RonAmok!

I caught a very interesting exchange between NBC’s Matt Lauer and political correspondent Andrea Mitchell on yesterday’s “Today” show. They were just coming out of Andrea’s story on the first YouTube Debates when Andrea said to Matt, “One possible lesson from all of this is that you and I could become obsolete.”

Matt replied, “Yeah, I wish you wouldn’t have summed it up that way, Andrea, but thank you very much. I appreciate it.”

Will you become obsolete, Andrea? No. Will your job change? Absolutely. New media is changing the political coverage game. And it’s not new. Before mass media, candidates would travel around the country speaking with individuals and hope that their message was captured accurately in print. After mass media, candidates hoped that their messages were pithy enough to escape the editing floor to become a sound-bite. The news reporting technology of the day has always had an impact on the political trail, and the YouTube Debates example is no different…or is it?

The press and broadcast media have always restricted external participation. Oh sure, newspapers have always offered a paltry “Letters to the Editor” section for reader comments, but even the name indicates the type of control that the print media has held a death grip on. Why? Power. Control the message and you have power.

At least that’s how it worked before New Media technologies.

Readers don’t need to rely on “Letters to the Editor” anymore. Candidates don’t need to hope that their message is saved from the editing room floor. New Media devices such as blogs and YouTube are arming voters and political candidates with tools which allow them to participate in an open, public dialog. Why? Because the rules have changed.

I applaud CNN for seeing the writing on the wall and fostering this new budding relationship between candidates and voters. It shows that the old and new media can coexist. New Media will not obsolete Old Media. But it will change it.
Now, let’s take the lesson of the YouTube debates and extend it to your company. Are you willing to open up a similar dialog with your customers?

When I was given the job to help my company adopt New Media technologies, I was told that I could call myself whatever I wanted. So, I decided to call myself a “New Media Evangelist,” partially because it was cool and different, but more importantly, to remind me of what I need to accomplish. I need to change the way that we represent ourselves as a company.

But change is scary. In order for people to change, they have to “believe” that the change will be good for them. And so, as an evangelist, my job is to stand on top of the conference table and shout reasons for my “congregation” to “Believe!” As any evangelist, I’m in the business of faith.

The hardest part of my job is helping folks believe in transparency — the fact that this medium demands it; and will not tolerate anything else. Unfortunately, most companies have never been transparent. Traditional marketing is contrived and controlled. It is wordsmithed, polished, and approved via committee. In the mind of the old media marketeer, non-transparency is considered safe. It paints a product or service in a very positive light, never revealing any warts, to potential clients, or in some cases more importantly, to competitors who will use that information against them.

But alas, that’s the point…non-transparency isn’t safe anymore; it never has been and never will be. The difference is that the customers have always known the warts in your product…they just didn’t have a way to tell anyone out of earshot of the watercooler about them. With Wordpress, iTunes, and YouTube, they now can spread that message around the world — and for a cost of nothing!

So why not beat them to the punch? Why not speak to them, in non business speak, without big fancy words that nobody understands? Why not communicate with customers, prospects, investors, and yes, competitors too?

Sound scary? “You gotta believe!”

New Media is fun. It’s exciting. Sometimes I feel as if I’m part of an exclusive club, a world where the geeks are kings and “normal” people are, well…not!

But there’s something wrong with this little club. The fact that everyone is working so hard to scoop the next person in finding the next big thing, that we aren’t taking time to master the last great thing. It’s like the paradox of hyperventilation, the fact that I’m breathing very fast yet not getting any oxygen.

I see my job as getting people to slow down a little…call it my “breath into a New Media paper bag” services.

I like being able to know what’s new. And I’m willing to invest some time, and sometimes money, in order to better understand another wizz-bang whatchamacallit. But it’s important for me to not lose site of the goal of these new tools — for people to actually use ‘em.

So, if you are looking here for the next big thing, you aren’t gonna find it. If you are looking here for applying some of these things in real-world applications, you’ve come to the right place.

It’s not about the technology, it’s about how people use the technology.