Social Media 1.01 according to JHTaylor
May 10th, 2009 by Julia TaylorA very quick discovery walk through of social media for everyone who looks at this phenomenon with amazement and blurry vision!
MySpace.com This is the space of teens, music and hormones. There are great sites with garage band music and playlists, photography and lots of little hourly and minutely connections. Sometime in the future, someone will figure out how to nuke myspace accounts upon request similar to yet to be developed less painful approaches to tattoo removal. It’s worthwhile joining just to know what your kids are up to.
Facebook.com The original college student only site is now owned by the Boomers. The largest group of new facebookers are 45 and over. Facebook created the verb of friending. Think about going to your local Cheers bar or coffee shop. You see people you know and catch up and they introduce you to their friends. You find people you knew in high school. Its is a virtual alumni party and calendar for birthdays, events and causes. It is a contained universe in some ways since you must agree to who is your friend. More arts groups, causes, non-profits, bars and other commercial sites are showing up and the lists of friends can be of great value in forwarding information and asking for support for events and efforts.
Twitter.com Tweeting is actually micro-blogging in 140 characters or less. It is the haiku of blogs. Twitter is going into a bar or coffee shop out of town full of friendly strangers. You find people you know, people you would like to know and others that pass by in a river of tweets. Twitter’s real power is the ability to connect people on issues, ideas and causes real-time. People use hashmarks to denote a trend, issue or idea like #GMCMKE or #Brewers and using a search function you can quickly find those who are also interested. Direct Messages or DMs keep messages private. Locally, twitter delivered people, calls and information on key issues like transit, water and public art. Authenticity counts so there needs to be personality behind the tweeter. Blasting out urls or headlines doesn’t work well. Anyone can follow you and so everything you tweet out there is visible to friend and foe.
Twitter is truly a river of conversation and I like to narrow the channel using apps like Tweetdeck where I can use columns to follow groups of key people, issues and topics. It sorts it all out. You can use apps that can connect all your sites–so one message on Facebook or twitter shows up on the other and tracks messages from both.
You can also stay up through phone apps. The iPhone particularly makes it easy to track all of the social media venues.
Friends ask me why people would be interested in daily events in someone’s life on twitter and I think it helps to open the door on who we are and our personality. People also want to know what is going on and what we think about issues and ideas so I think tweeting can say more about who we are and why we think and do what we do.
I may be tweeting about an issue like transit or water or the UN Global Cities Compact and the next tweet will be my daily grumble about getting on the treadmill. People tweet back and Retweet –the ultimate help and compliment. This sends my message onto their followers. The multiplier effect of RT (retweeting) is the power and strength of Twitter–it is how the word is spread.
I’ve met an amazing group of people on twitter. Getting together is called a “tweet-up” and I’ve had a chance to tweetup over coffee with folks I’ve met on twitter. New friends and new energy for a better Milwaukee–what could be better.
My Wishes for Twitter in 2009 (MKE, too)
January 4th, 2009 by Julia TaylorThe entire Wisconsin Congressional delegation joins Twitter. You can make this happen http://cli.gs/XYDjh3
The elected officials and the business community uses Twitter and social media for policy input
Governor Doyle includes the RTA recommendations in the state budget and we pass the legislation. (I get shivers just writing it!)
Sweet Water and Milwaukee becomes synonymous.
Milwaukee establishes a serious Venture Fund for social media
Social media changes the Arts, putting people in seats, direct funding from Tweeters and new ideas into production.
Milwaukee is proud of being MKE
Tweeters discover MKE
The Brewers win the World Series
The Bucks win the finals in the play offs.
Life is good.
How Twitter Changed the World (& MKE) in 2008
January 4th, 2009 by Julia Taylor
- POLITICS For the first time, social media played a key role in a major election shake-up. This is a historic cultural shift comparable to the role of television influencing the outcome of the Kennedy and Nixon debates and ultimately the election. The engagement of young voters will change the way public policy and politics play out for many years to come.
- TRANSIT We moved the ball forward on transit in MKE with the RTA report to Governor Doyle and the Legislature and real possibility of dedicated funding in the Governor’s budget to be released in February. We couldn’t have done it without the social media/political impact of Twitter including Launch Milwaukee and Johnny, we do hear the train a coming .
- Discovering TWITTER and all my peeps!
Me on Twitter!
- TWEET MOMENTS Working with everyone from Spreenkler and UrbanMilwaukee.com. Thanks to Steve Glynn and Jeramey Jannine and Dave Reid. The fun of the tweeting community moment for me was a little tweetup on transit at my house and TeeCycle Tim stopping in with my free T-Shirt I won on Twitter. The power of Twitter was the all the tweets who called, showed up and debated the transit issues with elected officials and each other.
