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Thoughts on Harvard-MIT-Yale Cyberscholar Working Group

27 May 2009 in From the Field by Kate | Comments

Last Wednesday, I attended the Harvard-MIT-Yale Cyberscholar Working Group at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society. The group is a combined effort between Berkman, MIT’s Comparative Media Studies Program and Yale Law School’s Information Society Program to showcase and create conversation around the research they’re doing through the peer review method.

Wednesday’s session included three pieces of research:

Aaron Shaw: Polanyi’s Penguin? Commons-Based Industry in the Neoliberal Knowledge Economy
Colleen Kaman: The World in the Network
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen: Mundane Tools and Mobilizational Practices in Two U.S. Congressional Campaigns

I found Rasmus’s talk most interesting. A few take-aways:

“Mundane” tools are much more effective in Congressional level campaigns than “emerging” tools (Mundane being things like email – tools that are now widely used and tools that people are highly comfortable with at this point. Emerging tools are, for the most part, new media platforms).
Why? Volunteers already use email, they don’t need to be trained. Political motivation is skewed by age. Volunteers are not usually early-adopters. Most interesting is the fact that the campaign managers decided to put less emphasis on new gadgets, but thought that meeting volunteers halfway would be most effective.
The tools that are considered “emerging” now will be “mundane” in a few years.

I would venture a guess that the majority of these findings stem from demographics. There are probably some very interesting specific pieces of information gathered in this research, but largely, that portion of it was not surprising.

However, I did find it comforting (and intelligent) that the campaign managers chose to forgo the “Build it and they will come” mentality, and opted for a set of tools that the knew would be easily adaptable, manageable and accessible for everyone.

While I definitely believe in the opportunities in the social media space, I also strongly believe in not reinventing the wheel, and really understanding what the best program is going to be for your target audience. Don’t just do something because the guy down the street is doing it. Only do it if it’ll work for you.

For the full description of their research, visit the event page.

Random Thoughts: RSS Feeds and Book Introductions

3 November 2008 in Random Thoughts by Kate | Comments

I have two lingering thoughts I wanted to throw out there, sort of random. One is a call-to-action, one is a thought/question for everyone.

RSS Feeds and Biased Information

I was having lunch with Patrick Meier and Lokman Tsui about two weeks ago, and Lokman was talking about his dissertation topic at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School. He’s focusing, generally speaking, on the impact of citizen journalism on global news production (Lokman, correct me or expand here!).

It’s funny I decided to post what was probably the the least interesting part of our talk, but it’s applicable to the way I run my life every day, and the way I think a lot of you run yours.

We were talking about how some technological advances, and the routines that come from them, have actually increased the bias of some media outlets. Who you call on for information, what channels you push content through, what you have access to. I chimed in with RSS feeds.

RSS feeds presumably make our lives easier for information consumption. That’s the idea at least. The other thing it does is almost guarantee you’re reading information from the same places, every day. In making it quick, you make it narrow.

I realized this a while back, so I make it a conscious effort to “clean out” my RSS feed (ideally) every week… might not happen every week, but at least I think about it. The other thing I do is add new sources to my RSS feed on a regular basis.

So there’s a constant influx of new information, and a purging of what I’ve deemed useless at that point. Some sources stay around consistently, some I’ve previously trashed come back, whatever. I don’t have any guidelines except that I want information from a varying number of places to guarantee I don’t rely on just a few.

[UPDATE (Monday night): Apparently, David Griner went through the same process on Friday, which I'm realizing now because he (has consistently) made my RSS feed cut]

So, do you “manage” your RSS feed effectively?

Book Introductions: What’s the point?

I just got my copy of David Meerman Scott’s new book The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use News Releases, Blogs, Podcasting, Viral Marketing and Online Media to Reach Buyers Directly (you can buy it here), which I’m excited to read [More on the book as I get further into it].

I started out with the Introduction.

Here’s the deal. I don’t read introductions as a general rule. I’ve only read the intros to books written by people I know and have a relationship with (David falls under this category). I skim the table of contents, maybe skim the intros quickly, but really, I just dive into the first chapter. I’ve always done this.

I know, I know. First rule of putting together a piece of communication is tell me what you’re about to teach me, teach me, the tell me what you just taught me (I’ve written and taught how to write enough pieces that this is engrained in my head). But in general, intros bore me.

Does this make me impatient? Am I missing something big?

David’s intro was nice enough, I think I took away something from it because I know him (intros get you into the head of the author? I don’t know). But I think I would have gotten the point starting to read (no offense David! It’s not YOUR intro, it’s just how I feel about them overall).

So tell me, AM I missing something? What do YOU get out of book introductions? Should I start reading them more? What makes a good introduction or a bad one?