RonAmok!

I remember a conversation that I had once had with my grandmother. We were talking about our favorite movie stars. Hers was Claudette Colbert. A quick check of IMDB shows that Claudette Colbert received a credit in 87 endeavors in a career that spanned 50 years, from 1927 through 1987.

So, why would a New Media Evangelist bring up an actress from a bygone era? Well, this morning I turned on my television and saw a black and white film called Three Came Home. This isn’t an uncommon experience. For as long as I can remember, if you flipped through the television channels, the odds are that you’ll always find an old movie. However, there was something different about this particular movie — because it was in High Definition (HD).

In the past, we’ve always been able to watch old movies on our standard television sets. But lest we forget, these old classics were intended to be projected onto the big screen, and therefore were filmed at a much higher resolution than our generation is used to viewing them. We have been deprived of the original beauty of these films, not because of a limitation on the original content’s part, but rather on the limitations of our viewing devices. Today, that limitation is gone.

One of my favorite bloggers is Mark Cuban. Back in July, Mark put out a challenge to recommend new Programming for HDTV. To me, the answer is obvious: start digitizing the warehouses of great content that have been lost to generations of consumers. It would be a monumental effort, similar to what Google is attempting with books, but one that would serve the public well, by reconnecting us with the richness of our storytelling past.

Tags:Claudette Colbert Mark Cuban Blog Maverick Movies Hollywood Google HD HDNet High Difinition digitizing ronamok

Last week, my buddy, Jeremy Vaught, attended the SXSW conference in Austin, Texas. While there, he had his picture taken with various “famous people” – well, at least they’re famous to those in the fishbowl.

Jeremy’s Nokia N95 captured images of him besides the likes of Mark Zuckerberg , Jeff Bezos , iJustine, Jeff “Dr Tiki” Macpherson, and Kevin Rose. Don’t worry if you couldn’t pick these people out of a lineup; it just means that you’re a “normal person.”

However, what about the picture above? Can you name that conference attendee? Jeremy told me that to his “normal” friends, the most recognizable person was “Marty” the Geico Caveman.

I love the irony.

• On one hand, it shows that normal people are much more in touch with Old Media. Okay, that’s fair.
• On the other hand, am I the only one who finds it ironic that the posterboy for Old Media is a Caveman?

BTW. In the picture — the Caveman is on the right:-)

Tags: Mark Zuckerberg Jeff Bezos iJustine tikibar Kevin Rose Jeremy Vaught sxsw ronamok new media evangelist caveman cave man geico

George is one of the best salesmen I’ve ever worked with. He has an incredible ability to assess a sales situation, understand the dynamics involved with the sale, and then architect a cohesive sales strategy. When it comes to his understanding of technology, though, he typically falls a little sort. You see, George sits in the office next to mine — a place that I’m frequently called to help with some Microsoft Word, Excel, or Outlook disaster. So, I found it interesting that the first salesman to walk into my office with a practical application for New Media was my friend, George.

George had attended an abridged version of my Social Media 101 class. It must have been something that I said during that class that motivated him to walk next door and say, “I need to keep up with the latest news on all of my customers. Do you think that I can use Google Reader to do that?”

I learned that his management requires reports about his sales territory. In order to pull those reports together, he needs to visit many web sites, gather the information, and then synthesize that information into some mandatory PowerPoint template. Evidently, the synthesizing isn’t the problem — it’s the time and effort that he spends searching for information that kills him.

Within the next ten minutes, George had a Google account. Within the following ten, I had demonstrated how to use the RSS Feeds created through Google News searches. After a few minutes, he began building his personal search tool.

A few minutes into the exercise, a fresh news story popped up, describing how one of his customers was being sold to another company. “What’s that?” he asked, knowing very well what it was and realizing the direct ramifications the news meant to an ongoing deal. Reaching for the phone, he thanked me for my time and said, “I’m sorry, Ron, but I gotta jump on this.”

And that was it. Today, George, our non-technical sales person, has an elaborate RSS search system at his disposal. He knows exactly what is happening within his sales territory and he loves to talk about it.

I’m glad to have been able to help this very unlikely New Media Evangelist.

Tags: sales rss customers google reader microsoft office New Media Evangelist