22 March 2007

The last 9 people

I just took a peek at the last 9 visitors to our site and wanted to share that I couldn't have hoped it would appeal to a more global audience. That it will grow ever more so opens up so much learning about the world's culture.

1. Cairo, Al Qahirah

2. Lausanne, Vaud

3. Hatfield, Norfolk

4. Muenster, Nordrhein-Westfalen

5. Pleasanton, California

6. London, Lambeth

7. San Francisco, California

8. San Francisco, California

9. Waianae, Hawaii

The most intersting thing I learned recently

Do you have a story to share with me from your side of the world? What's the most interesting thing you've learned recently?

The most interesting thing I saw this week was a latest demo of dotSUB.com, a translation service site with a really intersting player which allows you to scroll through captions in various languages. They are about to incorporate the service with sites like witness.org. Check witness.org out. Very smart, socially-conscious and responsible crew. Something the UN should support no debate.

21 March 2007

"Messy and wonderful"

That is how Dan Gillmor charactizes the state of Citizen Media tonight at the Mid-Peninsula Community Media Center. The long-time blogger and ex-columnist for the San Jose Mercury News now runs the Center for Citizen Media.

Dan touched on the history of the newspaper industry as an example of the changing landscape of journalism and said that for the past 40 years it has been dependent on monopolization. "It was previously bad business to annoy half of your audience."

But the traditional journalism business models are quickly eroding. The product is no longer printed on presses that cost $50-75 million. The competition that previously existed in journalism is much less significant today than the present race for ad dollars. We are struggling to encourage local coverage, which is playing a very important role in the value of community knowledge. Investigative and in-depth reporting sites and those adding value to content like newassignment.net, Witness.org, and dotSUB.com are also key to keeping some structure in place and continuing quality journalism. This discussion on citizen media attracted its own "random acts of journalism," a term Mr. Gillmor uses.

I have been part of Ourmedia.org since last May, which today celebrates its 2nd birthday. Happy Birthday! Two years ago J.D. Lasica and Marc Canter approached Brewster Kale, founder of the Internet Archive, to open the Archive's media repository to user-generated content. This turned out to be a popular idea and Ourmedia.org now enables a widely-available library of deep-tagged media, hosted for free. The content is copyright-indicated so people can use them in their own works if you say so. Ourmedia.org's library includes articles about how to use materials.

What's okay to use and what isn't? What do the different licenses mean? How do you strip out or add audio to a podcast or video? Ourmedia.org answers these questions. Ourmedia.org also sports a peer-to-peer file sharing application from Outhink Media you can use to create all kinds of things called SpinXpress. With SpinXpress you can set up private groups and share large files from one computer to another (without uploading it somewhere else first or emailing large files). These image, sound and video files are almost always huge so it solves a big problem. Plus you can publish to multiple locations, including . The Internet Archive is a really nice clean place to showcase your media too. Here a few pieces I published there. Ourmedia.org is also about to relaunch it's site with a Drupal upgrade, which will improve the user interface and extensibility of the service.

What else to expect in the future from these new media experts?

Dan and J.D. are about to launch a project at the Center for Citizen Media centered around "principles of journalism" which includes topics such as story accuracy, fairness and transparency. Check out the media center for ongoing projects and courses you can take to learn more about video production and editing and more.
When tonight's audience was asked why they came to Dan Gillmor's discussion, a member with a philosophy background said, "I want to change the world."

Let's continue with a common goal of better journalism, encouraging the diligence of formal reporting and working too with the spontaneous, creative nature of citizen-generalted media. Some pictures courtesy of Jeff Schwartz are posted on Flickr.

Related items:

http://www.communitymediacenter.net
http://www.archive.org
http://www.ourmedia.org
http://www.citmedia.org
http://www.metacafe.com
http://www.wikipedia.org (my home page is currently set to this page on the Wikipedia.org site and learn something every day)
http://www.newsvine.com
http://www.blip.tv
http://parr.org

13 March 2007

$70 M rewards loyalty?

by Michal Berman

Recently much was made of hockey goalie Rick DiPietro's 15-year $67.5 million contract, some commentators went as far as to call the move insane – owner Charles Wang said he believed in rewarding loyalty as a principal of doing business. What a refreshing message or reminder of the value that can be placed on loyalty, the faith (in humanity) required to set out on such a deal, and of how unfortunately rare this commodity (in the sense of an "article of trade") is in business.

