I’m chuffed to announced that I’ve been invited to speak at the 4th annual Social Media Summit in Melbourne, on Wednesday, 12 August. I will be talking about the social media strategy we put in place for the 1 Million Women environmental campaign, which was a pro bono client of ours at Keep Left PR. I’ll be talking about social media was built into the overall PR campaign for theproject, which launched nationally in May. I’ll also look at:
- How is online audience engagement different from traditional media?
- How do you engage women online?
- Using platforms like Facebook to drive traffic to your social media website
- Blogger outreach; handle with care
- What is the future of social media; do you have to own a niche topic or can you appeal to a mass audience?
I’m also looking forward to being on the panel afterwards, which is looking at effective social media & social networking strategies. I’ll be on the panel with Clinton Bown, Communications Manager, Hawthorn Football Club and Liza Boston, Founder & CEO, Cracked Pepper.
The panel will discuss “the challenges facing public and corporate organisations in developing and implementing social networking strategies. All organisations are cautious about using social networks and face real barriers to secure buy-in within the wider company. What content works and why? Best practice on blogger outreach and more…”
I’ve also booked my ticket for Web Directions South in Sydney in October. I’m just an attendee at this one – and I’m really looking foward to it, although I’m bummed that my teaching commitments here in Melbourne mean I will miss the “Ed directions” workshop, which looks cool. Oh well.
Online Reputation Management in Smart Company
April 28, 2009
Smart Company has published an article on Online Reputation Management which quotes me talking about crisis management. Brad Howorth kindly edited my rather stilted interview (it was my first ever as an interviewee!) so I sound coherent. And he called me a social media advisor, which I much prefer to the cringe-inducing “Social Media Expert” moniker. Thanks, Brad. 
I’m also one of the presenters on Byte into IT, the weekly tech show on radio RRR here in Melbourne. If you can’t catch the show Wednesdays at 7pm, it’s released as a podcast too.
The latest podcast includes discussion of new open source blogging and social community, Dreamwidth, as well as some news about tools for Google Android developers, and nice examples of Drupal in use. You can download the podcast here. I should mention here (since I forgot to say on air) that the Drupal sites were done by Development Seed, which is based in Washington DC.
Upcoming OSIA talk: Open Sourcing PR
April 6, 2009
I’ll be talking about “Open Sourcing PR” at OSIA this month. The meeting starts at 7pm, on April 16 here in Melbourne town. Details of the meeting are here and the blurb for the talk can be found under the cut.
I wrote this post for my students over at our class community on Ning, then realised I really wanted to share it here too.
I think I’ve mentioned CoPress before, but I’ve just been reading a few of their latest posts, and they just have so much useful info I wanted to mention them again.
CoPress is “a non-profit organization dedicated to providing college news outlets with the technical resources and support network they need to innovate online.” Among other things, they’ll host your student publication for you! And yes, before you ask, they’re happy to work with Australian unis, I already asked them.
The CoPress blog is awesome, packed with useful info and links. Here are two recent posts I thought you’d find helpful:
A awesome walkthrough of a multimedia “deep journalism” website put together by the Amherst Wire. You’ll see they even show you the flowcharts they drew to help them design their site.
A recent “link sharing” post they made looked at the recent big changes in newspaper publishing including the closure of the Seattle PI but it also has some really handy links about how student publications are using WordPress (and some recommendations of good plugins).
If you browse recent posts on the blog you’ll see they constantly mention new web tools (or how to get the most out of existing ones) – this post made me want to check out BlogTalkRadio – a way to record podcasts and then let listeners ‘call in’ with questions.
Hopefully at least some of those links will be helpful to you.
Stephen Mayne’s non-compete clause with Crikey has expired
March 13, 2009
Interesting. I got an email from the Mayne Report overnight which revealed that Stephen Mayne’s 4 year (!) non-compete clause with Crikey has expired (he founded Crikey and sold the biz to Private Media for $1M some time ago).
Stephen has continued to contribute news stories to Crikey since the sale, but I’m not sure if that arrangement will stay in place or not. The expiring of the non-compete clause means he’s free to increase his subscriber base from a cap of 500 people, and he can start covering politics and media for his own project. Here’s what he said about it in the email:
The 4-year non-compete agreement with Crikey expired on Monday so we’re now able to write about politics and media, plus send emails to more than 500 people at a time and freelance material anywhere we like. However, the focus will still very much remain on delivering a strong weekly corporate governance newsletter and this latest edition has plenty of juicy material.
