All the students laughed at the unintentional ambiguity of the statement. And in our amusement, I don’t know that any of us actually focused on the true meaning of the sign.

Every time you put something into the public domain, you risk being misunderstood. Step outside your domain of knowledge and bias, and consider how it may be interpreted by others. Bonus points if you can actually craft a message that really resonates and speaks more to others than to yourself.

Forget what you’re trying to say – what are you really communicating?

Image courtesy of Lazlo Woodbine

Quick: what site did I save to? Delicious? StumbleUpon? Digg?

Nope; it’s 1999 and I just added a site to the Open Directory Project. And you thought that all this “social sharing” stuff was new…

The Open Directory Project (a.k.a. “dmoz”) is touted as “the largest, most comprehensive human-edited directory of the Web. It is constructed and maintained by a vast, global community of volunteer editors.” These volunteer editors would take on particular topics, and find, review and list sites in the directory.

I was a dmoz volunteer editor myself a decade ago: my editor profile is still available at http://www.dmoz.org/profiles/afhill.html. When we speak now about social media and influence, I think back to what we were doing then. We were trying to provide quality resources based on our areas of expertise. My name was listed at the bottom of each of my categories, identifying me as the author. Is that not the same as looking up a tag I use on delicious? Social sites like those mentioned above are taking off, yet the ODP has seemingly lost its relevance.

According to compete.com visitor stats, visits to dmoz.org are on a steady decline:

If my actions as an active Web citizen have been the same for 10 years now, why is the platform changing? Why aren’t all those using StumbleUpon or Delicious just working on their own category on the ODP?

People don’t choose to edit the ODP because:

1. Content: The ODP is about multiple editors forming a single directory. Sites like delicious are about everyone creating his own personal directory.
2. Obligation: Maintaining a shared directory means following established guidelines. How I choose to use StumbleUpon or Delicious is up to me
3. Responding to Submissions: As an editor, you would receive submissions (often, many, many times) from people wanting you to list their site.
4. Bias: My personal resources contain bias, because they’re mine. A directory like the ODP should not (despite the fact my editor name is associated with my category)
5. Influence: We recognize certain “Twitterati” or Power Digg users, but Dmoz editors don’t seem to rise to any sort of special web celebrity for their efforts.

Surely if the ODP was considered a strong resource in which to be listed, individuals would devote some time to the effort. However, that compete.com report above noted that one of the top destination sites from dmoz.org was geocities.com. That was where I built my first few websites back in the 90s, and I don’t believe anything on geocities would now be considered a “top resource” for anything.

Beyond the content, the site on the whole has been unable to keep up with the changing landscape. Years ago, it was enough to have a directory that listed sites, but with the breadth of content available, we need to take it a step further, to having ratings and rankings (rather than just include/exclude with an occasional “best of”). This is where true social bookmarking and sharing sites shine. The “wisdom of the crowds” comes in as more people add content and it can be aggregated. The best known example is the front page of Digg, but Delicious also highlights “popular” articles.

So while my basic actions online to collect, classify and share information didn’t change, there is a shift in how the information is used, and how my actions relate to others. To some extent, this relates back to an earlier post I had on Social Media vs. Web 2.0. The ODP offered information to read from a single source (individual editors): sites like Digg only offer value when a critical mass start using the site.

Digg’s ‘about’ page proudly proclaims its difference from the ODP: “You won’t find editors at Digg — we’re here to provide a place where people can collectively determine the value of content and we’re changing the way people consume information online.” We can’t ignore the value of power users, but we don’t want to offer them complete control. As our system of categorizing and sharing information becomes increasingly complicated, with algorithms that take into account a multitude of factors, we can only guess how we will find, filter and assess value to content in the future.

Both complied, and responded to the few questions I threw out to them.

That was last April.

As excitement already starts to mount around SXSW 2010, I thought I’d pull up the ole emails to share.

Dan Shust (DS) is the Director of Emerging Media at Resource Interactive. From social media to mobile applications and mashups to surface computing, Dan shares his enthusiasm for applying digital experiences to business goals. His creative, business and technical experiences fuel his unique blend of well-balanced innovative experience strategies for the RI:Lab.

David Berkowitz is Director of Emerging Media & Client Strategy for 360i. A frequent speaker and media pundit, he has been published hundreds of times in MediaPost, Ad Age, eMarketer, and elsewhere.

Dan Shust of Resource Interactive

David Berkowitz of 360i

AH: What is a “typical day” for a DEM?
DS: Wow…not sure there is one (which I like!) Could be anything from working on client projects, innovation pilots, business development, internal education, speaking engagements, etc.
DB: I’m still waiting to find out, after a few years of this. But usually it involves some mix of developing campaign strategy, answering a few internal questions about whatever social or mobile sites or tools are getting some buzz, scheduling and holding meetings with technology vendors, catching up on the latest buzz from various social media channels, and registering with at least one new site du jour. And then when I’m at events speaking or blogging, all of the other stuff doesn’t go away.

