No, not that kind of running backward. Though, in my previous city, there was a dude you’d see doing that all the time. Seriously.
On a whim today, I reversed my regular running route. The route I’ve jogged dozens of times in all kinds of weather. The route, in the standard direction anyway, I could probably run in my sleep. Boy, let me tell you: It was like running it for the very first time.
Physically and visually, it was a completely different experience. When the start of downhills become the end of uphills, you change how you manage your workout. When the near side of the street becomes the far side of the street, you notice landscaping, architecture, entryways you’ve never noticed before. The best part: I expect today’s experience will help me better manage and better enjoy the route in its regular order.
The novelty won’t be as great next time but I’m sure to reverse the route again. I also will try to make a point to run backward, so to speak, in other areas of life, turning habits, routines, workflows on their collective heads.
I’ve already been doing this vocationally. In fact, one of my favorite parts of the interactive media master’s program I just completed was how telling stories on unfamiliar platforms improved my storytelling across the board — even in traditional print pieces, which I’ve been writing since high school.
The Mozarts, Bill Gateses and Tiger Woodses of the world aren’t as successful as they are by plain accident, Malcom Gladwell argues in his 2008 bestseller “Outliers: The Story Of Success.” Yes, such peak performers are naturally talented, and, usually, relatively privileged. But they also invest a tremendous amount of time honing their craft.
Try 10,000 hours. That’s the amount of practice Gladwell says the best of the best put in. I’m under no illusions I’ll reach this threshold in my newly chosen field of interactive media. Extraordinarily few do. That’s Gladwell’s point. But, that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t practice as much as can. To that end, it’s safe to say I’m behind on my hours.
To my credit, I’ve kept my head above water in an accelerated master’s program with my physical and mental health in tact. I’ve even taken on extracurricular projects, exercised regularly, and, I like to think, maintained some semblance of a social life — the fact that I’m blogging on a Friday night notwithstanding.
Getting in that little extra professional practice, however, that which separates the good from the great, has been difficult. But it doesn’t have to be. Like with physical exercise, short, intense mental workouts can pay large, long-term dividends.
In the time it takes to watch a “Seinfeld” rerun, I could be making my way toward great. I envision occasionally completing this routine toward the end of the day, but it could be done anytime:
11:00 p.m. to 11:07 p.m. — Browse a favorite news source. It can online, or off, mainstream or alternative, professional or amateur, about interactive media or about something else, so long as it’s something you’re interested in.
11:07 p.m. to 11:11 p.m. — Pick a story that especially captivated you and share it via social media. It’s fine to just favorite it on Delicious or Tweet a link to it, but try to add value. What did you like about it? What didn’t you like? What did you learn? What were you confused by? How does it relate to another concept? Also, try to favor tools you’re less familiar with. Always Digging your favorite links? Give Reddit a try.
11:11 p.m. to 11:17 p.m. — Pick an interactive media problem that is vexing you — Web site color scheme, advertising tagline, interaction design snafu — or the industry — monetization of online content, information overload, the digital divide. Try to brainstorm 50 solutions. Yes, 50. There are no bad answers. Just keep writing.
11:17 p.m. to 11:23 p.m. — Think of a skill you would like to improve. Ask an expert you know in this area to teach you a bit about it. (E-mail, Tweet, Facebook, text message or call, whatever seems most appropriate.)
11:23 p.m. to 11:27 p.m. — Go to Pandora or grab your iPod and put on some favorite tunes. Now, just think. Don’t read anything. Don’t write anything. Don’t surf the Web. Throw your mobile on other side of the room if you have to. Just let yourself have a uninterrupted stream of conciousness for four minutes.
11:27 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. — On a Post-It write two new things you want to try tomorrow. Sign the bottom and put the note in a place where you’ll see it the next morning. This is a mini-contract with yourself.
I’m yet to test run this exercise, but will share my experience in this space once I do. If you try it out, let me know in the comments how it went.
Spend enough time on the Internet, and odds are you played a part in circulating a meme. Yes, you probably did, even if you didn’t know that’s what it’s called.
A meme (rhymes with theme), Merriam-Webster tells us, is “an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture.” On the Internet, every time you forward, repost or retweet you could be giving life to a meme.
YouTube is filled with memes, like the oneparodied on last week’s episode of “The Office.” You might know them better as “viral videos.”
