Preparing for Jobs That Don’t Exist Yet

Most of the time, job-seekers merely must convince potential employers of their own ability. Those looking for work in emerging fields like interactive media often must also convince them of the value of their would-be job itself.

The jobs my peers and I are preparing for don’t necessarily exist yet. We can hope they’ll be at least enough for us when we wade into the job market this spring, but shouldn’t count on it.

Given the economic downturn and lagging mainstream awareness of the tools we’re learning to use, we should prepare for that second sell. Both of these points were reinforced in class discussions this past week.

My Public Opinion professor flagged an Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication survey indicating that last year’s communications graduates had a tough time finding work. Among both bachelor’s and master’s degree recipients, about three out 10 graduates had zero job offers upon graduation, the nonprofit reported in its November newsletter (.pdf).

Are this year’s graduates faring any better? Perhaps. Nationwide employment figures would suggest otherwise, however.

Anecdotally, several of my classmates said they enrolled in grad school in part because of a lack of attractive job options. And some are saying now that the titles listed on job boards are the same ones from a few years ago — new media responsibilities are merely tacked on to the list of duties, without a corresponding bump in pay.

Whatever the data are, one can tell just by looking out the window that the economic weather’s still crummy. Employers are inclined to rely on proven core positions to carry them through the storm.

Still, recovery seems less abstract than it did a year, or even six months ago. Smart employers are already planning for it. Smart job-seekers will articulate how they can fit into these plans.

The other problem is that even if employers have money to spend, many aren’t aware that they could be — and, my classmates and I would argue, should be —spending it on establishing a presence in social media or in virtual worlds. In detailing her research on the future of nonprofits, one of my classmates said that numerous nonprofit leaders told her they had never heard of Second Life.

The best job-seekers can do is show organizations that their competitors are doing these things, and that they’re working, and that they successfully applied them themselves, either in the classroom, or, ideally, for a real-world client.

If the economy and their own persuasion skills fail them, job-seekers should be ready to bite the bullet, accept a job that’s less than ideal, then work like hell and let their actions talk for them. It’s a tried and true approach. Get your foot in the door anyway you can. If you’re as great as you think you are, you’ll quickly differentiate yourself from your peers and your bosses will reward you for it.

One Good Thing About The Great Recession

It may not look like it now, but the past two years have been good for journalism. As ugly as it was, The Great Recession hastened the process of uncovering new models the industry already desperately needed.

Among those supporting that process is the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity, whose grants are reinforcing the dwindling ranks of state capital press corps, including in my native Maryland.

Led by a Maryland journalism veteran who was State House bureau chief at the Baltimore Examiner when it closed in February, just-launched nonprofit MarylandReporter.Com plans weekday state government coverage through its Web site and subscriber-based newsletter.

Reports by its now two-man team are already getting picked up by mainstream sources, and should only increase in breadth and depth once the state’s General Assembly convenes in January. Given its narrow focus and experienced staff, MarylandReporter.Com should get its share of scoops.

Also encouraging, and something one might not expect from legacy journalism refugees, is its early embrace of social media. Even before its site went live, and even before, by their own admission, its Tweeters were fully comfortable with the tool, MarylandReporter.Com was on Twitter reporting news, establishing its brand, and engaging in conversation about both.

The rub is that MarylandReporter.Com and other organizations like it will have to find a way to earn money on their own before their seed money runs out. Even those who fail, however, won’t fail in vain. At least they’re experimenting. And, importantly, experimenting in ways that would never be feasible at larger, for-profit outlets. As journalism reinvents itself, pushing the limits and learning what doesn’t work is a necessary step for discovering what does.

Go From Good To Great, One Half-Hour at a Time

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.

Designers’ Invisibility Cloak

I blogged previously about how computer engineers are out to make their product invisible. So are information designers.

Well, they want users to notice their design, of course. But they don’t want it to be obvious it’s been designed.

Users who easily find what they’re looking for don’t think about design. They move on to the next thing they’re looking for. Users who get confused or overwhelmed notice design. So, designers want their product to be invisible.

