Why do you curate? The 3 intents of curation and how they create value

By

I was recently in Rome for 24 hours to run a workshop for the senior technology executives of a global Fortune 50 company. While I was in town I was keen to try to catch up with collaboration and new media expert Robin Good, who I have known online for many years but never met, so I got in touch to see if we could catch up.

Fortunately he was available, and he took the opportunity to do a video interview with me. He has excerpted part of the interview in a great post Curation – A View from The Future: Ross Dawson, which includes 4 brief videos of me sharing my thoughts on curation.

Here is the fourth video in which I talk about the 3 intents of curation.

Here are the 3 intents, presented in reverse order from the video.
Read more →

Australia takes the wrong path on Twitter advertising disclosure

By

On Saturday I was interviewed on ABC24 about the news that Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) had said that it is acceptable for celebrities to do paid promotions on Twitter without disclosing their affiliation. This followed the announcement on ABC’s MediaWatch program that celebrity chef Matt Moran, among others, had accepted payment from South Australia’s Tourism Board for tweets.

I was asked why there was any difference with the “cash for comments” furor from 1999 when radio personalities were charged and fined for making on-air endorsements without disclosing payments made by the companies concerned.

There is of course no essential difference. Twitter is media. As attention shifts from traditional channels such as TV, radio, and newspapers to social media, naturally advertisers want to shift their presence to the emerging channels. That is absolutely fine. If advertisers want to use social media to get their messages across, that’s OK – users have many ways to deal with that. However there are clear regulations and norms on advertising in traditional media, where commercials are clearly delineated.

The US Federal Trade Commission has provided detailed endorsement guides, specifically revised to include social media, “because truth in advertising is important in all media – including blogs and social networking sites”.
Read more →

5 things to tweet and 5 things NOT to tweet

By

Earlier this week I spoke at a financial advisor retreat in the stunning Margaret River region of Western Australia, a region of wide-open beauty that is the source of many extraordinary wines.

I gave two keynotes at the event on subsequent days, on How to Lock-in Your Clients, and Success in a Connected World, which drew on my connected world visual framework.

I will write more later on the quite specific topic of Success in a Connected World for Financial Advisors. For now I thought I’d share a brief extract of the content I covered in my keynote on how to approach Twitter.

Around 15-20% of the audience had Twitter accounts, so my suggestions were intended as a high-level introduction on how to get started on Twitter, though the advice is relevant to anyone. The recommendations are based on my own thoughts as well as a range of research, notably the excellent Who Gives A Tweet? Evaluating Microblog Content Value from Carnegie Mellon University. This is what I suggested:

WHAT TO TWEET
Read more →

Using network perspectives to visualize changing culture and meaning

By

I’m a big fan of Tim Stock‘s work, which weaves together a deep network perspective with a rich view of how culture is changing informed by semiotic analysis. I earlier shared one of his presentations in a post on how the culture of luxury is changing.

The slides to his presentation at SXSW today on Culture Networks and the codes that drive them are available below. As usual, they provide a lesson in beautiful slide presentations to accompany the rich content.

Culture Networks (SXSW 2012)

View more presentations from Tim Stock

Read more →

Which countries have the most Twitter users per capita?

By

Recently web monitoring firm Semiocast published a list of the top 20 countries in number of Twitter accounts.

Not surprisingly US was top with 107 million users, with Brazil coming in second at 33 million and Japan next at just under 30 million.

I am always interested in comparing the degree of social media engagement across countries, so we did a simple analysis to find out the proportion of each country’s population that has a Twitter account, as below.


Read more →

[VIDEO] The flow of Twitter around the world

By

Twitter has created a nice video showing how much and when the unique moment of 11:11 on 11.11.11 was mentioned around the world last Friday, as below. They describe it:

This clip is a visualization of all the Tweets mentioning 11:11 on 11.11.11. Each “1” is a location that moves with the conversation on Twitter. Their scale varies depending on the volume of Tweets posted from the location they represent. You can see the main wave move from right to left, and then a second one that occurred at 11 p.m. around the world.


Read more →

The Question: What is the most interesting thing you came across today?

By

Twitter has moved from asking ‘what are you doing now?’ to ‘what’s happening?’, and now describes itself as an ‘information network‘.

The Twitter News Network is a manifestation of the global brain, in which we create value for others by contributing to the visibility and availability of high-value information.

While many contribute nothing of value to Twitter, many extraordinarily talented and interesting contributors are doing what they can to add value to others. It is a choice we make, by how we engage in our social networks.

If we consider what we can best contrbute to global consciousness, it is very likely the most interesting things we come across. The most intriguing, through-provoking, stimulating ideas, whether they be in the form of an article, a video, a conversation, or anything else from the vastness of media and ideas we encounter each day.
Read more →

Looking for talented editors/ writers / project managers / social media on cool tech, media, and future topics

By

We have just posted an ad on Elance, looking for editors/ writers/ project managers for some of our existing and forthcoming online publications.

Please apply on Elance if this seems like a match, or pass it on to others if you think it might be of interest. If you have questions before applying you can use our contact form. We hope to find some awesome people!

Talented editors/ writers / project managers / social media for cool tech and future topics

We run a series of content websites on topics related to technology, media, and the future, among many other activities.

We are looking for highly talented editors/ project managers who can drive quality content and traffic on these sites.
Read more →

Compulsory viewing: A CEO perspective on the business value of internal social networks

By

A few days ago Arie Goldshlager pointed me to the fantastic video below of Giam Swiegers, CEO of Deloitte Australia, talking about the company’s use of micro-blogging. Shortly after Forrester announced that Deloitte Australia’s Yammer network had won its 2011 Forrester Groundswell award in the category of Collaboration Systems.

Undoubtedly a major factor in Deloitte Australia’s success in internal social networks is the unreserved support of its CEO. However, as the video below clearly shows, Swiegers is not a man who likes social media for its own sake.

He simply recognizes that it can help lead to outstanding business outcomes. As an accountant and business leader, he sees the business value of using social networks well, and has helped Deloitte Australia to tap that value.


Here are some of the things that Swiegers says in the video:
Read more →

Keynote slides: The Power of Social Media and Future Organizations

By

This morning I am giving the external keynote at a closed conference for senior client executives run by a major professional services firm. They know the technical content they are presenting is rather dry so my role is to provide a highly engaging kick-off to the day (spouses are invited too) which is also practical and useful for attendees.

As is quite often the case these days, my client asked me to combine two of the topics from my general list of speaking topics, bringing together the ideas from The Power of Social Media and The Future of Work and Organizations. In fact every presentation I do is customized for the specific context and audience, including many topics not on the list, but it can be useful for clients to use the general speaking topic list to work out what they are looking for.

Here are the slides to my keynote. The usual disclaimer: the slides are designed to accompany my presentation and not to be viewed by themselves, but you still might find them interesting.

Keynote: The Power of Social Media and Future Organizations

View more presentations from rossdawson

Read more →