Mass Comm Week @ Texas State!

The School of Journalism and Mass Communication hosted its annual
Mass Communication Week, Oct. 25-28. Woo Hoo!!!

Ever since my Issues in New Media class this summer with @Cindy Royal we have been talking about Mass Comm Week! So basically since July I have been interested in finding out what Mass Comm week was all about. I couldn't wait to get a chance to hear from some REALLY cool people working in very different jobs and industries. I attended 2 different panels. One via Ustream and the other in person. I can honestly say both experiences were extremely interesting and very helpful. I was intrigued by the whole thing! :)

I had the chance to attend (via Ustream) Social Graces: Understanding and communicationg with clients, co-workers, audiences and the media with David Wyatt & Lauren Tuttle from WyattBrand and Nick Weynard from Trademark Media. I was very interested in the things they were discussing. I was very glad to see that Lauren was a Texas State Alum. They were a very intelligent group with very different backgrounds. One thing they mentioned was the fact that in their industry you are being hired to help with the design of things...to give it a feel. They also stated that you have to be working on a goal. The goal of a project isn't to have a high # of followers on twitter (for example). All in all the group discussed the importance of working toward an ultimate goal and how important working together is. They also discussed how important it is to be on the same page as the clients in order to find out what it is they really want and to help them make those important decisions. I really enjoyed this session!

I was also able to attend one of the Panel's in person "Going Digital: Changes in the Advertising and PR Industry" with some folks from Fleishman-Hillard. I LOVED this panel! They showed a video at the beginning of the session and one of the statements included in the video was "Creativity is a drug you can't live without" this really got me thinking about digging deep and finding those creative juices within myself in order to be successful in this type of industry. They start off by talking about the representation of Story Telling and how important it is. (Another thing @cindyroyal has discussed with us before) Everyone in the group had interesting things to talk about and it was evident that each of them were passionate about what they do. I also found it interesting that each of them were from different educational backgrounds but they work so well together as a team. It seems as though they each have different perspectives and ideas on things, yet they can come together and make something work out of it!

The panelists also discussed branding your product and being able to look at yourself as storytellers. One thing they mentioned (that blew my mind) was using certain branding strategies for companies like CHEVY by putting stickers on several power cords all around the convention center for the SXSW conference. That to me was just amazing and SO simple, yet so creative! Once I heard this along with a few other things these guys did to get this brand recognized and ingrained in the brains of people at SXSW I was honestly amazed. Something else the panelists discussed were skills necessary to be successful in this industry and just a career in general. One of the panelists stated "be careful what you're good at" this thought really struck me. He talks about how it is important to have a diverse set of skills but the reality is stay good at what you're good at and run with it. That really hit home for me :) I really enjoyed this panel and I am thinking of applying for an internship with Fleishman-Hillard!

You can find info about Mass Comm Week on Twitter @txstatemcweek

Web 2.0 Summit: Media and technology behind it

Picking from the Web 2.0 Summit videos was a difficult task, but only because I thought everything was very interesting. These people are helping lead the way in how we communicate on the web and building the technology that will be used to do it.


The Media Business: New Approaches


With that thought in mind, the first video I watched was the panel discussion between Joel Hyatt of Current TV and Evan Williams of Twitter that was moderated by Ken Auletta of The New Yorker. They were figures I was familiar with being that I'm a Twitterholic and I had been looking at Current as a way to get some video news pieces I planned to work on in the future.

Anywho, the panelists provide some background on their respective companies and models they were working on to create a profitable business, which is when my favorite word came in: monetize. (FYI: note my sarcasm). Williams discussed how Twitter was considering charging commercial enterprises to tweet as a way to generate revenue. He described it as an alternative model to the ad-revenue system that has been the only real model used in old media. So with the proposed Twitter model, instead of having advertising placed among your tweets, you follow the tweets of a company voluntarily.

One issue we discussed in class was what criteria would be followed to designate a Twitter account as a commercial one. Would newspaper or network news accounts be considered commercial accounts that require payment? Once Twitter explores this business model some more, perhaps we will learn how they plan to implement it and differentiate commercial and non-commercial accounts.