No wonder people think designing is easy. The harder designers work, the less obvious that work is. Kind of thankless, I suppose. Perhaps that’s why there are so many design contests. Designers can at least pat each other on the back if no one else will.

As a former copy editor, I can relate. If a copy editor does his job and stories are readable, thorough and free of mistakes, readers aren’t going to say, “Wow, what great copy editing.” But if an editor misses an error, or, God forbid, adds one, one can see readers saying, “Where was the copy desk?”

I edited this post. Did you notice? I hope not.

Open Your Ears Before You Open Your Mouth

Yesterday I posted about how businesses tend to delegate social media tasks to their youngest workers and that how young people use social media in their personal lives may not translate to  — or may even clash with — how to use it successfully in the business world.

I added that solid writing is the foundation of solid social media marketing, again, a skill students may not develop, or not develop appropriately, through day-to-day social media use.

Listening is also important, added a peer of mine who’s researching the future of social media.

“From what I have gathered from my research and informational interviews, the mistake made often by companies attempting to utilize social media for the first time is their lackadaisical approach,” he commented. “Social media management includes listening to the groundswell, responding, and being willing to make changes per the feedback received.”

As part of our Interactive Writing and Design coursework, three of my classmates and I are developing a microsite to promote a local jam band’s forthcoming album. The band has used MySpace and Facebook with some success, but is unfamiliar with Twitter.

Immediately, my teammates and I had some ideas about how the band could use social media to achieve its goal of playing in a popular Mid-Atlantic campout music festival. Why not get its active base — it drew several hundred people to a self-hosted festival on a friend’s farm — to talk up the band in places and in ways other fans and festival bookers would notice?

We’re anxious to get to work — the band’s needs seem to jibe remarkably well with what we’ve been learning in our grad program — but know first, we must listen.

Part of our homework is doing literally that — listening to band’s music. Half our group is checking out the band’s tunes, Web site, social media pages, digital press kit and anywhere else the band’s mentioned online. The other half is visiting festival Web sites and the sites of bands who’ve played in those festivals.

We’ll absorb our respective areas as much as we can, then compare notes, looking for overlap between the band’s existing identity and what’s valued in the external spaces.

The Molecule As a Social Media Metaphor

Name a social media app and you’ll likely find it on Brian Solis’ Conversation Prism. There are nearly 200 social media icons on Version 2.0 of the colorful conceptual map, intended to assist organizations in applying social media to their brands.

Every industry needs an encyclopedia. Daily newspapers have the Editor & Publisher International Yearbook. Such exhaustive resources can be invaluable — in the case of the E&P Yearbook, locating potential employers is how I used it — but are too cumbersome for everyday use.

To fully make out the Conversation Prism’s icons requires a large monitor. Or, for $20, you can buy a 22″ by 28″ poster from theconversationprism.com.

With some study, advanced users can make sense of it. They recognize most of the icons and have used enough of the tools to know how they relate to each other. But the average business person will be overwhelmed: “Yeah, it looks pretty, but what do I do with it?”

A second shortcoming is that the Conversation Prism does a poor job of illustrating the crossover between different tools. For example, I’ve embedded a YouTube video on this blog. WordPress and YouTube are at opposite ends of the prism, however, suggesting they don’t interact.

An alternative metaphor that addresses these deficiencies is a chemical molecule. Think of the models from chemistry class (pictured above). Social media advisers would only need to present to managers the tools they’re most likely to use, and the relationship between them would be clearer.

Say a rock band wants to use Twitter to promote its music, videos and fan-produced photos. The “molecule” for such a campaign would have a Twitter atom at its core and music, video and pictures atoms branching off of it. Electrons within each atom would comprise the individual tools. Pandora, Seeqpod and Last.fm for music, for example.

The hands-on assembly of the molecules would engage the manager on a level staring at a chart just can’t. Plus, social media chemistry models would make for fantastic conversation pieces. Sit them on an executive’s desk or trade show table and you’re bound to get people talking. Conversation. What you’ve been going for all along.