AH: What is your educational background? Work experience?
DS: My degree is in Industrial Design from The Ohio State University. I have been luck enough to have worked in a variety of Experience Design/Development capabilities, from Interactive Designer to Creative Director.
DB: I have a BA in Psychology from SUNY Binghamton. My work experience over the past decade has been dedicated to the digital realm at such companies as eMarketer where I was an editor and media relations lead, and then at iCrossing where I was focused on corporate marketing.

What I found interesting in this response was that neither of these men have technology backgrounds (bad luck for me? ) Technology is a necessary part of the equation, but these men are more in tune with the experience and its impact on individuals. Obviously this is not to trivialize their technical prowess: I recall the first time I worked on a project with Dan at Resource Interactive: he knew more about Yahoo Pipes than I did!

AH: What is the biggest misconception about your job? Do people think you’re a media buyer, etc?
DS: Ha..I haven’t gotten that one yet! Probably that what we work on is “future stuff”. We are always looking ahead, but my goal is to use the latest digital trends and technologies to solve our clients problems today. (When appropriate, of course!)
DB: The media buyer angle comes up quite a bit; I spent a lot of time at iMedia Breakthrough in March telling ad network representatives who else they should call in my agency. The other biggest misconception is that I spend my day under some giant emerging media tree waiting for an apple to fall on my head, or alternatively jet setting at every event known to man, to the point where that’s all I do. One client even named me the Paris Hilton of Search back when that was more my focus years ago, and I think he was trying to be flattering. I actually do have client deadlines, meetings, and paperwork.

AH: If the Internet didn’t exist, what would you be doing, career-wise?
DS: Some form of Graphic Design.
DB: I’d probably be a teacher. That was the original plan, at least. Or maybe I’d be an official taste tester for Sprinkles Cupcakes, since I do that on a volunteer basis already.

AH: Is your job primarily predicting future advancements, researching what’s new and upcoming, or explaining what’s here?
DS: Yes.
DB: The future’s important of course, but most of my clients don’t need to be the very first to do something. It’s more important that they use the tools and technologies in the smartest ways possible for them, and that’s the bigger focus. I do still play around with some of the more emerging stuff, from mobile social applications to augmented reality technologies, but those are less important for day to day campaign planning.

So there you have it. Apparently Directors of Emerging Media DON’T just sit around and play with the latest and greatest digital toys: they are talented marketers and strategists looking for how this technology can best be applied in client engagements. They certainly have the pulse of where things are headed, but ever with the consideration of its applicability and relevance to a particular situation.

Interested in learning more from these talented folks? You can help ensure they get to SXSW again this year.

• Lara Lebeiko (who actually introduced me to David last year) has pulled together a panel entitled Future Pioneers: Innovators in Digital with David, Noah Brier, Justin Kalifowitz and me!
• David has also been invited to sit on a killer panel that Dan organized: (Over)loaded – 60 Digital Predictions For 2010 In 60 Minutes with Robert Scoble and Jason Zada.
• David also submitted two additional panels: How Startups Can Create Buzz Without Selling Out and Tasty Conversation: Social Media + Food Brands

What IS Augmented Reality?

Augmented Reality (or AR) has been referred to as a way to “layer ‘virtual story worlds’ over the real world“.

Ever listen to an audio guide while traveling? You were augmenting your experience audibly. Augmented reality can allow you to do this visually as well.

How’s THAT possible?

Chris Grayson has created this simple video to explain how a combination of features on your cell phone can make mobile-aware AR possible:

And this is for real?

Yup! Owners of the iPhone 3GS users can get their first taste of AR googness in the new Yelp application. While there has been some controversy surrounding the inclusion of such a feature in the application, this doesn’t overshadow the significance of its inclusion at all.

The Yelp iPhone app has always offered an ability for users to find services based on their location, but Augmented Reality allows for an enhanced user experience. Looking through the “monocle”, you can see the street in front of you, but with Yelp results superimposed.

So what’s the controversy?

Developers had been asking for the ability to include Augmented Reality in their applications, and Apple had told them to wait until the next iPhone Operating System (3.1) upgrade. The Yelp developers tapped into some undocumented, private APIs to build out this functionality. The concern among developers is that this may further cause Apple to slow down the approval process on new applications to ensure they’re not violating the App Store rules. (Note: I seem to recall a Google App that did the same thing, without so much uproar).

Cool, sure. But where’s the applicability to my organization?

With AR just starting to seem viable and likely to have mass appeal, we’ve only started to consider where it may be used:

• historical recreations of places (i.e. tours)
• traffic updates
• how-to instructional guides
• home renovations/decorating

The iPhone is so cutting edge to support this!

