APPY

How do you know if you are happy? my daughter asked. I know I feel better than I used to, she said, but I don’t know if that means I’m happy now. I suppose she meant what if this is it, and I’m not appreciating it, and then it passes? It’s important to know what happy is, and savour it.

What I know, I said, is that happiness is in the present, in every moment, in many separate moments. Sometimes there are many in an unbroken series. Sometimes they are discrete. There’s the slow sigh of eternity in meditation, when the heart settles without fear or premonition, no memory, no desire, deep and safe, free falling. There’s the silvery sound of trees that whisper with the visit of the wind. There’s the embrace of many kinds of love, chest pressed to chest; moments of pure exchange. You got the love. Exult, hands in the air. There’s sunlight on colour, fruit in a jar, poppies that bow, the shift of autumn light. Watch them, let them pass by, let them go. These things strung together make happiness remembered. The trick is to exist in them. Taste them, fully be in them. Pass on to the next one, land softly.

I remember whole tracts of happiness in my life. I wouldn’t have said so at the time. I was planning for more, for better, wishing my life away. I know now these days were unrepeatable happiness. So I treat now with reverence. Happiness evaporates just beyond your grasp if you pursue it. Come back into the moment and look at it. There is no future except when we get to it, and the past another country.

Oh, Ok then ... I don't want to leave a blog in limbo

ISTINCTIVE

There's something a bit perverse about having started a thing with a life of its own, and then making a snap decision to abandon it. So having said I was off to WordPress in a way that sounded like "I may be some time...." I feel as though I'm creating a lost orphan leaving this one behind to fend for itself. Maybe I can blog in two places... until I get the hang of the "301 Redirect" I was told about by a sage blogger at WordCamp. I Googled it, and stopped at the geekspeak. So I'll also be here. Someone next to me at WordCamp said they had about a hundred blogs :\ Surely I can do two.

I returned here to re-read posts, because I was having a telephone conversation with a media academic in Leipzig and he said he's been reading my blog. I'm thinking today about the 'media studies' space now swirling with events such as the toppling of tyrants and debate about the role of social media in what has been dubbed Revolution 2.0 (a term attributed to Wael Ghoneim), the numerous intersections between crumbling traditional media institutions, the significance of reputation and the management of it, the Public Sphere, accountability, citizen engagement and ownership of framing... I'm thinking about the vital role of social media in thickening the layers and webs of global interconnections. And the distinctive International Communication space that brings all of these, and more, together.

Moved to WordPress....

It had to happen - you can't really be at WordCamp and still be using Blogger. If I've learned nothing else today, it's that there's no point in blogging unless you do what you can to maximise searchability.

So I'm off to http://float2.wordpress.com/ ...

Minimonos - "Story-telling for a better world"

Gwen Walton-Wegener talks at WordCamp about Minimonos, a kids blogging and game site - "MiniMonos is a virtual world for children, focused on sustainability, generosity, community and fun. We're based in New Zealand". Walton-Wegener opines that kids who are online are more likely to be writing generally. Encouraging blogging brings about interesting developments such as kids enjoying having the "first scoop"; building own blogs using Wordpress, writing html code, using images... no limits to what they can achieve. Kids are just as involved in social media as we are. "Kids who blog are really inspiring!"

How to publish a bestseller for nothing, without being Alison Holst

irst speaker Vaughn Davis (The Goat Farm) at the third NZ WordCamp at Te Papa Tongarewa talks about How to publish a bestseller for nothing, without being Alison Holst.
Well OK it's easy, says Vaughn, to publish in NZ if you are a cook or an All Black. But if you're not a cultural icon and you have views to share, Twitter will only get you so far - you still can't beat the credibility that a book gives you, even if it's the same content. Once you've got past the 'what makes you qualified to publish?' issue (there's always going to be someone in front of you, and someone behind you...so get over it) - there's a new way to distribute.
A creative team Innovative Thunder - created "Pay with a Tweet" ("a social payment system") = piece of code to create a distribution network. For Vaughn, a first Tweet about his book ("Tweet this Book") on 10 Dec led to 15,172 readers and downloads worldwide since then; and one printed copy.