- WATER, water everywhere..We formed a Water Council to grow the region as the hub for freshwater sciences. Talent is what will get us there and Twitter can make this cluster a wellspring for talent (I know, I know, I just can’t help myself–the puns just flow!)
- THE ARTS Connecting social media with the arts and culture community. Our recent report showed the fragile balancing act of our cultural assets trying to reach new audiences with less and less marketing resources. The 2009 February Summit can help figure out a better dynamic connect to our everyday livest than putting up electronic calendars and facebook pages (though it is a start).
- LINK UPS Starting this blog to connect the business community leadership with the social media network. I’m still figuring it out as I go but new ideas come every day.
- CHINA Learning how Twitter, the Flip and iphone pics can take a once in a lifetime adventure and share it easily with the world. My trip to China with the Bucks was amazing and my first posts were from China. The twitter feed made it real time. I’m actually standing in the photo–those guys are just REALLY tall (and nice).
Jr. Bridgeman, Kareem, Bob Lanier and me!
- BE THE FIRST TO KNOW–this was a surprise Twitter plus for me. In my job, sometimes I get a heads-up call on key community changes and sometimes I learn about the issue when the press calls for comment. I hate not being prepped and have learned to buy some time to make the contact calls and do the research and then get back with my quote of the day. The reporter would prefer a detailed and educated comment than a dithering one so it works for everyone. I’m amazed at how fast news items hits twitter. So twitter helps me with fast info real time when I need it most!
- WHO, WHAT, WHEN WHERE and WHY Editorial and information commentary by tweets–the argument about the role of social media and blogging in the world of journalism went away a long time ago based on consumer choice. I will always love my newspaper and I’ve found very informed blogs and tweets as another key component of my daily information feed. I love connecting all the above to work in a new way and meeting a whole new circle of friends that just continues to grow. Despite all the economic troubles, our hope comes from the ability to form these new networks and find the common concerns, passion, ideas and actions to create the change.
Arts and Social Media
November 24th, 2008 by Julia TaylorAt the last GMC meeting we rolled out an incredibly detailed roadmap of the state of key cultural assets in the region including performing arts groups, parks, museums–even sports venues. Everything that makes Mke buzz. You can check the full report out at http://www.gmconline.org . The Business Journal wrote a very comprehensive story. The Journal Sentinel ran a great editorial and one that was not too happy with our comments. And then we have video clips on the website too. Check out Jill Morin’s great presentation and the panel’s responses. Chris Abele provided an incredibly introspective look at the arts in today’s spiraling economy. Thanks to the Cultural Alliance for creating the report with the research by the Donor’s Forum, the Public Policy Forum and UW-M CUIR.
We will have a Creative Summit in early February to come up with a plan for the future to preserve and grow a sustainable and healthy creative community, which provides more than just performances and exhibits. This creative community is the power for our corporate community and changes the cycle of brain drain to regional brain circulation of talent and creativity.
I personally think the ability to connect social media to our local arts community is key but it takes a different mindset. The secret is authenticity and connecting the brand and work of the arts community to online just in time interaction. Sounds easy but it isn’t. It can’t be the same messages and if this really works, it will start to evolve cultural offerings as well.
How do you do it? Well, there are now books even on the subject (which worries me a bit). Here’s one interesting social media note—a twitter guide for non-profits on how to use twitter to raise funds—the first I’ve seen so far
http://www.corporatedollar.org/twitter-jump-start-the-complete-guide-for-small-non-profits/
The NYT had a great magazine section this Sunday on technology and how we watch things. (screens, in other words) http://www.nytimes.com/pages/magazine/index.html . So for those like me who are not very film literate there is an amazing film mashup site that basically pulls up all film genealogy from one original film —just type in key words like “Dirty Harry” and voila! It’s http://www.dipity.com/mashups/timetube or timetube. The article is Becoming Screen Literate, if you get a chance to read the magazine, it is amazing especially the social media marketing piece by Lars Bastholm on how to sell and redesign overalls to an entirely new market using ShotCodes in the Facebook Overalls section Think how this could be applied to the cultural community in different ways of looking at arts similar to a different way of seeing the utilitarian farm uniform. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/23/magazine/23roundtable-t.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&ref=magazine
I love this kind of thinking about our world. I think I like the actual concept and creative process more than watching the end product but that’s my problem. For those who do like watching the end product and have video enabled phones (like an iPhone) there is another new fun product that enables you to film projection to a new level with a device that fits in the pocket or purse—the Pico Projector. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/05/technology/personaltech/05pogue.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin I know what I want for Christmas! Ok, this my little techie/ arts/ social media blast for the day. Just wanted to share with these thoughts in these troubled times.
Julia