Robert Paterson's Weblog

Travel Chaos - Twitter - Lessons for us all

Millions of travellers have been stuck this holiday season. The question is what can you as a traveler and what can you as a supplier do about this kind of event.?

The lesson taken from this Christmas is surely larger than travel but also applies to any bad event – such as Skype’s system failure. You can imagine what your equivalent might be in your organization.

I can see that part of the answer is to be found in social media. Here is how the NYT ran their version of the story today:

While the airlines’ reservation lines required hours of waiting — if people could get through at all — savvy travelers were able to book new reservations, get flight information and track lost luggage. And they could complain, too.

Since Monday, nine Delta Air Linesagents with special Twitter training have been rotating shifts to help travelers wired enough to know how to “dm,” or send a direct message. Many other airlines are doing the same as a way to help travelers cut through the confusion of a storm that has grounded thousands of flights this week.

But not all travelers, of course. People who could not send a Twitter message if their life depended on it found themselves with that familiar feeling that often comes with air travel — being left out of yet another inside track to get the best information.

For those in the digital fast lane, however, the online help was a godsend.

Danielle Heming spent five hours Wednesday waiting for a flight from Fort Myers, Fla., back home to New York. Finally, it was canceled.

Facing overwhelmed JetBlue ticketing agents, busy signals on the phone and the possibility that she might not get a seat until New Year’s Day, she remembered that a friend had rebooked her flight almost immediately by sending a Twitter message to the airline.

She got out her iPhone, did a few searches and sent a few messages. Within an hour, she had a seat on another airline and a refund from JetBlue.

“It was a much, much better way to deal with this situation,” said Ms. Heming, 30, a student at New York University. “It was just the perfect example of this crazy, fast-forward techno world.”

Although airlines reported a doubling or tripling of Twitter traffic during the latest storm, the number of travelers who use Twitter is still small. Only about 8 percent of people who go online use Twitter, said Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet and American Life Project, a nonprofit organization that studies the social impact of the Internet.

“This is still the domain of elite activist customers,” Mr. Rainie said.

Of course, an agent with a Twitter account cannot magically make a seat appear. More often than not, the agent’s role is to listen to people complain.

I recently posted about Trust and how important it is. Being silent is THE worst position. Even when you cannot offer a fix, offering an ear and the truth helps. Skype kept a running commentary about their problem and now that they have fixed it have shared the post mortem on their blog. Please look at the comments on the Skype Blog - a lesson for us all!

I had been critical of Air Canada until this Christmas - but even they have upped their efforts on Twitter to work with clients and to offer sympathy when they could not help.

They still do promotion as you can see but look at the other tweets – Air Canada are starting to get how this can help their Trust levels.

Now Twitter is still an elite tool for the elite. But all new things start this way. I am thinking of all those who were in the information dark looking over their shoulder at those who were in contact and can see that it will not take long for Twitter and Social media to become the normal for how we find our way around problems. Here is a brief summary of my own travel hell. Where I reach out on Twitter and my friends help me.

This illustrates for me the next phase of using social media to navigate crisis. Right now an airline or your organization can use social media to communicate from your own perspective. But what if you could harness, as I did, the collective wisdom of the network?

In my case I could not be sure of what the roads were like in the last 4 hours of a 13 hour trip. I asked my pals for their opinion and in minutes got enough “TRUSTED” advice to make the call to stop. My pals may have saved my life. So what if an airline could use its followers to help each other look at local weather – hotel rooms – alternative routes etc – even put each other up? What would it take to have a real community of customers? For if you did – they could do this.

Again this demands a new relationship with your customer. A customer is no longer a person out there but a node in here.  If you can build up trust with an inner group, you can partner with this group in all sorts of ways.

• Marketing
• Crisis Management
• Problem Solving

Let’s play with this in later posts.

 

Will education follow the same path as media? I think so!

 

After many years of thinking and talking, here Sir Ken I think nails the problem and gets the direction for the right new path correct. Helped a lot by the guys at RSA.

So what can we do with this insight?

My experience in public radio and TV - which also is at a crossroads from one culture to another - is that we must not under estimate the power of the entrenched culture. Most people inside pub radio/TV and in education are so invested in the old that they can only fight an alternative.  This is not because they are bad or stupid - it is because they are human and their identity is the system as it is. So to change it means that they have no place. So they cannot go to the new. 

If you long for a better education system - you are also worried about how to breakthrough all these barriers. You don't know how to change the system. I think that we can look at what is happening in media and find a way. 

So where is the change happening in media that we might use to help us in education. As I write them I can see how these factors apply to education - can't you?