I Walk (Off) the Line

Nonlinear Storytelling Starts Before Post

One month into the fall semester, my classmates and I have completed or are working on a diverse complement of projects. We’ve produced Flash slideshows, planned mock marketing campaigns and have begun developing biographical Web sites. No matter the product or audience, our professors have encouraged non-linear storytelling. Even if we have set starting and ending points in mind, we should create opportunities for users to take side trips along the way.

How to go about achieving this is a question commonly put off until post production. The content is still gathered in a linear manner. This can be fine, but it limits from the get-go the spontaneity that non-linear storytelling is all about.

The approach my Interactive Writing and Design professor is requiring students to follow for their biographical Web sites forced me to consider this more directly than I ever had before. The Web sites can take virtually any form so long as they include six images acquired during a class field trip last month.

This wasn’t just any field trip. It was a trip to the Elsewhere Artist Collaborative, a former thrift store whose massive collection of salvaged items inspire the artistic process, often becoming works of art themselves.

For their Web sites, students were to locate and photograph objects relating to six themes: nature, ancestry, family, community, career and entertainment. A thumbnail of my career image is above. My peers and I are now in the process of writing stories centered around the six images.

The way journalists are trained to gather news is another non-linear model. A good reporter shouldn’t have his mind made up as to where his story is going. Sources should drive the direction of the story and lead the reporter to other sources. Too often, though, whether out of deadline pressure, laziness or overt bias, a reporter pre-defines the story, asks the usual players their take on it and calls it a day.

In pursuit of non-linear stories, four of my peers and I are considering a journalistic approach to content acquisition for an extracurricular project we’re working on even though it’s a promotional product.

The World Wide Web, a Wonderland of Words

The Web was built for conversation. Kind of funny, then, it can be so tricky to talk about.

Its lexicon is a mish-mash of new words, repurposed words, and, well, mish-mashed words.

Year after year, Web-related terms highlight updates to Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary. Vlog and webisode are new for 2009. In next year’s update? Who knows? I’m still rooting for specticipants.

Such a fluid vocabulary can be difficult to keep up with.

Why do those things that keep track of what’s in your online shopping cart have such a tasty name? Cookies, Wikipedia tells us, were named such because, like fortune cookies, they have hidden information inside.

How did unsolicited messages, Hormel Foods implores, get to be known as spam? Internet entrepreneur Brad Templeton traces it back to a Monty Python sketch. I’ll let him explain.

Sometimes netizens don’t even need words. This makes them : ) and maybe even LOL.

Like the government, the Web’s good at making alphabet soup. HTML, URL, CSS, P2P, MMORPG — acronyms are everywhere.

Inevitably, celebrities get involved. Or, the Web involves them. If your business conference gets Rickrolled and you don’t have a sense of humor about it, watch out for the Streisand effect.

Of course, Web vocab isn’t always so cryptic. Browse, scroll and jump, among the many words carried over from print, should be familiar to even the greenest users.

The Web breeds laziness, we often hear. It sure does. E-book, e-commute, e-commerce, e-mail, e-marketing. E-nough.

We’ll forgive Apple for iMac, iPod and iPhone, because, repetition is good for branding. Not to mention, the products themselves rock. Plus, the iPod inspired podcast. What an elegant blend of new- and old-media terms.

Words fall in and out of favor. Here are two whose days could be (should be?) numbered: Audience, I’ve mentioned before, seems too passive to describe the modern Web user, who, on his lunch break, is ranking, commenting on and retweeting content from five different sites. Lurking seems too pejorative for what is an accepted and even encouraged online behavior. To avoid being flamed for uninformed content, it can be wise to lurk.

Speaking of flamed, fire comes up a lot: Once I’m done this post, think I’ll launch Firefox, fire off a message on Hotmail and burn some downloaded music to a CD. Makes sense, I guess. Fire was man’s first great tool. And, if the doomsdayers are right, it’s only a matter of time before the robots take over and the Internet becomes man’s last great tool. How poetic.

Scalpel, Stat! Hold On a Second.

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?