JPowers @ IN3.ORG

NYC Schools Need Business Pros to Review Curricula ... Now

The New York City Department of Education is trying to check out its career and technical education programs against current industry practices. Are they relevant? Up-to-date? Effective? Clueful?

It's important work. Reviewers read schools' applications containing narrative descriptions of programs of study and participate in site visits to schools to observe the programs in action.

We need folks from real life to make sure the kids are getting what they need. Do one school. Do many schools. But get involved. Review the paperwork in May and June; visit the school in the Fall.

The hot programs that need reviewing by the end of June are:

• Medical Laboratory and Assisting Program in Biotechnology
• Academy of Hospitality & Tourism
• Commercial Photography
• Construction Technology, Carpentry, Plumbing
• Culinary Arts
• Graphics & Illustration
• Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning
• Nursing Assistant
• Practical Nursing
• Transit Technician
• Vision Technology

... but there are hundreds of programs that could use a thorough review by people with experience in business and industry. If you work in these fields -- or know somebody who does who's amenable -- get an email to the fabulous Reina Utsunomiya at the New York City Department of Education: RUtsunomiya@schools.nyc.gov. (If you need convincing or stroking, contact me: JPowers@IN3.ORG, 718-499-1884.)

Here's your chance to quit Twittering and do some good, face-to-face. You'll be surprised by how many smart, dedicated teachers are doing truly great things to get kids ready for the world. And they really need your help.

(For some examples about the ways industry gets involved with education, see our Graphics Industry Advisory sites at GTexchange.org)

Social Media: The Narcissphere

"Circulating throughout the narcissphere." A throwaway line from Chris Ayres, LA columnist for the Times of London, has been rattling around inside my head for a couple of weeks. Social networks -- Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace and all the rest -- are all about the "I". Each service is a walled garden of Friends and Followers answering the question: "What are you doing?" The only people in the garden are the people I know, culled from my email address book or vetted by an invitation subroutine. My ego expands with my list of Friends, and I surf for ever more worthy Friends to enhance my Connections.

The Internet has always featured user-generated content: home pages, email, chat lines, fan fiction, blogs, wall postings and the Fifth Circle of Hell -- wrathful and sullen comment threads. But the public Internet also delivers exabytes of professionally-generated content: the academic, journalistic, literary and -- most recently -- cinematic. It's got people we don't like, ideas we're afraid of, philosophies we haven't considered, chances we're not ready to take. It's life. The world. Everything.

Social networks carve up the Net into special interest groups so we mainly see the people who think like we do. No wonder the marketers and spammers are all over social media: we do their research work for them by lining up into the correct psychographic. I think I prefer a life that's not so easily pigeonholed.

Boomers, Gen Xers and Millenials Feel Technology Differently

 

I've just updated the IN3 think piece Age & IT Experience that plots the current age of managers, employees and customers against the big developments in information technology. It's a good party starter: find your age when the IBM PC was launched, when streaming media happened, when Google Maps came out. Try to imagine how people from other life experiences feel about tech, and try to avoid the ageist notion that your cohort is the only one that matters, the only one that deeply understands.

It's a different kind of diversity with wide variations in adoption rates, dexterities, familiarity with digital concepts, comfort levels. Everybody comes from a different place on the map, and we'll all fall off the chart eventually as technology passes us by. With the aging workforce, maybe we should add columns for 65-, 75- and 85-year-olds. After all,we start with COBOL in 1960.

The tech-cultural column is very subjective, with headlines from politics and pop culture. Some companies customize the chart with their own industry milestones, and I can imagine versions for healthcare, education and politics. What do you think?

What's the opposite of "social media"? (Poll)

When we analyze social media, what are we comparing it to?  What do we call the other kind of media?

A Wikipedia entry suggests industrial media, but that seems mainly based on the expense of old media production tools and the ownership of the means of production. I do like industrial meaning part of the media industry, implying professionally-trained content creators and managers. Professional media makes the same point.

Other familiar modifiers like traditional or conventional don't define what we're talking about in any concrete way. Mass media or broadcast media come close but suggest huge scale that's not always there. A book of poetry that sells 1,000 copies is definitely not social media and it's not mass media.

Most definitions of social media incorporate user participation, user-generated content. Participatory media is a nice term, but is non-participatory media the opposite? Besides, a lot of user-generated content is meta-data: the most emailed story, the most downloaded song, the most linked post. It's just surveillance, not true participation.

And how is a blog part of social media? Free blogging software is a de-skilled method of producing web pages, but is cheap and easy the mark of social media? Or is audience participation the key: does enabling comments or mashing-up an RSS feed make a blog social?

Here's a more controversial suggestion. Social media is a walled garden that includes my friends and generally excludes the public. Even in open feeds like Flickr and Twitter, my content is concealed in an avalanche of traffic from anyone who doesn't explicitly follow me or search my key words. Getting in with the in-crowd is definitely a big part of the social scene.

Maybe the opposite of social media is open media.

What do you think?

PollPub.com Vote

What is the opposite of "social media"?