Open educational resources or closed Learning Management Systems - Patricia Arnold

nteresting to hear what's going on among a highly specialised group of researchers in CI. Thinking how much more successful such a research network could be, for building critical mass in (especially) new and rapidly changing research fields. For goodness sake, here we all are re-inventing the wheel - yet even with my "other" hat on as having a central interest in e-Learning strategy (including use of Moodle) at Unitec - and here I am listening to Patricia Arnold from the University of Applied Science in Munich, talking about exactly the same challenges there! Must invite her to the e-Learning Futures Conference (ICeLF) we are hosting at Unitec next year....

Doug Schuler keynote: Community Informatics Research Network, Monash University, Prato Italy

Doug Schuler's keynote at today's conference opening leads me to think the research activity I've engaged in in recent years, as well as the extension of it through the role I take at Unitec (strategically orienting itself very much toward serving community needs) and now being an invited member of the Auckland Computers in Homes Steering Group, positions me well within the ambit of the CIRN network. Here in Prato, Doug's comments to a gathering of internatonal community internet activists are focusing on the need, now, to mobilise as a network rather than continue to have a localised focus. Leadership (shared?) is required, that will help to 'frame' what we do with cyberspace. It's not enough to find community informatics interesting & study it – it needs to be framed it in a larger sense.

This is all timely and good to hear. How do we use what we are learning about CI – how do we focus it on our community? "Civic intelligence", Schuler argues, is ultimately what we are about – trying to increase it – in a collective way.

How do we structure our network? How do we put the sort of structure on our networks that will get the work done without becoming that rigid hierarchy that we don’t like, that has all the wrong features? Dynamic leadership – or no leaders? Alternatives include - issues as nodes; shared projects. How do we organise the technologies we use?

Some possible uses of this more strategic CI approach include that it will enable us to find the information that we need – papers, projects, people, events. It's there but we have to searhc for it. It's not necessarily central, Schuler argues; we can find it – but there’s not a ‘there’ there (with a nod to John Perry Barlow). We could... share policy documents; identify other people with similar interests; develop and test theories; find others with whom to collaborate; facilitate larger research projects less expensively by sharing the load more broadly and intelligently; create and manage projects and campaigns; make our work more accessible to the world as well as more legitimate, necessary possible and effective; build our community.

This all resonates so wel with where I find myself in the terms outlined at the beginning of this post. Schuler suggest that for this new energised CI network to be effective, it needs to be easy to join – eg sign up and you’re on board – with some small commitment (rather than just communicating with the network). In this way we can create an enormous resource.

Outages, apologies and media scrums

Notes from Nick and Mark’s “insights,stories and lessons from inside one of the biggest stories of recent months: the multiple outages that hit Telecom’s XT network.” PRiNZ conference “Taming the Tiger” 28-29 May 2010

Often funny and dry, Nick and Mark offered a list of the key elements of crisis communication management – lessons learned from having to deal with several “outages” of the XT network over just a few weeks this year. They recommend Andrew Griffin’s book “New Strategies for Reputation Management”.

Prepare your leader/s. They need training to develop self-awareness, so they know their own strengths and weaknesses

Simplify the crisis manual. Make it user-friendly.

Understand powers and limitations. That is, the people involved in the crisis communication need to know who makes decisions, so that they don’t over-step each other’s roles

Watch the team dynamics. The other part of behavioural crisis management. The team that know one another, have rehearsed together, perform better when the occasion demands. In the case of XT – the geographical disjoint was a weakness in this regard.

Communicate early and often, e.g. first update within 2 hours of the crisis; 2-hourly updates; shorter time frame for social media. Team members need to understand how the crisis will be seen / reported by the media.

Don’t forget your own people. Don’t assume they won’t be emotionally affected. Example – abuse of call centre staff. Communication and leadership needed for the staff dealing with the public…at Telecom, a movie was made showing how everyone (Telecom employees) was dealing with the outages and public backlash/media attention etc. Showed a real hands-on response – people just getting on and dealing with it. The movie was put on the Telecom intranet to show staff what was being done – affirming, encouraging, positive. CE (Paul Reynolds) was shown as leaderly – a role model: “Be truthful… ‘Fess up… This is not acceptable.” This in-house movie proved to be great company-wide communication that brought everyone together with a sense of purpose.

Own the crisis. Focus on the stakeholders that matter.

