Social Media Training for Voters

Here's an interesting item (well, to those of us obsessed with social media). On the Jerry Brown for CA Governor YouTube channel, along with posting various interviews, campaign ads, biographical bits, and so on, the campaign has now posted a "Social Media Webisode" -- a short training video on how Jerry's supporters can help get the word out. The first webisode is on promoting the Brown campaign via Facebook:



Now, whether or not you're a Jerry Brown fan (I am) or support his campaign for Governor of California this year (I do), you have to admit that this is a brilliant strategy. Faced with a challenger who has so far spent over $119 million of her personal fortune, making hers the most expensive campaign for statewide office ever anywhere, Brown has not only made good use of social media to get his message out, he is harnessing the full power of social media by turning supporters into advocates.

Too many of the social media campaigns that I see, whether political or for products or whatever, treat facebook, twitter, etc., as one-way broadcast mediums. They neither engage the audience in dialogue nor tap into the extended networks of each of their followers. Brown 2010 has now done both.

It Ain't Over Till It's Over

With yesterday's dramatic ending to the 2010 primary election season, starring anti-masturbation activist Christine O'Donnell winning the Delaware GOP Senate nomination, and racist-sexist email comedian Carl Paladino winning the New York GOP Gubernatorial nomination, each over the "official" Republican party candidates for those offices, today's headlines are mostly of the Tea Party Victories that are expected to sweep US politics into a new era of populist know-nothing-ism come November.

As much as I fear some of these far-right xenophobic dilettantes actually being elected, I think the story line of this being a warning of what's to come in 2012's presidential race is a bit overblown.

Here's what the pundits are going off of:

• The president's party, historically, "always" looses seats in the first mid-term election.
• The majority party, historically, "always" looses seats when the economy is down.
• Trust in Washington is at "historic lows" (they say this, but I haven't actually seen polls going back very far to demonstrate just how historic these lows are).
• Turn-out in Republican primaries this year has been higher than in Democratic ones.

But let's look at things in the proper perspective.

• Despite the handful of high profile nut-cases winning Tea/Republican Party nominations this season, over 95% of Congressional incumbents seeking reelection won their primaries.
• Of course Republican primaries had higher turn-outs: they were the ones being contested by the Tea Party wing-nuts. Most of the Democrats had little serious competition to draw out voters.

And here's the big kicker of why 2010 does not guarantee a Tea Party Victory in 2012:

• They're winning this year by bringing out lots of first-time voters, and if there's one more "historically, always" we can add to our list, it's that first-time voters are typically one-time voters.

Yes, the Republicans will pick up several seats in Congress seven weeks from now, perhaps even capture a slim majority of one of the houses. And, yes, there will likely be some fresh new tea-stained faces among them. And, yes, they will cause plenty of trouble for the president. And, just as certainly, they will fail to completely destroy Washington.

While they will certainly have some successes, they will fail to eliminate the IRS, Social Security, and the Department of Education. They will not end the debate over gay marriage, put a stop to legal abortion, and effect the deportation of every Muslim and Latino. And when they fail to achieve all their goals (remember, it's all or nothing for these guys), their followers will turn on them and crawl back under the rocks where they've been hiding all along.

The Tea Party Movement may be big news today, but most polls show that they only represent about 19% of the electorate. If they're the only ones who show up on election day, they can win. But they cannot put together enough of a majority to govern. And I predict that these political neophytes will not have the stamina or the momentum to put Sarah Palin (or similar) in the White House in 2012.

At least, this is what I keep telling myself in order to get to sleep at night.

Why the Wrong Person Always Gets the Job

I have many good, smart, capable friends right now who are looking for work, and finding nothing. Other friends who, like myself, are self-employed, are having trouble lining up new clients and customers and we're finding our businesses faltering. And now I know who to blame: Stupid People.

Over the long weekend I read an article that introduced me to the "Dunning-Kruger Effect," a cognitive bias in which an ignorant person makes poor decisions and reaches erroneous conclusions, but their own incompetence prevents them from realizing how wrong they are. Basically, "ignorance begets confidence."

The opposite is also true: Those who are truly skilled or knowledgeable in any given area, knowing enough to know that they can't know everything, will tend to be more modest about their abilities compared to the bombast of the dullard.

The article I was reading was talking about the Dunning-Kruger Effect in relation to politics, and certain pundits who prey on the ignorance of their followers for political gain. But in thinking about the article, I realized it applies to all sorts of situations, including employment.

Who stands out during job interviews? Who does the recruiter remember? Is it the guy who calmly and honestly says, "I believe I can do it, and if there's anything else I need to learn, I'll do my best to learn it." Or is it the guy who proudly boasts, "I'm the best! I could have written the book on how to do this job!"