Auletta referred to Twitter's plan as innovation seeking the business model versus the business model seeking innovation since business are already tweeting. I think that's a very apt description that old media finds a very scary because the possibility of failure is fairly possible versus the tried and true old ad model.

One thing is for sure, though. Twitter is becoming a mainstream player in the world of interactive web communication and the disbursement of news. While Williams contends Twitter is not on the level of Facebook or Myspace, I think they are on the verge of getting there. The adoption of Twitter by some news media outlets is proof of that. Current is one example.

Hyatt discussed their collaboration with Twitter on the presidential debates this year, which was called Hack the Debate. The digital cable news channel and Twitter joined forces on Election Day again - along with Digg - to provide viewer responses and user-generated content. Hyatt touted the fact that 40% of the content on Current is user generated and it was a way to "unleash the creativity of young people." However, he also said they were experimenting with new ways to generate revenue as well, which includes their user-generated ads.

Here's my issue with Current. In order to submit pods, which are the mini-news stories that Current airs, you have to submit release forms for legal purposes. So basically, anyone who appears in your video has to sign a release in order for it to appear on Current TV. Also, if you film on private property, you have to get a location release for that too. Speaking from experience, because I had to do this with my Choose or Lose gig, it's a giant pain in the behind because it is not something the typical journalist has to do. I understand why Current and other media corporations do it. They have to protect themselves legally, obviously. However, I don't know of ANY news stations or journalists in general that have to do this.

I love Current. They have great content. However, if they want to keep that "news network" mentality, the releases have got to go. It's one thing that hinders it from growing, I believe. Granted I couldn't get paid by posting my video on YouTube (Current pays content creators $ if their stuff makes it on air), but I don't have to get a release for the protester that was just beaten at some rally.

Paul Otellini


So enough of my rant on monetizing and release forms. The next video I watched was a talk with Paul Otellini of Intel. I had never heard of the guy, but I'm glad I know about him now.

He discussed the need for professional networking and the need for a customized web experience, which he said was close to fruition. The big point he was trying to drive home was the advances in chip technology Intel has been able to create and how they would help propel Web 2.0 to new heights. I particularly enjoyed how they used camera-like gadget to translate Chinese characters to English (in this case, the name of a restaurant) and provide a variety of links and videos to items related to the restaurant.

Otellini claims this is the future of interactivity, but when I saw this demonstration, I couldn't help but think of an iPhone app that Cindy said I should download (I did) called SnapTell. The app has image recognition technology for CDs, DVDs and book covers. When it figures out what book, CD or DVD it is, the app provides link to the Wikipedia page, amazon page and any other web pages it finds relevant.

I think the technology that Otellini described is there, but making it even more powerful and accessible from compact devices is oh so close to coming.

Bringing the two together

Each video discussed very different, but very related topics involving Web. 2.0. Some assessments:

• In order for news media to survive, it must evolve by adapting to new technology.
• However, news media must first learn about the technology, which is where the real problem lies. When someone from Intel is talking about the processors that are continuously getting smaller and faster, someone needs to break down the information for those that don't understand it. I think reality has begun to sink in for those news organizations that haven't jumped onto technology bandwagon. Simplifying the information may help get these media organization over the fear of the new.
  
• The tech community should continue seize this opportunity. Granted there will always be some entities resistant to change, but that's why they will die out and innovators won't. They might fail at one thing (Twitter could with their proposed revenue model), but eventually find a formula for success.

Innovation and experimentation is where it's at. You can't be afraid to fail, because you will. Eventually, though, a solution can be found.

He's Our Einstein

Okay, before I really expound upon the articles, ya have to understand: V. Bush serves to technical communication the role of Orson Wells to film. That is if Orson Wells had been born 30 years before the first film and suggested you use a flip book of photographs to perform his cinematic visions. Bush envisions hypertext, tags, electronic shopping, and digital scholarship from Victorian Web to Perseus. If you work in computers and rhetoric, you owe him a debt akin to what English literature owes Chaucer and Milton, combined.

From Bush:

Wholly new forms of encyclopedias will appear, ready-made with a mesh of associative trails running through them, ready to be dropped into the memex and there amplified. The lawyer has at his touch the associated opinions and decisions of his whole experience, and of the experience of friends and authorities.