Practise, practise, practise. For Telecom XT – 5 outages in 3 months!! There is no substitute in preparedness for having been put through your paces on a regular basis. (Ironically, the day after this presentation, Mark was being interviewed again on National Radio, after the latest crisis: in Otorohanga, the 111 service was non-operational for 3 hours….causing unacceptable delay in emergency service for someone who needed an ambulance…)

Show, don’t tell. Don’t just tell the media you care or that you are doing everything you can – show them. No empty commitments. Front up – daily – pull all advertising – pay compensation – make changes.

Taming the tiger

At the PRiNZ conference today, high points include hearing more about "conversational marketing" from Jake Pearce, who finished his presentation with video about the t-shirt company Threadless Jake's illustration of how success can be built on making people feel as though they are part of the business - they have a stake in it. Threadless is one of the fastest-growing companies in the US. They treat their customers like they belong to a club. Artists submit their ideas for t-shirt designs to the website; winners (decided by voting on the site) get their designs printed plus prize money plus rights to the design for keeps & the t-shirt goes on sale. Artists/customers are welcome in the company's head office. The art / the t-shirts become the marketing. Consumers are also producers here. Roles are blurred. "A design team of thousands....And what are they paid? Nothing!"

Brand trust and loyalty have gone down the tubes. Who do people trust now? Each other, says Jake. Word of mouth advocacy is what sticks. And the kind of people who respond well to so-called conversational marketing are Gen C - the 'influencers'. They want a sense of control. Gen C can be seen here in a video narrator Cody Shuttleworth calls a 'Looksy' - about what his digital world means to him as a 19 year old: "We're creating a documentary about Generation C; the generation of digital creatives who are rethinking the way we communicate. A 'Looksy' is a short user-generated video which answers one simple question: What does your digital world look like?"

Breathe

Hello blog, I'm back. I left you in a sort of cryogenic freeze for a while. Now I find you still here, waiting patiently. Don't deserve you, do I. Let me thaw you out, breathe a fog of words over you. I see it's been almost a year since I left you to fend for yourself. I've shrugged a few monkeys off my back that weighed heavier and heavier for a while. Life returns to something more like normal. The urge to let the words flow in some form other than the bloodless prose of a thesis begins to surge. That's all. I'll be back soon to keep you warm.

Howling at the moon: an internet meme

But Charlie Balch on the airI (Association of Internet Researchers) mailing list notes the pitfalls of word of mouth marketing. "We need a new term. Viral marketing doesn't fit" says Charlie, referring to a report in the Washington Post late last week. Amazon.com customer reviewers ran hilariously wild with the life-changing powers of a t-shirt featuring three wolves. Customers can be wise to all this "engagement" and "marketing is a conversation" rhetoric. The shirt is so kitsch it's cool to an online audience that appreciates irony. "Anybody, or any group, armed with a Web browser can anonymously game the system and manipulate the marketplace at sites inviting user feedback" says Mike Musgrove in the Washington Post.
Turns out the manufacturer of the Three Wolf Moon shirt isn't all that happy, calling the spate of ironic reviews "a viral assault" in the BBC News, while the art designer Michael McGloin reckons "we'll take ironic fashion any day."

Kiwi & Proud

This week the PR Institute of NZ (PRiNZ) conference, Kiwi & Proud, foregrounded the role of social media and Web 2.0 in the work of PR practitioners, steering toward a theme of how the PR industry can assist Brand NZ. John Bell of Ogilvy PR, a keynote videoconferenced in, was a dynamic start to the day. It’s an exciting and slightly scary world. Enthused about ramping up my activities by finally registering with Twitter and reading more blogs each day, as well as writing more of course, I worry too about where to carve the time from. The excitement so far outweighs the anxiety. Quit moaning, you’ve just got to do it, they say.

Increasingly the marketing and communications functions are blurred, Bell tolled us :)- PR people are now in marcomms. Not sure I'm comfortable with that. The influence of social media is seen for example in computer brand Lenovo, an Olympics sponsor, aggregating blogs and vlogs (video blogs) from 100 athletes at the Beijing Olympics to a Lenovo website: an alternative to TV coverage. Thus, now, brands as media companies…and marketing as a ‘conversation’. Individuals can build a worldwide movement around their identity, and manage it themselves: at “Livestrong”, Lance Armstrong , prolific Twitterer, shows he understands the reach of social media. Buzzwords here are “engagement”, “empowering influencers to take ownership”, “co-creation driving loyalty and advocacy”, “treat new influencers like colleagues.”

