Ben Self is the founder of Blue State Digital which was responsible for the online social media activities that helped fundraise millions of dollars for the Obama campaign to presidency. As he is introduced at Fairfax Digital’s Media09, Ben Self is credited with engaging the largest civic involvement in US politics in history. The Obama campaign  is the most successful start up in internet history to date.

Self explains that Obama knew he was never going to raise money for his campaign in the traditional way.

“What Obama did,” Self says “was to gather 10,000 people together at a rally and ask each and every one of them to use their mobile phones to sms a number and pledge five bucks”. Certainly not a big ask but there you have it – $50,000 in 50 seconds.

This sort of activity is a great example of how Obama focused on a grass roots campaign rather than doing the traditional fancy dinner party for maximum donations of $2300. Read the rest of this entry »

Meg Pickard, Head of Communities & User Experience – The Guardian (London)

There are many ways for users to consume content online, begins Pickard. They consume, react, curate and create. Unfortunately we spend most of our time and efforts engaging them to consume and not enough engaging users to react, curate or create.

UCG or user generated content is considered a pretty dry term by Meg, she’d prefer to think of it as users expressing themselves about stuff they are passionate about.

People also tend to get social media and social networking confused. To often the media tends to provide social media tools in a separate environment to the content, rather than having that engagement interacting with the content.

Read the rest of this entry »

Meg Pickard, Head of Communities & User Experience – The Guardian (London)

…on, developments at the guardian.co.uk, how to receive user feedback and designing for your mum.

Life at the Guardian

Meg jokingly calls her self an ‘insultant’ for the Guardian (internal consultant), but in all seriousness highlights the value of having someone responsible for focusing on the user agenda, constantly asking ‘why are we doing this?’ and ‘why would people want that?’. If you don’t know what your really asking of your users, then they most certainly won’t get it either.

Meg describes her job as understanding cultures and spotting patterns of which her background in anthropology is proving useful.

Innovation

The web has changed and now there is a much greater desire to be “of the web and not just on it.”

Some of the things Meg and the Guardian team have been thinking a lot is new ways for streams of information to talk to one another.

Read the rest of this entry »

Nic Newman, BBC Future Media and Technology at Media 09

iPlayer moto: “Making the unmissable, unmissable”

iPhone users are using their iphone 25x more than smart phone users to access the internet.

Looking at the history of the web, in 1994 the goal was for companies to have an online presence, in 2007 they were offering support to their linear media and in 2009 and beyond we will see much more made for web content that is rich, dynamic and on demand.

2007 -2008 showed the tipping point for many online activities including the iPhone (mobile interaction), social media went mainstream (Barak Obama on twitter) and video on demand grew. BBCs own, iPlayer went from launch to 300 million views in just one year. Read the rest of this entry »

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Pesce is always an interesting listen – he cases topics at hand in real world examples which are really engaging.

All the Friends I’ve Never Met details how a group of bloggers took down the US Attorney General and how Twitter informed him of the recent earthquake in China before it hit the wire. Great inspiring examples of social media as hyper-connected and powerful information sources.

Excellent use of 15 minutes of your day.

I’ve made some quick from reading and thinking about speech writing this afternoon. These notes are good for reading through before you get started and assessing first drafts against. This is a first rough.

You Should:

1. Reflect your personality, passion & perspective
2. Establish a purpose – what would you like the audience to take away from this?
3. Keep it fairly simple – try not to confuse the audience ( clear sentences & clear arguments)

Audience analysis

1. Who are they? What does each member have in common?
2. Why would they want to listen?
3. What do they have to benefit?
4. What level of detail is useful to them?

Opening:

1. Thought provoking
2. Ask a question, show a stat, tell an anecdote
3. Establish context / motive – why is it important
4. Tell your audience your what you are proposing & how it will be supported
5. Tell the audience what you will cover

Middle:

1. Make few points and do it well than bombard with many
2. Reiterate throughout – remind audience of the main point & refer to how the information supports your argument

End:

1. Recap
2. Summary
3. Leave food for thought… pose a question, tell an anecdote
4. Call to action / where to from here / recommendation

Theme:

Choosing a theme throughout helps audience remember main points and retain the central message

Evidence:

What backs up your thoughts?

Illustrations:

Stories to convey a message in a more interesting way

Terminology / language:

Don’t use new terminology or add variety in that way, this dilutes the message. Ie, say “review” throughout rather than – “reflection”, etc.

Tone:

Be careful of content that may offend

Ensure you don’t condescend your audience or talk over their heads

Know who your talking to (see audience above)

Oh yeah. My organization paid for me to attend Web Directions South and I’m a bit of a speech addict. So I looked up two of the stand out key note speakers who were inspirational and also people who I think focus on the universal issues. So this is stuff I think my media loving, artsy, creative and deep thinking friends would be into. If your not one of these – look anyway. He he.

Video Links:

http://www.scottberkun.com/services/speakingsamples/

http://markpesce.com/

I love casting.