Hm.. well, not really: the Android phone has supported Layar, an Augmented Reality browser, for several weeks now. And Augmented reality isn’t just a “mobile phone thing”, it is also showing up in the Entertainment industry in full force.

Below is a product demo of a new augmented reality game coming out from PlayStation in a few months:

For more about augmented reality, you can check out the Facebook page dedicated to such, or tagged articles on ReadWriteWeb.

remember.. when you and your friends were all talking about the future or whatever.. and everyone was trying to be all insightful.. so your friend asks..

If you could have/experience the one thing you most wanted to in all the world.. would you want to.. if you couldnt tell anyone.

Im just curious.. how many people out there would actually.. REALLY wanna do it? After alot of thought.. I have decided that I would.. if it was absolutely the one thing I most wanted in all the world.

I still recall: I didn’t even hesitate on my response:

I don’t think I would. It might be my ego talking, I want to share my experiences. But also I think if it is the most important thing in the world to you, it’s going to have a profound impact on your life. People may notice you’re different, and it would be extremely hard not to tell, because the event would have altered your entire life and views. I think it would be impossible…

I smile to look back now: as LiveJournal was truly a place for me to write to share my feelings and emotions, so dramatically different than this blog.

I was thinking of this recently with regard to Intellectual property, online disclosure and thought leadership. Years ago I stated that I felt compelled to share my experiences, and I believe that’s why I “play” in the social media world. I love to educate and share with others. When I worked at Resource Interactive, our CXO wrote a book about the strategic framework that guided our work. She put it out there for all to see, and yes, perhaps to copy. But it was clearly a demonstration of the thought leadership at the agency.

The question my friend posted 7 years ago was hypothetical, and assumed you couldn’t share your experience. But when you create or discover, you have the choice to share that knowledge with others.

People want to work with smart people. What are you gaining by hiding your smarts?

The service allows users to scan their followers for suspicious behavior (ignore factor, follow rate, identical profile pics, among others) and block them directly. While I was aware of the presence of spammers on twitter, I was surprised to learn that some avatars had been used on over 100 twitter accounts.

Naturally, there has already been some backlash that the service makes it too easy to block people, and identifies “frequent tweeters” as spammers. But the service simply offers information, and leaves it up to users to take action as they desire.

As always, I’m curious about the decision of people to block a follower versus simply not following back. I’ve never been particularly concerned about people following me, since everything I tweet is on the public timeline. The “about” page on Twitblock helped to clarify why the service was established:

TwitBlock aims to raise awareness, and hopefully educate Twitter users about how to avoid falling foul of cons and phishing traps. The data TwitBlock can gather while these junk accounts are active will be useful battling spam in future, wherever it shows up next. We hope to gain great insight into how spammers are using social networks, and rest assured that we will be sharing these insights.

Whereas I always only considered the low impact a spammy follower had on my own account, I now recognize that flagging suspicious behavior can help the overall community. The service may also help casual users learn what is considered spammy or at least nuisance behavior. The Wild Web has some rules of etiquette that not everyone is yet aware of, and Twitblock may raise awareness of such.

I love the fact that Twitblock exists, as it illustrates that people are not solely interested in increasing their follower numbers. While there is no personal cost to having unengaged followers, the numbers actually mean something if the spammy (or abandoned) accounts are trimmed away. At that point we can actually start to evaluate the engagement and reach of our tweets.

Support Details is a simple site that determines various details about the visitor’s configuration, which can then be saved or emailed. Rather than having to explain to less-technical folks how to determine if they have Javascript enabled or not, they can simply be directed to supportdetails.com.

They say the best products are designed to solve problems. As Co-founder and Client Services Manager George Morris wrote in the blog post introducing Support Details, the “idea started as a way to save time…[w]e simply were losing too much time to explaining the “how to”.” They came up with a straight-forward solution (the website title cheekily refers to the site as “Tech support anger management”), and now are sharing it with others.

Simple. Useful. Smart.

1. Web Application Accessibility Showdown: Flash/Flex, HTML5 & Silverlight – For anyone who knows me, this is a no-brainer. My Masters capstone was on Accessibility for RIAs, but I never even got into Silverlight. This is progressive stuff. The course description mentions Accessibility APIs, which I rarely see mentioned in talks. While listed as a beginner course, this stands to have more detailed information than you’ll see most anywhere else! My only concern? The presenter is from Adobe.
2. Your *#@^!in’ Website Is Not Accessible! – Getting Results – Shawn Henry brings together a panel to debate different approaches to getting the Web more accessible. Beyond the tactics of a developer, this session seeks to answer questions like “What are pros and cons of different collective approaches (e.g., laws, lawsuits, community pressure)? What are some cautions and tips for the different approaches?” and “Where are resources to back me up when approaching organizations with inaccessible websites, e.g., business benefits of web accessibility, web accessibility laws, etc”
3. Web Accessibility Gone Wild – Jared Smith of WebAIM presents “a wide variety of mistakes, blunders, misconceptions, over-indulgences, intricacies, and generally silly aspects of modern web accessibility.” Sometimes we know just enough to be dangerous!
4. Cross Device Accessibility: Is This For Real? – We haven’t even figured out desktop-based web accessibility yet, and Chris Mills from Opera is pushing the question of cross-device accessibility. There’s always more to consider, isn’t there?
5. HTML5: Tales from the Development Trenches – It was tough to pick a last panel, but learning about the implications of HTML5 from Bruce Lawson, Remy Sharp and Steve Faulkner is probably the best way to really understand them.