As the president of WOMMA, the word of mouth marketing association, Bell was keen to drive home the message that the most trustworthy source for purchase ideas is word of mouth….and because we have what he calls a ‘personal message shield’ (to ward off the bulk of the 3500 messages we are exposed to in one day) high relevance is needed, as well as engagement value, aka “what is the value we can provide people so they will actually give a crap and want to spend time and energy with us?”

Conversation, not just messaging. Manage communities. Look for affinities: read blogs. Practice digital media relations.

no news is good news?

We’re enjoying the response to media censorship by the military government in Fiji. “Man gets on bus” and “watching paint dry” are some creative responses from The Fiji Daily Post to the clampdown on press freedom. Meanwhile in New Zealand the press pages are filled with breathless reporting on the guilty plea of Tony Veitch, sports journalist, now convicted for injuring his former girlfriend with reckless disregard. He broke her back by kicking her on the floor. This disturbing story has polarised opinion: who is the victim, and who the perpetrator? To what extent was the conclusion predetermined by the case being played out in the media over ten months? Frankly I find comment such as the former girlfriend being a mercenary b—ch, and Veitch undeserving of public opprobrium, a disturbing insight into a rich seam of largely tacit bloke-ism in NZ culture. It doesn’t take much at times to flick the scab off this unattractive trait. Celebrity sports jocks have done themselves a lot of damage in the public eye in recent years by (I'm speculating) enjoying their larger than life image so much they start to imagine themselves as invulnerable.

Partnership: 13 March 2009

Rain fell today on the seated crowd, the marquees, the stand of ti-tree behind, and the empty paved forecourt of our new whare, Ngakau Mahaki, in the marae complex called Te Noho Kotahitanga. It gusted in beneath the canopies of canvas, and the umbrellas. Gleaming wet warriors issued a challenge; there was the calling of a woman, of women, and the inching forward of the guests, the manuhiri.

The showers came and went; an orchestra of umbrellas moved in time. We are taught the rain bodes well. The manuhiri huddled as a flock against the gusts, ranked in rows of dark seating partially sheltered by trees, separated from us by the forecourt. There was stillness, and patient listening as speech after speech rolled out over the valley and stream: guests and hosts, hosts and guests in two large gatherings. And we were still, and we listened, and we were solemn. This place and this event had been eight years in the making.

In time, speech and song and solemnity gave way to ripples of laughter. Two gatherings became one in the shared response and the slow filing of manuhiri inching towards Te Noho Kotahitanga, the hongi – the mingling of breath - and the scent of recently carved wood. I understood now the craft and practice of formal welcome: its rhythms, its sensibilities. We were two, and then we were one, in a place where we can meet, listen and learn from each other. Potential hostilities are defused; barriers dissolved, and what was an assembly of separate agendas becomes an entity of shared interests.

The interior is warm, and dimly lit like a cathedral. Peopled by stories, histories, and genealogies, shapes of faceless people press through the walls as if surging forward to rejoin us or drawing us back into the past. We join a throng of souls present and past, pressing forward to the future. I am in a heart space of welcome and inclusion. Pulsing now with the breathing, the footfalls and the heartbeats of all who enter, stirring with the bloodlines and life stories of those who went before, Ngakau Mahaki is living and breathing, nestled among the trees and the rain tonight with the full moon sifting silver over all.

Flight path

This week the birds are flying north. On an eggshell blue morning I catch sight of strings of them in formation, reeling and unreeling like the tail of a kite or slow motion billowing of silk used in rhythmic gymnastics. Mostly, the strings of 40 - 100 birds look like a wide ‘V’. So many squadrons, one shifting and fluttering after the other, an avian assault on the warmer Pacific.

Seasonal changes happen subtly. Friends look at me dubiously when I say the light is changing, the cicadas are dying, there’s a moment of chill in the evenings. But the birds always confirm it for me that autumn is here. I’m no bird expert: they may be godwits migrating some unbelievable distance, or native oystercatchers…whichever, they tell me that the roosting places around the Manukau must be getting chill.