The Mayne Report, for those who don’t know, is where Stephen does business reporting, with a large focus shareholder activism. It includes a fair amount of video reporting too.
Will be interesting to see what he does with the politics/media stuff now he’s off the leash from Crikey.
(I also notice that he’s selling subs to The Mayne Report for $55 until June 30, in case you’re interested. Thought it was worth a plug.)
Webstock 2009: Peace, love and a eulogy for Web 2.0
February 23, 2009
It opened with a call for website creators to help save the world, and closed with a call for Web 2.0 to grow up already… In the course of just two days, speakers at New Zealand’s Webstock conference evoked the perils of ecological disaster, suggested that computer games might be able save the world and performed a eulogy for Web 2.0. A heady, visionary blend of themes, attitudes and exhortations – this was Webstock 2009.
Heading to NZ for Webstock 2009
February 16, 2009
I’m heading to Wellington, New Zealand on Wednesday to attend Webstock 2009. It will be my first Webstock and indeed my first trip to the land of the hobbits.
Check out the program here – I’m particularly keen to hear from Ben Goodger (who was project lead for Mozilla’s Firefox browser before he moved to Google where he is the User Interface Tech Lead for the Chrome browser project), Bruce Sterling and Annalee Newitz (longtime tech writer and sci fi blogger at io9) . Actually, the list of speakers is pretty damn impressive, rather than namecheck a bunch of people you can browse the list yourself.
I’m covering the conf for ZDNet and I’m also filming an interview with Annalee which will be published on the Webstock site. Fun! Exciting! Hopefully I’ll also have time to do some sightseeing in gorgeous NZ.
NEWS09 Presentation: How to get your student publication online
February 7, 2009
Welcome to students visiting from today’s NEWS09 conference. Please feel free to ask a question or leave a comment. Keep me posted if you decide to try out any of the ideas or tools that were mentioned today – I would love to hear how you get on.
As promised, here’s a copy of the presentation I gave today on How to get your student publication online.
Laneway Festival responds to critics of its Melbourne event
February 4, 2009
Just a quick one to point out that Laneway Festival has published a response to criticisms of its Melbourne event on the website here. The piece discusses the problems in some detail, and while it stops short of an apology, it “acknowledges” issues and is “deeply disappointed” that the experience was marred for some festival goers.
I liked that it ended by saying “We would also like to acknowledge that we have had personal letters and we will respond to them all next week when we return from the last three dates of the festival.”
Here’s a tip – if you’re the organiser of a (nominally) smoke free event sponsored by Quit Victoria, it’s probably best not to smoke on the night. Oh, and your staff should probably be trained to be able to give people prompt first aid assistance when required.
The Age ran a story today about disgruntled patrons complaining about the lack of organisation of Melbourne’s Laneway Festival. But I’m surprised it didn’t pick up the smoking angle. One unhappy punter, jametheil-bane, posted to the Melbourne Maniacs online community today, saying that he (I’m assuming gender here) had an asthma attack because so many people were smoking in full sight of security guards. Worse, he was stuffed around by event staff when trying to find first aid. You can see jametheil-bane’s post about the event here.
The post is a copy of the letter of complaint sent to the Festival organisers and includes the following little gem:
The guard came back and told us that he couldn’t ask the third gentleman to put his cigarette out as the third gentleman was one of the event organizers. Lighting up at a non-smoking event, not 5 metres away from the first aid tent.
Assuming this is true, I’m sure Quit Victoria will be thrilled to hear that.
Update: Ugh, I just had another look at the Laneway website, which proudly proclaims “Leave your lighter at home for Australia’s first smokefree music festival. I think every nonsmoker who attended should ask for their $99 back.
Update 2: The Enthusiast published a detailed story about all the other organisational stuffups patrons experienced at the Laneway Festival including queues and overcrowding. Apparently there’s a petition and a Facebook group for disgruntled patrons to demand a refund. Thanks Angus!
Update 3: Thanks Jason for the link to this awesome Tunebinder photo showing the horrendous queue waiting to see the headline act, Girl Talk. You can read the Tunebinder story here.