Nine times out of ten, it's the second guy, the self-deluded moron, who gets hired, and through the same process gets promoted over the years, over all the truly competent co-workers. And now, they're the ones at the top, screwing up the entire economy.

So, if you're looking for work right now, and you're lucky enough to get a job interview, and the interviewer asks you, "Why have you been out of work for so long?" Look that son-of-a-bitch right in the eye and with all the confidence you can muster say, "Because of stupid bastards like you!"

You may not get the job, but at least you'll know why.

(NOTE: Some might ask, isn't this really just another way of describing the Peter Principle? Not quite... The Peter Principle explains how, should a competent person be lucky enough to get a job, he or she will be promoted to their level of incompetence.  The Dunning-Kruger Effect explains why the competent person probably won't even be hired in the first place.)

Book Review: Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook

Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook by Anthony Bourdain

Warning: I'm an Anthony Bourdain fan. No, that's not strong enough. It's the kind of fandom that in younger days I'd reserve only for those who'd turned their guitars up to 11 shortly before smashing them. Yes, Tony's my new rock star.

So, of course, five stars and a strong recommendation for others who already love and follow Tony for both the No Reservations TV show and his previous books, particularly Kitchen Confidential. But, perhaps, only three stars for somebody who's never heard of Anthony Bourdain, and just stumbled upon this book on the New Releases rack at Borders.

Not that the writing isn't excellent. It is. His style is flowing and conversational, vivid and detailed, bringing you into the various kitchens and dining rooms, and making you smell and even taste every morsel. But many of the subjects are self-referential. Many chapters (really, only semi-related essays) assume you've read Kitchen Confidential, and provide follow-up on certain topics, characters, and places. Some make reference to specific episodes of No Reservations.

But if you're the type of person who's ever enjoyed a meal so much that it made you cry, and you're not aware of Anthony Bourdain, then you need to be. But start with Kitchen Confidential, catch Tony a few times on the Travel Channel, and then enjoy Medium Raw as your decadent, oh-so-rich, guilty little dessert.

Kitchen Confidential is required reading for anybody who ever has, or ever plans to eat in a restaurant, any restaurant.

Medium Raw is for those who've days on the phone, fighting busy tones to get through to that most exclusive restaurant for that most elusive reservation. Medium Raw is for those of us who've closed the regular menu and gladly put ourselves into the hands of the chef for the tasting menu.

Medium Raw is for those who've traveled far from home, turned down the hotel's recommended list of "safe" places for tourists to eat, deliberately wandered into the "locals only" part of town, and grinned happily while eating a dish you would have never ordered in a million years at home.

Anthony Bourdain is not for the squeamish. If you always get the same chicken dish from the same "reasonably priced" place down the street, then you may want to stay away. If you're ready for the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, then this "bloody valentine to the world of food and the people who cook" might be right up your alley.

Talking About Audio

As mentioned in the previous post, I've been on Blogger for nearly ten years. I've also been on YouTube for four years. So, I have no problem sharing, and I enjoy creative hobbies. But one thing I've never gotten into was podcasting.

I opened an account at PodOmatic.com back in 2007, but I never really knew what to do with it. By that point I was already vlogging on YouTube, so it seemed like, if I was going to put in the effort to "produce" an audio program, I'd rather put the same effort into producing a video.

Just in the last week or so, my friend Rich (WorldAccordingToRich on YouTube, and on Blogger) started playing with podcasting over at Audioboo.com. My first reaction was, "Hey, where's the video?" Then, in his blog, he made a great point about some people being more comfortable opening up to a microphone than they would be to a camera. Audio could be a great tool for getting some quick on-the-street interviews that otherwise would not make it to video.

Then, poking around the Audioboo site, I found they had one thing that PodOmatic does not have, and perhaps it's the one thing that guaranteed I would try it: Audioboo has an iPhone app.

And so, once again, I'm testing out podcasting, and here's my first attempt... if you enjoy it, you can check out my Audioboo profile page and subscribe by RSS feed, follow me on the site, or even subscribe using iTunes.

Blogging is Dead! Long Live the Blog!

Pretty much since blogger.com launched eleven years ago, giving the average non-total-geek access to the tools to create frequently updated, timely, personal websites, the mainstream press has been declaring the death of blogging. First off, they said, what we were creating now were not truly "weblogs" as the pioneers had created, they were more along the lines of diaries or journals, or even worse, according to the professional pundits, amateur punditry. And so they looked to any signs to show that it was all just a passing fad and fancy.

Newsweek (remember them? they used to publish a magazine?) is the latest to pound these well-worn drums in an online article titled "Take This Blog and Shove It!" with the clever sub-title of "When utopian ideals crash into human nature—sloth triumphs."