There is never one particular day when you know, suddenly, that it’s the next season. It’s a gradual accumulation of changes. The angle of the daylight, the colour of the sky. The birds fly north.

Wind in my face and riding under sprinklers

Even my Siamese cat complains and lies wilting in the shade. Vaguely affronted that conditions could so fail to be to his liking, he asks for distractions such as food, which he then finds also fail to please, so another lie down is called for.

In weather like this… I learned to ride a pushbike as a child of maybe seven. We lived in a very small provincial NZ town in a farming district. The streets were safe for an unsteady child on a two-wheeler, or so it seemed to me. Feeling tricked by my brother’s technique of pushing from behind and then letting go without me knowing, at some point I gathered together that terrifying, fragile sense of staying upright by keeping the forward momentum, and I tottered off down the street to claim Main Street as my own. What lingers is the combination of rushing air, the rhythmic sound of the tyres against bitumen, and the feeling of seeing things from higher than usual. So the curiously elongated letters in white paint, yards long, spelling ‘G-I-V-E W-A-Y’ and ‘S-T-O-P’ that make visual sense from a car, flowed like film reel under the bicycle tyres, now somehow different in meaning from the same words on lollipop signs at the street corners. The words were now mine: they were meant for me too. In my other life a scruffy, nondescript blonde-haired child of seven, up on the seat of the bike I was legitimately part of another world where the rules determined by adults were ones that I too could master and own.

In weather like this… I now learn to ride a road bike. I buy the helmet, the cycling shirt with pockets at the back; I already have the shoes with cleats. I go to my university campus, where acres of sun-browned fields and shady trees are circled by roads undisturbed by traffic this holiday weekend. The sun beats down. I park underneath a large leafy tree, unload the bike, put on the helmet and shoes. I scoot off down a slight grassy incline, mastering the crucial trick of clicking the shoes in – and out – of the cleats. I roll to a stop, one leg ready to connect with the ground. So many decades later, the basics are still there. Yes! I ride back to the car, uphill a little this time. Somehow I have the right gear, get there, unclick and get off. Yes! Second trip, I mis-judge the timing of unclicking my left foot, and the bike and I, united by shoe cleats, fall as one onto the grass. No worries. This is why I came today, and began on the grass. Back on again, and next time to the road.

A couple of circuits of the campus later, cocky now, I point the bike up a bit of an incline by the Mason Clinic heading for the Architecture School. Two observers sit in the shade, perhaps talking about me, or perhaps something else: either way, enough to distract me. I slow to a standstill, wrong gear, I forget about the feet, too late now … for an eternity we hang in a moment of balance, the bike and I, united by shoe cleats, then fall as one onto the road. Blood runs down my shin and the bike chain has come off. No worries. I wipe the blood off with leaves, fiddle with the chain, and find a tap to clean my hands. Back on the bike and away I go… and away I go… and away I go… the wind in my face, the road disappearing under me like film reel. I stand on the pedals a little at times to absorb the bumps and judder bars, loving it. I push hard to get up the little inclines, and feel a rush of playful pleasure as I sweep down the other side, onto long straights, judging the corners to tilt the bike a little to negotiate the arc. More downhill, more flat, and there! The sprinklers watering the field where the Auckland Blues train and I ride under them, one, two, three, as the spray blows onto the road.

A few circuits later, the road now mine, my face puce from the sun and the effort, I dismount, wrench off the shoes and helmet, toss them on the grass, gasp into the remains of the litre of water I’d brought, lie down on the grass under the large leafy tree and feel thrilled. The veil of leaves stirs and shifts over me. Cicadas scrape out a wall of sound. I study a cycle map of Auckland.

In the presence of a legend

A claim that we were in the presence of greatness at the Leonard Cohen concert last night is easy to defend.

First, the instrument: his voice was extraordinary after all these years, from the first spirited bars of "Dance Me to the End of Love" when the honeyed tones filled the stadium with ease, yet with intimacy (singing only to me, surely), to the prayerful intoning of the poems "A Thousand Kisses Deep" and "If it be Your Will". Until he left the stage at 11.30pm, the voice did not waver, and I suspect it could have easily played on.