Media scholar Henry Jenkins calls such communications, which can also take the form of music, still images, catch phrases, even clothing, “spreadable media.” “Meme” and “viral” understate the role of the audience, he says.
Whatever you call them, memes can make you a lot of money. The just-released low-budget horror film Paranormal Activity built a marketing campaign around them.
Just over a year ago Huh told a Web 2.0 Expo NY audience (video above, presentation .pdf here) some of the secrets of his success. My classmates and I, it turns out, would have said roughly the same thing. And our speaking fees are much lower.
Asked by our Theory and Audience Analysis professor to list qualities that, as Jenkins would put it, make media spreadable, we honed in on many of the same aspects as Huh.
Memes, we said, tend to be simple, discussable, brief, relatable and easy to share.
Huh, earning his speaking fee, I suppose, captured the first two elements in a single soundbite.
“We perceive Web. 2.0 as this complex environment, where there’s lots of filtering, lots of stuff going on,” he said. “But really what it boils down to is there’s two people sharing a piece of content or an experience.”
Think of it as the “Hey, dude check this out” test.
Brevity, meanwhile, is at the heart of the irreverently captioned cat pictures, known as Lolcats, on I Can Has Cheezburger?, where the goal, Huh said, is “to make people happy for just 5 minutes a day.”
The importance that content be relatable explains Huh’s early discovery that many of the submissions to I Can Has Cheezburger? aren’t explicitly about cats. They’re about eBay, drinking too much, everyday annoyances or whatever else users deem topical.
Finally, what really helped I Can Has Cheezburger? take off, Huh said, was the lightweight tool that enables virtually anyone with an Internet connection and basic computer proficiency to upload their own captioned photo. It took a part-timer less than a weekend’s work to put the widget together, but it’s a big reason Huh’s site went mainstream when others like it did not.
“We try to lower the bar for content creation,” Huh said, “because the more you allow users to remove the technology… the better content you get.”
Some tips from Huh that apply to any Web company are to consistently update your site — I Can Has Cheezburger? features six new posts every day, the first coming as East Coasters are arriving to work, he said — and, this will sound familiar, “Groundswell” readers, to listen to your audience. I Can Has Cheezburger?’s handful of full-time employees spend much of their time interacting with users, Huh said.
What’s that? Time for one more Lolcat? I thought so.
There’s a grade school art piece of mine, a watercolor, I like to reference to illustrate — pardon the pun — why one should never be afraid of mistakes.
The assignment involved using a cardboard edge to paint the wisps of a flower’s stem. Class was winding down and my piece looked nothing like a flower. The more I tried to fix it, though, the less like a flower it looked. Panicked, I frantically swiped the cardboard across the paper. I was close to giving up when I realized what I was painting did look like something: grass.
With a new design in mind, I worked with greater care and confidence. What I thought was a lost cause suddenly resembled a scene one might find in nature.
It also had pretty brilliant depth of field. It ended up being featured in the student art show at the town center mall for thousands of shoppers to see.
My parents still have the piece. I’ll try to digitize it and post it here sometime.
“The things you own end up owning you.” Well said, Tyler Durden. Now, keep that lye away from me.
“Fight Club” author Chuck Palahniuk’s cultural critique is directed at consumer items, like IKEA furniture, but it can just as easily apply to technology. Yes, technology empowers us. But, if we don’t manage it, it gains power over us.
Don’t check your text messages, e-mail or Twitter until you’re done reading this blog post. If your phone buzzes or Outlook or Tweetdeck flashes an alert, ignore it. If the prospect of this bothers you, you’ll want to read on.
Browsing the Web, carrying on a text conversation and responding to e-mails as they come in while you’re typing a paper may make you feel uber-productive. You’re multitasking!
Problem is, each of these tasks is going to take you longer to complete than if you tackled it by itself. You’re decreasing — not increasing — your efficiency.
Don’t just take my word for it, though. Scientific research — up, up, put your mobile down, this is important — has shown that not only does so-called multitasking reduce your level of engagement with any single activity, you also lose a minute of productivity refocusing your brain every time you switch tasks.
Got it? Multitasking is a myth. Just like the well-rested grad student.
Here are five more tips — based on an in-class group assignment — on how to manage technology before it manages you:
Schedule technology blackout periods during which you forbid yourself from interacting with a computer, television or handheld device.