Among the horrifying (yawn) statistics uncovered:

"Amateur blogs, the original embodiment of Web democracy, are showing signs of decline. While professional bloggers are "a rising class," according to Technorati, hobbyists are in retreat, and about 95 percent of blogs are launched and quickly abandoned...

"[W]hile Twitter carries more than 50 million tweets per day, its army of keystrokers may not be as large as it seems. As many as 90 percent of tweets come from 10 percent of users...

"Citizen journalism also has stabilized. Fewer than one in 10 Web users say they have created their own original news or opinion piece..."

First off, I love the quotes around "rising class" when referring to professional bloggers. If ever a typed quotation mark had to be read as air quotes, this was it. Leaving that bit of editorializing through punctuation aside, let's look at the 95% abandonment rate and why I think that's just fine.

Starting a blog is the modern version of starting a novel or screenplay. In any office in any city anywhere in the world, you'll find accountants, clerks, middle-managers, and other assorted board pencil-pushers who all have the seeds of their dream project tucked into the back of a drawer. Nobody has ever put a number on their abandonment rate, but I'm willing to guess it's somewhat over 95%.

If 5% of first novels started this year were actually completed and published, we'd be seeing more new authors than at any time previously. 95% of blogs are abandoned? Fine. Does that take into account blogs that were started for a particular limited time purpose, like promoting a (now past) event? I doubt it. Some blogs have a final post for a reason, but still remain live for archive purposes.

The only difference between blogs started and abandoned and writing the first few pages of the Great American Novel is that one is a far more public declaration of the would-be writer's creative ambition. Writing is tough work, whatever the medium. Not every idea pans out the way we hoped it would, and not everybody with a creative idea has the stamina and drive and determination to see it through.

I've certainly abandoned my share of blogs. This particular blog (9-1/2 years and over 1,100 posts) is still going strong, as is my Nonprofit Consultant Blog (nearly 5 years and over 200 posts). But my attempts to do a food blog or a guitar blog have not fared as well. Big deal. Next point.

So, 10% of tweeters account for 90% of tweets? Again, not surprising, or any different than we'd expect in any type of communications medium, including face-to-face meetings. Does your workplace have staff meetings? Keep track of who does the most talking. This is just human nature. Some people have the common sense to keep their mouths shut once in a while.

To me, what I see in that sentence is "50 million tweets per day." That's a big number, representing an awful lot of written text, even at 140 characters per tweet. And that's from only 10% of people with Twitter accounts? I don't see failure; I see an awful lot of written communication and I'm still impressed.

Next point... the "stabilization" of citizen journalism. Again, "only" one in ten web users has created a news or opinion piece. I wish somebody had ever thought to keep track of how many newspaper readers had ever even written a letter to the editor, let alone had one published in the paper.

When in the history of the planet, has 10% of the population been able to share their ideas, opinions, and creativity with mass audiences beyond their immediate family and a few associates without editors, censors, and expensive hurdles to cross?

And this amazing amount of participation, writing, and reading, is what Newsweek terms "sloth"?

For the social media revolution to succeed at changing our society it does not need the majority of citizens to be constantly publishing their every thought. All it requires is that a greater percentage of people participate than have ever had the opportunity to participate previously. That has happened.

So the participation figures have leveled off a bit. Great. They've not declined. A leveling-off should be expected after the initial bursts of growth. There will be more growth, but at a slower and more sustainable rate, in the years to come.

The tools are out there, and getting better every day. The cat is out of the bag. There's no turning back. Sorry, Newsweek, but your days of being relevant are what is losing steam.

Social Media Meet-Up in Santa Cruz, CA, September 18, 2010

Along with my friend Curt (known as OhCurt on YouTube and elsewhere online), I'm organizing a Social Media Meet-Up (or SMMU) on the Santa Cruz Pier for September 18, 2010, 10 AM to 3 PM.

In the past I've been to several YouTube gatherings, but the social media landscape is much broader than that now. I've been here, on blogger, for nearly a decade, YouTube for about four years, twitter and facebook since they each launched, and the community is very fluid, with people migrating from on platform to another as their interests and needs shift.

One day video bloggers may be posting vlogs on YouTube, but the next on Vloggerheads or Vimeo, or micro-vlogs on 12seconds. Bloggers now tweet, and status updates from twitter now automatically post to facebook or buzz. It's a fascinating time, and there are lots of great people involved, and the SMMU is an attempt to get them all together for a great time and learn about how we're all using social media in an informal and fun setting.

For all the details on the SMMU (location, time, etc.), please see the SMMU blog at sc-smmu.blogspot.com, or the join our facebook group. Meanwhile, here's a little announcement video about the event: