RonAmok!

Readers of this blog know that I’m not a big fan of copyright law as it stands, preferring the likes of Creative Commons instead. But at the same time,  I’m still an ardent supporter of author rights. Simply put, there are right and wrong ways of using Other People’s Content (OPC).

As your company takes on the role of “publisher” through the use of blogs, podcasts, and online video, it’s important to educate your content creators as to the proper use of OPC.

This morning, my good friend Harry, the author of Harry…The ASIC Guy blog, asked me about a post he found on an EDA vendor’s community page. Evidently, the author had cut and pasted a large percentage of Harry’s most recent post into the company’s community user forums.

I’m not lawyer, so I’ll leave the finer points of “fair use” and the risks associated with OPC to your corporate counsel. Instead, I want to address the problem from the perspective of being a good netizen.

Rather than copying and pasting large portions of OPC, it’s normal and customary to write original commentary about an article, perhaps pulling a small quote or two to make a point, but leaving the vast majority of the OPC on the original website. If readers want to learn more from the original source, they can follow the hyperlink provided. Such a practice creates the best of both worlds: you’re company enjoys the benefits of a conversation-starter and the original author enjoys the benefits of an inbound link for potential new readers.

I believe that the person who posted Harry’s article did so with the best of  intentions. He did in fact offer hyperlinks to Harry’s original content, as he also did with articles that were cut & pasted from sources such as  EETimes and The Wall Street Journal! Unfortunately, the law doesn’t take into account good intentions, so rather than taking unnecessary risks, a little corporate education in the proper use of OPC can go a long way to avoiding potential legal headaches in the future.

And of course, your New Media Evangelist is available to help with that process:-)

What about your company? How are members of your online communities handling other people’s content?

Photo Credit: Chief Trent

Tags: copyright eda eetimes netiquette

Last month, your New Media Evangelist had the pleasure of presenting at the Ragan Communications Social Media for Communicators Conference in Las Vegas. While there, CEO Mark Ragan asked if we could talk a little about online video.

Here’s what we talked about:

Click here to go to the original video.

Tags: Ragan Communications Mark Ragan Ron Ploof New Media Evangelist ronamok online video interview

While sitting in the audience at a SoCal Action Sports Network event last month, one of the panelists, Tim Young, CEO of Socialcast, said something that caught my attention.

“The way we communicate is different than upper management.”

The “we” in his statement referred to the Millennials. “Upper management” was code for Baby Boomers.

Tim described how millennials are entering the workforce with a new set of communications skills that the Baby Boomers just don’t understand. At first, I took the statement personally. I mean, this boomer doesn’t need some new-hire to teach me how to communicate! Right?

Just as I was about to write him off, though, Tim offered another insight.

“Millennials can help Gen-Xers and Boomers communicate, and Gen-Xers and Boomers can help ‘onboard’ Millennials.

“Onboard?” I thought. “What does that mean?”

And then it hit me. Tim was describing the experience-gap between the groups. Although millennials are natural collaborators who can teach the “me” generation something about communication, they are still green when it comes to the ways of business. In order for businesses to succeed in the future, Tim simply pointed out that these groups will need to learn from one another.

This experience-gap reared its ugly head during last week’s Dominos Pizza fiasco, when two millennial employees collaborated swimmingly to create a sickening video. Unfortunately, their youthful inexperience blinded them from the fact that the food preparation business is all about trust, which the young communicators napalmed in the amount of time it took to upload their video to YouTube.

Dominos responded by releasing its own video response, a two minute video of Dominos’ President, Patrick Doyle, describing the seriousness by which the company was taking the situation. Although the corporate video contained all the right words, it fell flat because some public relations genius puppet-stringed Mr. Doyle’s performance, having him look off-camera to read a prepared speech.

ATTENTION PUBLIC RELATIONS PROFESSIONALS OF THE WORLD. Executives responding to a crisis don’t need no stinkin’ teleprompters. Nobody cares whether it comes off as polished or not. All we care about is that the message is authentic and real.

Ironically, the millennial employees actually produced a “better” video than upper management. Think about it. Rather than reading from a script, they looked directly into the camera and clearly communicated their stomach-turning message.

Tim Young was correct. Millennials and Boomers do have a lot to learn from one another.

Photo Credit: Photo Mojo

Tags: Millenial Gen-X Baby Boomers onboarding business collaborate communicate