Make time for low-tech hobbies. Exercise (without your iPod, thank you). Read a book (the dead tree version).
Use pen and paper. For all the work that goes into developing slick calendar and to-do-list apps, paper often works best.
Face-to-face conversations should take precedence over the buzzing mobile, not vice-versa.
Don’t name your devices. It creates an unhealthy attachment. It’s also kinda creepy.
I’ll add one more: Get outside! Stepping away from your work and getting some fresh air can be great productivity boosters. Plus, exposure to sunlight has been linked to neurotransmitter activity that elevates mood. This tip is especially important as the number of daylight hours dwindles.
My cohorts and I are in the thick of the expert-interview stage of our future-oriented research projects and today our professor, a former newspaper journalist, gave a slide presentation of interviewing tips. An ex-print journalist myself, I received similar advice in high school, at internships, in college and in the workplace.
Still, a refresher never hurts. Familiarity breeds complacency. On deadline, one adopts shortcuts, and some of them stick.
Research ahead of time. Have a backup plan for if technology fails. Save hardball questions for the end. Always get contact information for follow-ups. All tried and true.
Two of my favorite tips are also among the simplest:
First, leverage the power of silence. Yeah, it’s uncomfortable for the interviewer, but, trust me, it’s even more uncomfortable for the subject. I used this technique at my last reporting job to get details on the relationship between a murder victim and the suspect before police were ready to announce them.
I was canvassing the apartment complex where the homicide occurred and came across a chatty older gentleman who seemed to know more than he was letting on. Sensing he was one of those people who enjoy the sound of their own voice, I kept him talking no matter the subject. Then, I asked what I came there to ask and waited. And waited. Sure enough, he spilled what he wasn’t ready to spill before. His information matched up perfectly with what the police would later release.
This technique is helpful not only for sensitive questions but also for complex ones. If a subject doesn’t answer immediately, it’s natural for the interviewer to assume something was wrong with the question and scale it back. Give the subject time to think things through. The point of an interview is to generate original, well-thought-out answers, not trite, off-the-cuff ones.
Second, before ending an interview, always ask something to the effect of, “Is there anything else you’d like to tell me?” Usually, the source’s response will yield something of value. It’s not always groundbreaking, but, surprisingly often, it is. The source will point out an essential resource or raise an issue that completely reshapes the story.
A ridiculously open-ended question can even produce a bombshell. It did for me one Sunday afternoon working the cops shift at my first paper. The police beat required tracking disorder of all forms across a sprawling four-county area. Keeping an ear to the scanner and asking “Anything going on?” “Anything else?” over and over was pretty much the only way to do this. I made the first of two routine calls to one of several state police barracks on my call sheet and asked the routine question. “Any accidents, arrests, anything to report?
“Oh, you’re calling about the arrest from last night,” said the trooper on the other end of the line. “What do you want to know?”
I had no idea what arrest he was referring to but it was obvious it was newsworthy. “Umm,” I thought, before responding with more boilerplate, “Name, age, residence, location of the incident, the charge.”
Whether the trooper could tell that I was clueless I’ll never know. But the name was that of the county sheriff. The charge? Drunken driving.
Yes, preparation and tact are important, but the worst question can be the one never asked.
Time seems to speed up when you’re live tweeting. Especially when you lose your Internet connection.
These were among the lessons I learned this morning from my first live tweeting experience, covering Elon University’s OneWebDay celebration.
For the international Earth Day-like event, designed to raise awareness about the Web — this year specifically about digital inclusion, my interactive media classmates and I surveyed attendees of our school’s weekly College Coffee gathering about their Web use and knowledge. Through this, we learned that less than 20 percent of them spend more than 15 minutes a day accessing the Web from a mobile device and they learned that Tim Berners-Lee proposed the World Wide Web in 1990.
Promotion
Ideally, I would have done more advance promotion. Live tweeting is a great tool for interacting with your audience and building your brand, but, you need readers to do this. I did post tease tweets on my professional and personal accounts yesterday and, on my way out the door to go to the event, verbally told a couple of classmates still in the computer lab to follow suit. Even these minimal efforts produced a couple of retweets promoting my coverage. However, as I was live tweeting just to expose myself to the experience, whether my coverage bore any journalistic or marketing fruit was secondary.