Hockey commentators are still shaking their heads at this move and are questioning the merits of offering this type of a deal to an athlete considering the risks of injury and the affects on motivation to maintain a high level of performance. However, NHL and NBA analyst Maria Rotundo indicates in her research that these types of moves may be exactly what is needed to improve overall team performance and reduce counterproductive or retaliatory behaviour on the rink/court. I'm not arguing for or against this kind of contract in sports what I'm more interested in is the message that owner Charles Wang is sending by rewarding loyalty in what is deemed as such a controversial move. Just who wouldn't want to feel some of that organizational "love" at your company?.

Loyalty, according to many industry pundits, is an important business goal. It's sought after to build great teams, to enable revenue growth via customer retention and for those some would argue, more enlightened companies, it's a powerful productivity tool.

The current business climate seems to be far from realizing the concept let alone the ideal of "investing in loyalty in reward for superior value". It's the exception to be able to establish a relationship whether as an employee/employer or consumer or service/goods provider that lasts the long haul e.g., 15 years or more.

Although we don't know the personal aspects of this deal, it will take all the stakeholders (the owner, the individual and the team) to create success from this start. While maybe a bit trite or sophomoric to those whose business is hockey or other sports (or for organizational theorists and psychologists), a great example of the human and environmental complexity required to support this move is the film Jerry Maguire. Ultimately the success of all involved came down to loyalty, loyalty between player and agent, agent and business partner, and player and fans. Loyalty is a quality hard to offer, challenging to maintain and impossible to mimic. I'm hopeful from the various quotes I've read by Wang and DiPietro that all involved will have the faith in each other to sustain this public commitment, (and we all know, deals, whether in writing or not, are broken every day).

A refreshing example, well who knows really? Guess we'll have to wait the 15 years to surely find out in this case.

If you want to read more about loyalty in a business context, check out University of Toronto, Business school, Rotman's latest magazine on the subject.

Michal Berman is a multi-national technology consultant from Toronto, Canada.

10 March 2007

Media in Italy


Roberto Spiezio, citizen journalst from Italy, is interviewed about his entry into the world of jourmalism.

After my interview with Mr. Spiezio in South Korea, we corresponded by email and he was kind enough to offer more information about politics and media in his home country of Italy.

LP:
Thank you in advance for your perspectives on life in Italy, Roberto. First, let me ask, how does Italy view immigration?

RS: This is a really sensitive issue and one of the usual battlefields for the political parties. The left wing has a policy of aperture about immigration, because of ideological matters and because immigrants are a good source of political consensus.

At the moment the government (left wing) has given many immigrants a resident status, as long as they have a regular job. In the past few years the right wing government had cracked down on immigration, by making the entrance and the staying in Italy a lot more difficult. As example, a Korean friend of mine came to visit me 2 years ago, and the army stopped her and told her if she didn't notify her presence -even as a tourist- within 7 days with the authorities, she could have been immediately expelled and banned from the country for 5 years - and she was just a tourist!

In Italy immigrants don't have the right to vote, even if they are permanent residents, whereas relatives of native Italians abroad, even if they are not Italian citizens, do have it.

This is one of the points the present government is going to address, along with the problem of the legal status of the 2nd and next generations of immigrants, citizens by birth or not.

Finally, the enterprise world in Italy is demanding more immigrants, because the economy needs it, and this affects the choices of the government in a decisive fashion often times.

LP: What is mobile phone use like in Italy?

RS: In Italy mobile phones are really widespread. Many Italians have more than one, and even elementary school kids tend to have it. Born as a status symbol, now it's more a common consumer device, like the TV or the radio. The most widespread technology is GSM, an European standard not compatible with Eastern Asian one (CDMA 2000) but UMTS (a standard introduced for multimedia streaming) is gaining consensus, since it allows people to make video calls and watch TV, while browsing the Internet at broadband speed, but the service doesn't cover the whole territory yet, we are far from reaching a 100% covering actually.

