Twitter at RTNDA@NAB?

I’m heading to Las Vegas early Monday morning for three days at the Radio and Television News Directors Association (RTNDA) meeting at NAB. We have a booth there for Mayo Clinic Medical Edge, our syndicated news offerings for TV and radio.

I’ve heard about how Twitter was used during SxSW in Austin to help people connect on the fly. I’m not sure how they did it, but if anyone can tell me how to connect with what’s happening through Twitter, please send me an invitation. I’m still trying to figure this out.

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Social Media Summit Wrap-Up

Great to see another participant from the ALI Social Media Summit blogging about his experiences. I’ll be happy to stay in touch with any of my fellow participants who want to further discuss how to engage in blogging, podcasting and other social media. Don’t forget to join Twitter and become one of my friends; that’s a good way to continue the discussion.

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Social Media Summit – Day 2

We heard some excellent presentations today, including one from Andy Sernovitz of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association, another from Mary Owens of Motorola, and a third from Mayor Bill Gentes of Round Lake, IL. A panel discussion featuring Mary, Bill Hanekamp and Patrick Rooney also created some good discussion.

I liked Bill Hanekamp’s four essentials for a successful microsite: it needs to be Entertaining, with Exclusive content, Timely and Relevant to the target audience. We also talked afterward about whether companies can put their video on YouTube and still keep other companies from incorporating it into their for-profit sites. Bill said the owner of content maintains copyright, and a cease-and-desist letter to the offending company will get them to pull it down. The panel said companies need to have a presence on YouTube to be relevant.

This made Kimberly Smith’s kind words all the more meaningful as she launched her blog today. I firmly believe that as more communications professionals begin to understand just how easy it is to blog and start experimenting, they will find applications that make sense for them. As Michael Rudnick said, we need to see the tools as just infrastructure. Don’t pay attention to how most people use them. If they are free (and most of them are) and you can meet a need with them, be creative and take advantage.

So – for those who attended this week, what was the most important nugget you took away? What are you going to apply in your work? In your personal life?

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Social Media Summit – Day 1

I had planned to live blog this ALI meeting, but found out when I got to the room that there was no wireless internet access. So, here are some highlights from the presentations, less detailed than if I had blogged contemporaneously.
Michael Rudnick from Watson Wyatt gave the conference introduction and overview. He talked about the Google applications that make it possible for consumers to buy a new computer and never purchase Microsoft Office. There are likely security issues for businesses, but in five years we could see business using on-line applications instead of the desktop. That would be a huge blow to Redmond.

He referenced a McKinsey & Co. report on social media use in business, and his summary advice was helpful:
Focus on benefits, not technology or risks. Security and legal issues will stop anything. Focus on business benefits first and foremost.

Don’t position this as something ‘completely’ new. People instinctively fear radical change. Let them experience the real difference for themselves

Use betas and move quickly. Deploy a quick beta site and let it loose on the users. They’ll tell you if it’s any good or not, what needs changing and what needs adding.

Don’t get hung up on measurement. The tools are inexpensive and easy to change; if it takes off, the users will write the business case for you.

Or, as Zig Ziglar would say, “wait until all the lights are on green, you’ll never leave the garage.”

Christopher Barger, the former “blogger-in-chief” at IBM who moved to General Motors about a month ago, reprised much of his presentation from the San Francisco conference. He has new challenges with GM, moving from a tech company to one that is more traditional.

Likewise, it was good to hear from Mark Jen again, too (and to join Chris, Mark and several others for dinner this evening.) We also heard presentations from Jim Goldstein from Informatica, who attended the San Francisco conference and went home and applied what he learned, Susan Russ from the Reader’s Digest Association and two gentlemen who worked with the Acuvue-sponsored podcast for Johnson & Johnson Vision Care.

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Low-Power Community Radio?

A comment on this post reminded me of something I was thinking a few days ago: remember when the commercial radio stations were fighting with the low-power radio stations? I haven’t been involved in this debate for a while (I used to work for a member of Congress, so I recall something of the issue; I’ve been out of politics for about 7 years, so I don’t know whether it’s still a live issue.)

Some in the community at that time were concerned about consolidation by Clear Channel and other big players, and that radio would lack local community voices…so they wanted to have extremely low-power stations that would preserve that local megaphone (or maybe I should say miniphone.)

Now we seem to have come full-circle. Clear Channel is going private and selling off hundreds of its stations. And with the advent of podcasting less than three years ago, now anybody can get as big an audience as they can attract. No FCC license needed.

In fact, that’s my working definition of New Media: anything that doesn’t require an FCC license.

Admittedly, the FCC licenses are for public airwaves, and there is a stewardship responsibility. I don’t know how exactly what the ownership rules are (and Nabisco, whose name links to the NAB site) obviously has a dog in this fight, as he properly disclosed in his comment.

Who disagrees with him and why? I can see that the broadcast stations are going to have a significant advantage in building an audience because they are using the public airwaves for transmission. But with bandwidth costs essentially approaching zero, now almost anyone has very similar ability to reach an audience through audio. And we can do video, too…which radio stations can’t, except on their web sites.

And as we see on the net, communities aren’t necessarily geographic. FIR, for instance, reaches a community of people interested in PR and technology.

In a world of infinite choice for audio entertainment and information, does it still make sense to limit ownership of local radio stations?

I don’t know…I’m sure open to hearing arguments on the other side. But it seems the days of media monopolies are over.

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