Planning
This exercise was similar enough to covering events for delayed Web or print publication that I knew enough not to go into it blind. I typed up a text file containing pre-made shortened urls for content I thought I might want to link to and keywords for tweets I wanted to make sure I got in. This prepwork definitely paid off. I didn’t waste time or miss important details creating links, and my keywords led to descriptive tweets. These three were respectively based on the prompts “weather,” “shirts” and “food.”
It’s an overcast but pleasant first day of fall here in N.C.’s Piedmont Triad. A few occasional drizzles. #OWD09
iMedia students, clad in black #OWD09 T-shirts with the hashtag in teal on the back, are setting up. Students are starting to file in.
Crowds snaking around food spreads. Donuts, fruit, sweet tea &, of course, coffee. Unfortunately, tastes/smell uploads not poss. yet #OWD09
To get others’ voices in my coverage, I also made plans ahead of time to interview a few attendees (this would have been easier with a netbook instead of a laptop), asking them, “What’s your favorite thing about the Web?” Here is one resulting tweet:
Getting similar responses. Freshman Sunny likes the “Unlimited information. If you want to find something it’s out there.” #OWD09
Hashtags
The “#OWD09″ in each post is a hashtag. Hashtags help readers find information on a specific topic. This particular hashtag is the tag OneWebDay organizers asked content creators to put on all OWD-related posts. If any of my classmates were also live tweeting today’s event, it would have made sense to add a tag specific to our school so everyone’s posts could be accessable from a common page.
Writing
Thinking of stuff to write about wasn’t an issue. Writing it quickly and maintaining a certain threshold of quality was. In hindsight, I might have put too much pressure on myself to constantly churn out content. Allowing more time to think about and edit posts might have better served readers. I did have my share of typos, which, the way I understand it at least, are tolerated in live tweeting, but only to an extent. I might have had too many.
Interactivity
As I mentioned farther up, the opportunity for interactivity is one of the strengths of live tweeting. A fellow user might write me, for example, “I thought government researchers invented the Internet, not Tim Berners-Lee,” and I could explain that the Internet and the World Wide Web are two different things. However, had anyone been asking me questions, since my coverage lasted only about an hour, I doubt I could have kept up with them and what was happening around me. Here, a co-tweeter would have likely been needed.
Technology
I’ll end where I started: Cumulatively, there was probably about 10 minutes where I lost my wireless connection. This can be a helpless feeling, and, toward the last quarter of the event, I thought I had lost it for good and began scanning for someone with a smart phone he or she could loan me. To avoid such panic, having a built-in backup would have been a good idea.
Search engine optimization is an entire industry onto itself. Organizations with large online footprints that can afford to hire experts usually do. For this reason, SEO can seem intimidating. But, for casual bloggers who just want to feel a little more popular or useful by allowing more searchers to stumble upon their content, it needn’t be.
Here are five SEO tips you can start applying today that require minimal extra effort:
Include four to five keywords in your home page’s title tag. Be authentic. The keywords should accurately reflect what’s on the site. The site for my hometown paper, The Baltimore Sun, has well-written title tag keywords: “breaking news, sports, weather and traffic in Baltimore.”
Post often. Also vary the length and frequency of your posts. This helps convince search engines your site is being written by a human and not a robot.
Always, always include alt text for images and media. This creates more copy that may potentially match search terms. (It’s also an accessibility commandment.)
Link to high quality content (.edu and .gov sites are especially good). Engines love connections and hate dead ends. Look for places where the copy naturally lends itself to a hyperlink but don’t link just for the sake of linking.
What you shouldn’t do is as important as what you should do. Don’t try to game the system through keyword stuffing or invisible links. Search engines penalize for these and, if they get wind of them, so will readers. Protect your ranking. Protect you brand. Stick to white hat techniques.
There’s a whole SEO universe beyond this, of course, and that universe is constantly changing. Here’s a look at what the future may hold:
Greater attention will be paid to optimizing for clearinghouses other than search engines. Restaurants, for example, would be wise to pay attention to Urban Spoon. Airlines, Kayak. Social networking sites will also demand greater attention.
As mobile devices proliferate, ensuring pages come up in locational searches will become increasingly important.
Optimizing for multiple languages is an important aspect of SEO in Europe. As the world continues to get smaller, this will become more common in relatively linguistically homogenous regions like North America.
Last year around this time, the presidential candidates were talking a lot about tools. No, this is not a Joe The Plumber reference.