Anti-social
Broadcast
Industrial
Mass
Open
Professional
Traditional
Other

View Results

Poll powered by PollPub.com Free Polls

Un-neighborly: Ad Blocking in Park Slope

Grumpy laminated signs are uglifying the gorgeous architecture of Brownstone Brooklyn. "Do not deface my property with your disgusting advertising," they seem to say. "Let me deface my own property with this churlish plastic billboard." The most subtle sign is postcard-sized with a giant NO! -- flyers, ads, menus -- but you can get a lawyer-worded 5" x 7" placard that is "technically compliant with the new Anti-Flier Law" with each letter 1 inch tall.

It's part of the hard bigotry of non-commercial aspirations. We listen to public radio, support environmental groups, recycle our leavings. Overt money grubbing is for the hicks in the sticks. (Although plenty of residents make their living in media occupations.)

But it's un-neighborly. The offensive print doesn't come from Halliburton or Dow Chemical, it's from the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker -- local businesses who sell food, home repair, car services and locksmithing. The worst offenders may be supermarket coupon books, but that's because the folks who once appreciated the cents-off groceries have been priced out of the neighborhood and $5 celery from Norway is more fashionable.

Advertising -- not predatory marketing, behavioral targeting, huckstering or deceptive selling -- is an important part of running a business, a basic human activity since the first prehistoric souq on the banks of the Tigres and Euphrates. For the businesses down the block, better to give some kid a few bucks to walk the stoops than to pay for a direct mail campaign with addressing and postage and handling costs that are, in a word, unsustainable.

But the adblockers are gaining ground, making it harder to make a living. Last year, 12 states were considering some form of "Do Not Mail" legislation to keep print ads out of the mailbox. There's already the federal "Do Not Call" list to stop ads on the telephone -- except from politicians and non-profits. And in response to no-cost spam, only 74.57% of email messages make it to the average U.S. in-box through all the various spam filters.

I'm not writing in favor of junk mail, telemarketing calls or spam. But consider: there wouldn't be any ads if people didn't buy from the messages they get, however odious the medium. At some level, advertising works, and it's essential to the way business gets down. The intrusion on our attention and the clutter have to be balanced in the grand scheme of things.

All I'm saying is that we should give our neighbors a little leeway, not be so hard on the smallest companies trying to make a buck when times are tough. Who knows? We might even learn about something we'd like to buy.

On Event Peeps: Time to re-write the manual on live events

This week I've got an article on EventPeeps.com (free reg reqd), the live event industry social network, with a list of five things to do during the recession to make trade shows and conferences succeed.

1. Air travel sucks, so fix it.
2. ROI dominates, so prove it.
3. Virtual meetings encroach, so out-dazzle.
4. Carbon scolds rule, so ante up.
5. Demagogues bluster, so head 'em off.

We all hate the aggravations and costs of travel, and there are people who think live events can be replaced by webinars and e-meetings. And recently, there's been a lot of noisy indignation from politicians and headline writers about conferences, sponsorships and other corporate events booked by financial firms before the Crash, prompting the U.S. Travel Association to churn out press releases and talking points (PDF) about the economic value of meetings, events and incentive travel.

Business is going to get worse before it gets better, but like they say, "When there's blood in the street, there's money to be made.

At SISO: A Twitter Feed for ConferenceIdeas

I'm speaking at the Society of Independent Show Organizers 2008 Executive Conference in Atlanta. (Slide links to come.) In addition to discussing this year's SISO Web Awards, I'm presenting a talk with Carl Pugh of Radius Events on "Developing Your Conference Program for Fun and Profit." Among the things we'll be talking about is live blogging and tweeting from conferences, so I've set up a Twitter account called "ConferenceIdeas". Follow it and send your conference comments to @ConferenceIdeas via Twitter.

Best Case and Worst Case for Google Health: Ten Years Ahead

On the face of it, Google Health released this month in beta is just another personal medical record system similar to a hundred others including Microsoft's HealthVault. But Google has designed a specifically open health record: providers, payers and all kinds of service companies can use the published Application Programmer Interface to link their data to your Google health file.

Since Google is not a healthcare provider, the privacy restrictions of HIPPA, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 don't apply. Health IT security guru Fred Trotter describes why this is a good thing, and we went brainstorming to see how open architecture might affect wellness, sex, eldercare, insurance and other health concerns.

Read Google Health 2018: Best Case Scenarios.

Read Google Health 2018: Worst Case Scenarios.

The glass is half-full or half-empty. Add your comments on the www.HealthcareNBIC.org blog. 

"Slovenly Email" Intervention Notes and Comment

Frustrated by the terrible qualities of the emails I get, I produced a "friendly intervention" to send to folks who are especially sloppy writers. In addition to the two-and-a-half minute video, we made a page of links to webinars, books and web sites that try to help  people to communicate better on-line. The IN3 page can be mailed to friends who need email advice.

Post your take on the material here at the "Comments" link below.

Widget Marketing Event

A recent report from Internet metrics firm Comscore counted 177 million unique widget viewers on the web around the world, 81 million in the U.S. A new conference this month from FreeWeb considers the marketing angles. Here is their widget linked to this IN3 blog page from the conference widget at IN3.ORG.