• The long term effects of the poor economy is pressing the system
  • The school system is under huge funding pressure too
  • In higher ed - the degree also costs too much now and drives loans that canot be repaid
  • Kids will seek out new ways - they have to
  • In the next 10 years the pressure to find a new way for the money will become unbearable - thus creating the same kind of context for change that we see in media

• There are organizations like Craigslist that are killing the economics of the old and forcing economic pressure - the old way leads to economic starvation and sets a context for change
  • There are new online schools such as the Khan Academy that offer kids a wonderful alternative to school
  • Great Schools like MIT have put a lot of superlative content online
  • Kids are voting with their feet - better content will be available online for next to free as with Craigslist and personals that will ad to the economic pressure

• The web has a bunch of new tools such as Twitter, YouTube, Netflix, iTunes, Apple TV etc that are empowering new sources and new ways of finding, producing and using content
  • Same for Ed - iTunes, YouTube are already there
  • Why take Math with Miss Jones when you can get the world's best math teachers on your time at your pace?
  • Parents will buy into this too

• There are entirely new organizations - Huffington Post, Daily Beast, Politico - Greenfield that go through no transition but start with the new model - they are forcing competitive pressure
• There are a few old leaders who get it and have enough critical mass inside to go for it now - The Guardian in the UK and NPR - they are forcing change on their system
  • Athabaska and Phoenix come to mind in higher ed - they are moving to the mainstream
  • Soon there will be Grade Schools that have the same features

• There are  few local small organizations that have the leadership to go for it too and are making enough progress to show the rest - KETC is the one I know the best.

So what to do?

Don't think about changing the whole system!!!!! It's too big and powerful.

Instead take advantage of these powerful forces.

If you are a learner - Explore the new world of resources - do not feel trapped in school as it is or feel that you have to wait - enough change is here for you to take full advantage now

If you are a parent - see the whole picture for you child - help line them up into that is now available that is more fitted to them and at a cost you can all afford. Vote with your feet.

If you are a school board - Learn how to make the shift from the old to the new - Do a KETC - pick a school with the right leadership and try the new in ONE place - learn from this - use this test bed to expose others to the new from their peers.

If you are a teacher - Learn how to be the new - participate in the new world - be a citizen teacher - offer content or coaching - learn how to be an entrepreneurial teacher who can hang up their shingle on the web or locally. Be the math coach or the history coach in your place or globally!

If you are a social entrepreneur - Build the new a place together so that you are the convener of the a place where kids can be together and yet be part of the a larger universe of resources that fits them! 

It's coming folks - you can win now if you play now.

Good Listening vs Talking well

This Fast Company article from 1995 describes how a native American wisdom council gets taken into the corporate world. Interesting stuff. I read it with some anxiety as I fear the real wisdom behind the practice could easily be lost by corporations co-opting the ritual.

So the best bit for me were the principles underlying the process, described at the end. I'll highlight a couple of them. The first is:

Good decisions begin with listening. The Western give-and-take meeting emphasizes talking rather than listening. Businesspeople come into a meeting prepared to give their presentations -- not to listen to the contributions of others. And the debate format encourages people to begin formulating their responses while the other side is speaking, rather than listening and reserving judgment. The first element of a council ceremony, on the other hand, is careful listening.

When I've worked with "no interruption" rules, I'm often amazed at the difference this simple intervention makes. Something special can happen about the way people give attention - a quality that I think is evoked, not taught by "active listening" courses. By stopping interruption, I think we help participants to develop the capacity to suspend judgement and enquire more deeply.

The second principle I wanted to pick up is this:

A slower process yields better decisions. Rather than looking for the fastest answer to a pressing problem, the council process accepts the need for careful, in-depth reflection. With the understanding that implementation is faster, easier, and more successful if it comes after all implications of an issue have been thrashed out, the process doesn't address the question of action until the latter stages of the discussion. "By the time you get around to talking about action," notes Eric Vogt, "the whole council has had a chance to speak and feels engaged in the results."

I've written a lot in the past about the danger of "action theatre" and about the power games that get played out about demanding action. If we force action on a group we risk shallow commitment, passive aggression and end up with little real engagement. Taking time to reflect offers the chance of something more substantial. Chris Corrigan calls it "wise action" which is a succinct way of putting it.

via johnniemoore.com

Many of the comments on KETC"s site on Immigration have made the point that we should, have less conversation and have more action items. "Tell us what to do" seems to be the main thrust.

But isn't the "Do" the problem? If I come from one POV and you another then if I tell you what to do - you will tell be to take a hike. No one is listening. We all seem so captured by what we want to say that we cannot hear what some one else is talking.

How can we make progress if we cannot listen?

Posted via email from Rob's posterous

Boingo - The Power of Strong Ties

What would it be like if your business had a sales, marketing and support force that was 1.3 million strong that you did not have to pay for? What if you could source this leverage with a tiny central force? Sounds impossible? Do you have any idea of how this could work?

