RonAmok!

One of the reasons that I write this blog is to share things that I, as a New Media Evangelist, learn while helping my company adopt New Media tools and techniques. Every now and then, a series of events conspire to create an “Ah-ha!” moment for me, something to pass along to you. I had one of those moments last Friday while speaking with my boss, Herta.

A little background. Our company is learning how to incorporate video into our stable of communications devices. In order to push ourselves along the learning curve, we hired Gerard Braud of Gerard Braud Communications to come and speak with us. Gerard is an accomplished journalist and videographer who shared his experiences, both on a technical as well as a content-creation basis.

During his presentation, he demonstrated the hold-the-camera-at-arms-length distance-from-your-face-while-speaking-into-it technique.

“Did you see the change?” Herta asked, while we recapped Gerard’s presentation.

“Change?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said. “The moment that he looked into the camera. He changed.” Herta described how Gerard became more animated. He engaged with the camera. And he was comfortable in his element. Then she added, “I don’t do that. When someone puts a camera on me, I shut down.”

I love conversations like this. They highlight things that I need to remember. I’m a content creator. I have a podcast. I have a blog. I create videos. And so, if you put a microphone or video camera in front of me, my instinct is to turn on, not off.

And so do all of the fishbowl people that I hang out with. If I’m standing in a crowd of other content creators (i.e. bloggers, podcasters, videographers) and someone sticks a microphone into the mix, we all turn on! We become more animated. We are comfortable in our element. It’s natural. It’s “normal.”

“That’s not normal, Ron!” Herta corrected me. “Most people have the exact opposite reaction.”

She’s right. It isn’t normal. But I wonder; is it teachable? Is it something that anyone can learn, or is it reserved for the predisposed? Either way, it’s a problem that businesses need to focus on as they become publishers.

Tags: RonAmok New Media Evangelist video business skills Gerard Braud

One of the things that I like about New Media is its cause and effect capabilities. For example, when you put something “out there,” people respond.

Last Valentines Day, I had a customer support nightmare with an online flower vendor. In response, I produced a video that I posted on YouTube. Although the video wasn’t watched by millions of people, it did draw some folks into conversation with me. The following video story is a result of those interactions:

I’d like to thank my friend and co conspirator, Corey Scribner of BigOrangeBox, for this video. Corey is a video wizard and fellow New Media Evangelist. You should talk with him for all of your video production needs.

In addition. Are you looking for Royalty Free Music to use in your projects? I use Kevin MacLeod’s Music. Great stuff and very affordable. Try it out.

Tags:Corey Scribner Big Orange Box Kevin MacLeod New Media Evangelist YouTube RonAmok AmokTalk

In the mid nineties, just as the World Wide Web was getting going, Owen Davis wanted to share his frustration with the service he was getting from RBOC NYNEX. And so, he started a movement that struck fear into the hearts of public relations professionals around the world when he created a website called nynexsucks.com. In it, he described the trials and tribulations of getting an ISDN line installed at his company. And that’s when others came out of the woodwork. Others shared their stories which were also published on the website. It’s one of the first times that the consumer was given a public voice, and it caused all sorts of corporate consternation.

Companies responded in the only way that they knew how. By trying to control the situation. They began gobbling up domain names that ended in “sucks.” Today, a quick look at Whois.net shows that nynexsucks.com and BellAtlanticsucks.com (the successor to NYNEX) are now owned by Verizon — who rounded out their collection by grabbing Verizonsucks.com too!

Instead of seeing this as an opportunity to have a conversation with their customers, businesses have attempted to control the bleeding.

But business weren’t the only group to miss the point — consumers and advocate organizations whiffed on it too. The king of the consumers, Ralph Nader, saw this domain grab as a strike against consumers and their freedom of speech. And so in 2000, he waged an unsuccessful battle to create a new set of web domains…the “.sucks” domain.

Hindsight is always 20/20, but there is no reason to create a new set of domains that ends in “.sucks.” In the age of Google, in the age of “tagging” it was only a matter of time before this information was indexed.

For example a Google search for “Verizon Sucks” yields 17,900 hits of which the top one, posted on February 4, 2008 is:
http://mamaintranslation.blogspot.com/2008/02/verizon-sucks.html

Is this a website dedicated to the destruction of Verizon? Nope, it is a blog called Mama(e) in Translation, written by a stay-at-home mom with a Ph.D. A closer look shows that her blog is hosted on blogspot.com, a Google property that hosts blogs for free.

The business world needs to understand that it lost control a long time ago. Its gone. Bye bye. Sayonara. Au Revoir. And that the longer they deny this, the more silly they’ll look.

It’s time to stop “targeting” your audience. It’s time to start having a conversations with them. Otherwise, the hunters become the hunted.