Then there was the performance, like a devotion: kneeling, or singing with eyes closed in rapture as if to the Lord of Song. The tender enfolding of the mike in two hands arranged as if in prayer, or offering up something holy to be handed on.

He's funny. "I spent a few years looking into religions and philosophies, but cheerfulness kept bursting through". There was joy, and an exquisite sense of the power of the moment to be savoured, right now, as one never knows when one's voice will be silenced...(if it be Your will).

Acknowledging everyone in the venue, he included thanks to the audience "for keeping the songs alive all these years". Our pleasure.

The Aussies are so damn hot there's a heat wave in NZ

Thought for the day: the NZ Herald reports today

"Warm air coming across the Tasman Sea has been blamed for the scorching temperatures (in NZ yesterday), which went into the 30s in several North Island centres" (...and unofficially topped 40C..)

ANZCA news for Media International Australia (Feb.09)

The first days of 2009 in Auckland are a blur of spectacular summer days, still nights, and the sweet sense of a few last hurrahs before we begin the serious business of handling a recession. Reluctantly back at my desk, I join a few hardy souls at my place of work scanning the figures, attempting to divine whether an economic downturn will bring increased interest in higher education – that is, more bums on seats. We all like to think so. There may be nothing like the cool breeze of rising unemployment to focus our attention on the relationship between university study and “the industry”.

The lull of summer is also a traditional opportunity for page 1 media exposure for university researchers. So it was that Professor John Hattie from the University of Auckland appeared on the front page of a NZ Sunday newspaper on January 4, where his 15-year study of student achievement, involving a total of 83 million students, was hailed as “teaching’s Holy Grail”. Hattie’s key finding: the most important factor in student achievement is - not class sizes - but the relationship a student has with the teacher, embodied in trust and effective feedback. My lifetime of teaching so far tells me this is indisputable, but with the relentless focus on increasing student/staff ratios in the tertiary education sector in NZ, my challenge is how to protect the conditions in which the necessary trusting relationships can be fostered. Hattie calls for a carrot approach: boost salaries and provide the incentive of performance payments for excellence. Presumably then, we will find creative ways to produce it. Time and motion studies, anyone?

Our upcoming conference, Communication, Creativity and Global Citizenship at QUT in Brisbane from 8 - 10 July 2009 is an unparalleled opportunity to ensure that we are mixing with peers in communication research and education, debating the issues that unite us, sharing in one another’s latest research and hearing from outstanding keynote speakers. Abstracts and papers are due 6 February. Now is the time to ensure you register for the conference and consider accommodation options in this most appealing of mid-year destinations.

Finally, I invite you to take up the opportunity to renew your membership online. We have installed a PayPal facility on the ‘Join’ page of the ANZCA site so that the business of ensuring your continued access to MIA, the Australian Journal of Communication, a wonderful network of peers across the Australasian/Pacific region, the annual conference and more, is as easy as 1-2-3.

Poisonous toxins

So why on earth do people stll forward urban legends? Does it not seem somewhat implausible to read that microwaving food "...causes poisonous toxins to actually melt out of the plastic wrap and drip into the food"? If it were true, would there not have been mass poisonings throughout the microwave-prevalent reaches of the world, hospitals overflowing and doctors perplexed, with an accompanying public outcry and panic? Oh but "Sheryl Crow said that exact same thing"! OMG then it must be true.

I can't think of the number of times I have politely replied to perfectly sane folks, some of them my friends (referring them to urban legend sites like snopes.com or urban legends) who seemingly read this garbage with their critical faculties on hold. Perhaps there's a cachet about being first to "pass it on". They just don't seem to get it. It must be like a drug - the racing heart, the thrill of discovering the world is conspiring against us, full of wild-eyed villains lurking like goblins.

Let's see, what have people in my networks informed me with a completely straight face? That Bill Gates wants to give me some money (lots). That I should look out for men in shopping mall carparks inviting me to sniff samples of perfume so they can knock me out and do unspeakable things. Or to look out for flyers under the windscreen wiper when I look in the rear vision mirror - oh, but don't get out of the car! It's a trick, and there are villains lurking who will leap into the driver's seat and steal your car! It happened at the mall just down the road! True!

I feel better now.