Now that everyone is using Social Media – what I am seeing mainly are people who using the new tool in the old way – trying to shout above the noise – “Look at ME!” “Aren’t I cool!” “Aren’t we good!”. I am seeing a Dilbert approach – “Let’s have a Facebook site” “Let’s get on Twitter”.

Most do what most do when a new technology arrives – they apply it in the old way and so get nothing in response.

So what then is the power and leverage that you can harness by using social media well?

Boingo are on their way to finding out how to do this. Oh yes and I am one of the people that are part of this and oh yes I am not being paid and nor do I in any way work for them. I am living the theory.

So how might this work and so how might you do this too?

Boingo have a class of people that are deeply committed to the enterprise that Baochi calls her “Super fans”. They and why they are connected to Boingo and each other is the core of the leverage potential. We will meet 4 of them in this post who agreed enthusiastically to be interviewed by me. As you will see, these Super Fans are attracted first of all to Boingo by the obvious:

• The service – easy one stop access to Wifi in Airports and Hotels – is now no longer a nice to have for travellers but an essential
• The support for the service is outstanding – got a problem – you get instant personal help

But a great product is not enough. Nor is good service. What is the differentiator for Boingo is the human nature of the relationship that Boingo has with its customers. Most organizations do not allow their people to be human. Service people are often ciphers working from a script. Boingo have set up an environment where their key point of contact is a real person who is allowed to be herself.

She has a name and a face and we are all in awe and a bit in love with her. We all feel her presence watching over us. It is way more than getting her help when we can’t sign on. She watches out for us. Have a problem – A quick tweet. In minutes she is there. She is like the guy who runs the old corner store who holds your keys when you go away, keeps an eye on your kids in the street, helps you find a new roommate.

As Nuno Montegro, a customer in Portugal says – It is not what she says but how she says things that is the difference.

Nuno is like me, a customer who actively refers others to the service.

Most of Social media is all about Weak Ties – They are very useful but Weak Ties don’t get people to do much – or risk much – or commit much – that is why they are Weak – they are easy.

If you want to do something – Civil Rights in the US – you need Strong Ties. (Nice new piece by Malcolm Gladwell that explores Weak and Strong Ties in depth)

The key to attracting Strong Ties is being human. It is NOT PIMPING your product. It is instead to show that you really do care about ME. It is instead to show that you can indeed be trusted.

How do you show this? Nuno makes the point that every service and product fails at times. The key is to offer the best possible response to the inevitability of a problem. The best possible response is to know from experience that if there is a problem, you can reach a real person quickly and that they will go the distance to help you get it fixed. “I felt as if I was the only customer in the entire world when she was helping me” Bruno told me. I had the same experience.

Attracting Strong Ties is all about “Giving”.

Aaron Strout is the CMO at social media agency, Powered Inc. and is also Super Fan. “Boingo is proactive and they don’t expect a direct return – they are not selling all day – so if they want an inch, I go the mile back. It’s Karmic! I know if I have a problem that they will look after me. If people are good and do good, then good comes back. Not necessarily directly but good gets attracted back. We talk about a wide range of things that affect me not just the product – which is great too – have to have that – they listen.”

What Aaron is talking about here is a very old model for an economy that was the centre of all tribal economies – the Gift Economy. In the Gift Economy, the Big Guy is not the man who has the most stuff but the person who gives the most.

This is the power in networks – this is how Open Source Works too.

Cliff Bremmer is a programmer who works for a company called Carley Corporation that bids on government contracts to develop instructional CD base/computer based training for the US military.  ”In my spare time I help companies understand and navigate the social media spectrum in a professional yet interactive way.  The company I’m currently helping is the one my father works for called the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel“.

The Gift?

Not only is he a fan but in interacting with Boingo he has learned a lot about how to use SM media well. “If there is anything I’m proud of lately it’s that I helped the Pegasus Hotel promote their brand with the help and support of @Boingo and other companies to become one of the most popular brands in Jamaica.” Boingo is  not only helping him with his travel and Wifi but is talking with him and helping him help his dad in his business with advice and Tweet Up prizes such as free access and bag tags. The Gift in action!

He can see the flaws of how most use SM – “They are stuck in self promotion versus communication. I can see through it all – it’s all about them.”

In the Gift Economy that drives Trust and so Strong Ties, the starting point is YOU. In the non network economy the starting point is ME. No small difference!

Shelby Rogers is a flight attendant, a serving soldier (in the active reserve) and the wife of a serving soldier. Travel is her life. When she is not working, she travels. Access to Wifi has made her travel better – “I now know more than the Gate Agent does about my flights!” and it has taken away much of the loneliness that travel brings with it. Who has not been alone eating room service and watching TV in our room? “I can stay in touch with my husband on Skype and every city seems to have a friend in it.”