Recently Italy has been witnessing a springing up of services connected to the use of the mobile phones, especially silly subscriptions services (love compatibility and stuff) and it has been also introduced the TV service. Sky Italia is on the frontline in this new development.

The market seems to have reached its saturation since there are a number of mobile providers that have not changed for years now.

LP: What can you tell me about RAI?

RS:
RAI TV is not exactly a private enterprise. As a state television, it has a character of public service, like PBS in America and it's divided into a number of companies that have a specific area of the industry to take care of, from advertising to new media.

Rai receives public funding, especially through subscription fees paid by the viewers. An anomaly is that this fee is conceived as a government tax on the possession of the TV set, so everyone is supposed to pay it, even if doesn't watch the channels. The management is appointed by a parliamentary commission, so there is a heavy political control as to how the company is run.

There are plans and petitions to exclude this pervasive political control over the service, and a real privatization is, as far as I know, not favorably welcomed by many, since the original character of public service would be "betrayed."

The overall quality of this network is good, apart from a questionable tendency to multiply quiz shows and "reality shows" like big brother and others, in that there are several competent journalists, and the offer is quite wide, even if some of the most interesting channels can be viewed only via satellite or in the new digital terrestrial platform. But in my opinion, just because of the political control over the management, a complete independence can't be assured. This is particularly evident in the news branch of the network.

LP: And how about SKY Italia?

RS: This is quite an interesting problem. Sky Italia is the only satellite provider in Italy, after the debacle of Telepiu and Stream. Its offer is wide and overall good quality in my opinion, even if too expensive for the average viewer. Nowadays SKY is under the spotlight because of the big soccer scandal ongoing, and the problem of the game transmission rights (collectively contracted or team by team). In Italy many don't see SKY as a positive reality, since it has a monopoly in its particular branch of the media.

LP: What about globalization or “delocalizzazione”?

RS: This is a relatively recent and controversial issue in Italy. It's recent because we "woke up" to comparing with other countries, and started facing the problem when other countries already were actuating their own solutions. It's controversial because the economy in Italy is not as good as before, the cost of living and for energy has risen dramatically over the past few years, and de-localization unavoidably brings job decreases and desperation in many people made redundant.

In my area there are the major eyewear companies in the world, producing glasses for the most important brands, including Ray-Ban and Prada. Some of them have started a delocalization project, and the main destination is China.

The pros of such a kind of phenomenon can be seen only for the enterprises in my opinion, in that they can reduce costs while gaining higher profit. I still have doubts about the quality of the products made in China, though. Cons regarding job descreases, and all the social problems related to that, including destroying entire communities that were totally built around a single factory in many cases.

LP: How do the quasi poveri connect and use the Internet, as well as get their news? Do they trust the large media companies? If not, then who?

RS: The Digital Divide in Italy is still a grave and serious problem. While we are supposed to be an "advanced country" there are still many towns and villages without broadband connection. Some organizations are trying to propose a project to adopt a policy for bringing the broadband virtually everywhere. The real matter is not the access to the internet by quasi poveri, but the access to the internet and its diffusion as well as the creation of an "internet culture" as a whole.

Some enterprises have introduced Wi-Fi in rural areas or villages not covered by the wired broadband connection.

The de facto monopolistic situation of Italian telephony, whereby one company owns all the infrastructure and forces the other providers to abide by the rules and the prices imposed by it, has created a really difficult situation: the prices for a flat internet connection are comparatively higher than in other European countries, and the quality is nearly always unsatisfactory.

The access to news is mostly traditional: TV, newspapers and then radio. People are divided about trusting mainstream media. As I perceive it, while the majority still relies on them, especially the well-established media, such as Corriere Della Sera and Republica, the most important newspapers in Italy, there are many people more and more dissatisfied with them, in search of something better. Proof is in the springing up of "counter information" and alternative information websites. Their quality is not always good, because there seems not to be any form of editorial control, and anyway they are regarded as niche realities that have nothing to do with the "serious" and "official" media.

My perception is that as long as a publication can pose itself as a credible and authoritative alternative to the mainstream media, it can break in and become a point of reference.

Related items:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0482633/
http://www.cjr.org/issues/2006/5/Stille.asp
http://www.vivazapatero.co.uk/

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