Replace memex with net and you have the most brazen prediction of a wiki pre-1994.

Englebart focuses on another revelation by Bush, the concept of what we now call tags, electronic codes that identify associated groups of discrete bits of knowledge. Englebart seems to conceptualize the collaborative uses of Bush from memex to database. He offers less speculation than Bush because he has better technology, but he also seems to settle for human to computer production with limited sharing capabilities (advanced for the time, but limited by Bush's view). There's a slight failure to embrace the human collaborative and sharing available in the furthest extent of Bush's ideas. However, he does comment upon associative 'linking' that will eventual suggest how we shape the interactive method of the early web. I think Englebart did wonders in moving Bush's theory to a working concept, even if his practical answers (limited by the card technology of his time) somewhat slowed the full promise of Bush's memex goal. However, he makes up for this by almost exactly predicting a type of HTML, though his HTML concept is too visible to the average user. The beauty of HTML is that Joe wouldn't have been puzzled after two minutes surfing the web revealed via clandestine code.

While I have fond hopes for many types of technology, I largely reject technological determinism, have for many years. So it likely isn't a huge surprise that I have issues with McLuhan. Consider this statement:

Consequently, he had nothing to report. Had his methods been employed in 1500 AD to discover the effects of the printed book in the lives of children or adults, he could have found out nothing of the changes in human and social psychology resulting from typography. Print created individualism and nationalism in the sixteenth century. Program and "content" analysis offer no clues to the magic of these media or to their subliminal charge.

Now, I believe print drastically affected global culture, but Kuhn, Hobbes, Kant, Locke, Hume, Rousseau, and a hundred others helped create many of the systems McLuhan attributes simply to print. They would have done so as orators, like Cicero and Plato before them, without it.

Form is important to understand, but McLuhan's argument of content having no place in understanding the affect of a form in the arena of social sciences lacks logical historical awareness, and uses anecdote in its place. The irony of McLuhan's strong Classical education in this fact does amuse me, however.

It is also important to note that people have always possessed some level of speciality(Farmers, Smiths, Tanners, and other Anglican surnames show this); even the invoked warrior class is a speciality, as was the ruling orator of classical times. Some hold more prestige than others, but specialization alone does not make one a slave.

I enjoyed Williams spelling out the history of invention with few value judgments. Saving the argument for later, after the facts are on the table, always promotes a more convincing case to me. I also tend to see social and technological evolution in resource and demand terms. Technology generally solves a problem, and the use of that technology might enhance the positive and/or negative aspects of any communal grouping. The society must own the purpose of the technology, actively and with great awareness.

Coming to terms with the fact that, yes, I am falling for new media

Hi everyone. I'm Maira Garcia. I graduated from Texas State this past December with a BA in print journalism and political science. Currently, I am the editor in chief of The University Star, which explains why I post stuff at 3 a.m. I also work with MTV's Choose or Lose campaign creating multimedia on youth and the 2008 elections for think.mtv.com, which is very exciting. Check out my Think profile and see my latest video. It just got featured on the front page.

Anyway, I felt I didn't have enough real-world experience to jump into a career after graduation, so I decided graduate school would be a good thing to pursue because I am interested in research, learning more about mass communication and honing my skills overall so I can be competitive in the job market. Considering all these things, I realized how important it is for mass communicators to understand new media, especially those in the print field. Until recently, I thought print journalism was the avenue I wanted to pursue, but I know the industry is changing and not know what new media and how to use it could hurt my chances of being a successful journalist.

So finally, my definition of new media is simply written media as we know it, digitized and "glammed up" for faster processing and reception. I felt Dennis Baron's examination of writing techonology explained it best. Writing techonologies and attitudes toward them change over time, with each new techonology becoming more acceptable and desired than the previous. The pencil is to the telegraph as the telephone is to the television and the television to the computer. We are trying to accomplish the same purpose with each technology, receiving information. It's just one does it faster and perhaps better than the one before it.

What's most fascinating about new media to me is, as Manovich states, is the variability. Variability also indicates it can be customized to a person's taste, which is what Web 2.0 has afforded us. Not only are we able to receive information when we want it, but how we want it as well.