I’m sure many of the other accessibility sessions have some great information, but these are the ones I’d love to sit in on. Obviously there is so much information at SXSW it’s hard to devote too much time to a single topic – these are the sessions that rose to the top of the list for me!

(While you’re reviewing these panel submissions, please check out my own as well!

This year, I want to share what I’ve learned with others. If you think this is an interesting topic and want it to be presented, please take a moment to vote for “Forging your Ideal Career” for SXSW 2010.

Forging your Ideal Career

You’ve proven you’re a great developer / designer. How do you rise above the production floor to share your ideas and insights, and drive the solution rather than simply implementing it? Presenters will share their strategies for cultivating your career and attaining personal satisfaction while still keeping a steady paycheck!

1. What if you feel your company’s career path is not for you?
2. How do you position yourself as what you want to be doing, versus what you’re currently doing?
3. How can networking help?
4. What opportunities exist outside work?
5. Forget work-life balance: how do you maintain paid work-unpaid work balance?
6. How do you get support from your organization for your outside activities?
7. What ideas do you share with your employer, versus keeping them to yourself?
8. Wherein lies the problem: Your career, your job, or your company?
9. When is it time to leave?
10. How do you move on without burning bridges?

I sought out a former co-worker to serve as a co-presenter. Michael Krotscheck is brilliant: we worked together at Resource Interactive, where we were both Senior Developers. Whereas I left RI, Michael still works there and he also devotes his time and passion to serving as an Adobe User Group Manager.

Michael and I will share our own strategies and experiences as to how best to take control of your situation to achieve satisfaction and success.

Again, topics for South By Southwest are selected in part based on interest by the community. If you think this is an interesting topic and want it to be presented, please take a moment to wing on over to the PanelPicker and vote for “Forging your Ideal Career” for SXSW 2010.

Yet when I recount these stories, I feel the audience tense up. Unvetted, unofficial information? What if it was used by “the bad guys”? This social media thing doesn’t appear to be beneficial at all!

A recent article on ReadWriteWeb declares: Twitter is not an Emergency Broadcast System. I scanned it eagerly: did they admit to the challenges associated with decentralized information? Was it an infrastructure problem: what if service was unavailable?

Nope: evidently TechRadium, a Texas-based technology company, “argues that it has patents covering the process for simultaneously notifying large numbers of people about emergencies through multiple communication gateways, such as cell phones, pagers and e-mail.” According to Law.com, TechRadium claims their patent rights are being violated when Twitter is used by organizations to send out bulk messages about emergencies.

I’m not an expert on Intellectual Property or patent law, but it surprises me that a patent can apply to a small extension of use of a product. As is mentioned in the Law.com article, it appears that sending out a mass email to your address book about an emergency would therefore be an infringement of these patent rights. I’d be interested to know if there is some clause about “primary” vs auxiliary use. Twitter was not designed for that exclusive purpose, although it can be used that way. Like abusing household cleaners: you can put a warning on the container, but you’re not going to outlaw the product just because people use it in unintended ways.

The article explicitly mentions the use of Twitter by organizations to send out mass messages. This is a big red flag for me – TechRadium didn’t seem to care about Twitter until they felt they were losing out on a sales opportunity. But social media makes it easy for anyone to be a publisher: if @CDCEmergency can’t tweet mass messages, can @jnwilliams76? Also — at its core, Twitter is ideal for spreading crowdsourced messages, so it accounts for the rapid receipt and dissemination of information. TechRadium appears to be more specifically for simply sending out “official” notifications.

Services like TechRadium are great when you have a known subscriber base, but Twitter offers other distinct benefits: the ability for people to find updates online without previously signing up. This overcomes some of the barriers of traditional emergency preparation programs, where people are only motivated to act when the situation arises. With Twitter, individuals are already using the service. Compare this to a separate system like TechRadium, where individuals may have to make a conscious effort to subscribe. Again: this comes back to the primary purpose of the service: most people on Twitter likely aren’t only signing up to subscribe to emergency alerts.

Does TechRadium have a right to feel their Intellectual Property is being infringed upon? Should Twitter be used for mass emergency broadcasts?