Don’t remember? The candidates were speaking figuratively about reigning in spending.
Obama said his opponent’s approach amounted to “using a hatchet when you need a scalpel.” McCain countered that both tools were needed: he’d go in with a hatchet first, then pull out a scalpel.
Regardless of whether you agreed with Obama, his metaphor painted a picture. To use a hatchet for a job clearly meant for a scalpel, say brain surgery, would be silly, not to mention gruesome. To use a communications tool unfit for the task is also reckless.
Not three weeks into my fall semester studies, the mantra, “Let the story dictate the tool,” has been popping up a lot. It’s been nearly as ubiquitous as commentary on Kanye West’s VMA outburst. (Heck, even my favorite football team is weighing in on that.) OK, maybe that’s a bit of a stretch, but, in the iMedia world, this is a kind of a big deal. It’s being reinforced at every turn:
By my class readings: Forrester Research’s social media primer “Groundswell” preaches “Concentrate on the relationships, not the technologies.”
By my research: Spanish media company Novotécnica, a May 2008 article in the journal Convergence said, instructs its journalists to be platform agnostic: “Reporters are constantly generating news content and the central desk decides each time how to distribute it,” a senior editor told researchers.
And by guest speakers: Former BBC journalist Jonathan Halls implored me and my classmates to focus on the story. Individual tools will go out of style, he said. Sound storytelling won’t.
Unfortunately, pressure to churn out fresh content and establish a presence in new mediums often leads news organizations to violate the story-first credo.
Last year, the now defunct Rocky Mountain News live tweeted a 3-year-old’s funeral. It had his family’s permission, but, a tool favored for posting (often mundane) status updates, sharing shortened urls and firing off witty one liners hardly seems capable of capturing the depth of emotion associated with a young child’s death. “Rabbi recites 23rd psalm,” “family member remembers marten,” “earth being placed on coffin” were a few of the posts.
More routinely, news sites will do a video story simply because they haven’t done a video story in a while or merely tweak traditional content to fit a new tool instead of developing material from scratch that leverages its functionality.
My former paper, which has recently begun to explore Facebook as a news delivery and marketing tool, this summer had an ah-ha moment with Twitter. After weeks of using the microblogging service as an RSS feed in different clothes, it saw an opportunity to do something more: give users intimate access to a major sporting event happening in its backyard. All four days of Tiger Woods’ AT&T National golf tournament, a reporter was assigned to file frequent dispatches. It took a while for reporters to get comfortable with the format, but once they did, they really ran with it. Here are some choice tweets:
Spotting some of these guys is a Where’s Waldo experience. Steuart Appleby breaks the mold wearing an apple green shirt.
‘Sure you can interview me, but don’t use my name. I’m playing hooky from work.’ Dave, from Burke, Virginia
Basically the only clouds over the course are from the cigar smoke
What’s more, they found that tweeting, by forcing them to look for rich detail and pithy quotes, enhanced their reporting.
So, how can journalists be confident they’re using the right tool? Considering the following factors should get them on their way:
Look, listen, and think: Use photos and videos when there are compelling, action-oriented visuals. Use audio when there is rich natural sound. Use infographics or interactive presentations to simplify the voluminous or complex.
Audience: Is the format appropriate for the probable audience? A podcast, for example, probably isn’t the best format for a story about the new senior center. It would be an ideal format, however, for a story about a transit line targeting young commuters.
Turnaround time: Some mediums have longer production processes than others. Before committing to a format, make sure the deadline allows enough time to create a quality product.
What’s gained? What’s lost?: Tools giveth, tools taketh away. Yes, a picture is worth 1,000 words, but what about the “words” that are out of frame? Weigh what’s gained against what’s lost. If a video’s going to end up being all talking heads, you might be better off sticking with text.
Does it get along with other content?: If producing sidebar content, does it complement the mainbar? Or does it repeat it or distract from it?
Staff expertise: Does your staff have enough technological and strategic familiarity with a tool to use it effectively? If not, wait until they do before playing with it.
Is it searchable?: If a lot of people are likely to be searching for the content, know the limitations of video and Flash and how to work around them.
Is it shareable?: If a lot of people are likely to want to share the content with others, does the format make it easy for them to do so?
The Mozarts, Bill Gateses and Tiger Woodses of the world aren’t as successful as they are by plain accident, Malcom Gladwell argues in his 2008 bestseller 