For Shelby, Boingo is a service that truly meets her needs. But it is how Boingo is connected to her that has transformed a pleased customer into a Super fan.

How often has your service provider taken you out to dinner? “We have even had dinner recently. I am now a walking billboard for Boingo with winking bag tags!”

So what does this mean? What are the lesson for both Boingo and for you?

• Baochi is no accident – the Boingo senior leadership have created the role and given it the space to enable someone who is naturally humane to be herself inside it. This new way of using Strong Ties to be the centre of a network is all about culture. In most cases senior leadership is too scared to let go. But if you do let go and create this safe place then the power of the network effect can be yours
• A really powerful network has to have an inner core bound by Strong Ties. This is where the leverage is. One staff person like Baochi can without too much trouble have close ties with 34 people. That gives her an outer network of 1.3 million. If she can handle the Dunbar limit of 144 that creates an opportunity of 400 million! You can see that with the right person, you can have a vast reach – provided you realize that your goal is not to have thousands of relationships but a few Strong Ones
• The secret is the math of social leverage. Many of you know about the “Dunbar Number”. Some of you know about “Magic numbers – the hierarchy of trust in human groups. If you don’t here is a quick primer.

So what now?

I think that the next stage would be this:

• At the moment all the Super Fans have a strong relationship with Baochi – I think that the best next step might be to find a way to connect them to each other
• At the  moment most of the dialogue is still about the obvious and excellent service that Boingo provides – I think that some of the work that the Super Fans could do might be to deepen the conversation – Shelby touched on this in her interview with me – What is it that being easily connected while travelling does? In her case it helped her deal with isolation and loneliness – it helped her do her job better – it kept her in touch with her husband – these are deep issues that I think connect all of us who travel a lot

As I think about networks, I think about the laws of physics. All systems have order and attractors. Some force is needed to keep systems coherent.

Think of the Sun in our own local system. It has mass that provides a gravity that holds all the planets and asteroids and stuff in a pattern. It has energy that creates life in the system. I think that any healthy human social system has to have gravity and light.

At the very centre is the “Right Space” a Trusted Space created by the leadership. In this Space, the Right Person – Right being a person who as part of her natural persona truly cares about others. Connected to her is the fuel and the mass that makes up the Sun – the Super Fans. The closer they are to the centre and the closer they are to each other – the more mass and the more energy. The more mass and energy, the larger and more healthy the network of Weak Ties that form up around the Sun.

What gets in the way is our fear about losing control.

At Disney the surface of the Brand Icon never changes but inside the mask is a person who changes all the time and so is never allowed to speak.

But in the new world we have to take off the costume and let the person inside have conversations with the public – HARD to do.

via fastforwardblog.com

Posted via email from Rob's posterous

The Twitter Guide for the Social Revolution

What a week it has been for Twitter!

News of  the Hudson River Crash was broken first on Twitter by Laura Conaway who works not for a mainstream news organization but for Planet Money, an economic web magazine on the NPR's web. How and why did Laura scoop the street? She is one of the most plugged in news folks who use Twitter. Twitter was the core feed that built the story.

Today millions of Torontonians have been without power in one of the coldest days of decades. How are people finding out what is going on and what to do with no power or heat? Twitter #darkto is the feed.

In the new year, the Sun, THE mass media mainstream paper in the UK. The paper that invented the Page 3 girl. The Sun is going to make Twitter a major channel! (Freshnetworks Blog)

Whilst many people may be using Twitter, it only becomes really useful as a social media tool when it starts to meet mass adoption. Just like the first fax machine, or the first use of email, Twitter and other social media tools become more useful and more rewarding the more people that use them. They will only really come into their own when they stop being niche and start being popular. To date, I don’t think that Twitter has been ‘popular’ in this, and the common, meaning of the word. It has been something that a large group of people have used and got benefit from, but this group has to some extent been restricted or limited - people who share certain interests or common characteristics of some kind.

The fact that the Sun is now reporting about Twitter suggests that it is starting to gain the kind of mass, or popular, influence that will see it really come of age.

So to help Twitter come of age - to help those who know help others to feel comfortable about using it - we at fast Forward Blog offer you our first Guide for the Social Revolution - The Fast Forward Blog Guide to Twitter.

I have gone back over nearly three years of posting by the FF Blog team and I have combed the 'sphere for what I think are the best sources, stories and tools. My brilliant publisher Hylton has created a new format - a kind of Blog Book - a nested/hyperlinked/aggregated set of articles that pulls it all together.

Having done all of this, it helps to spend days and days doing nothing else but thinking about one thing - I have come to a few conclusions:

• Twitter's simplicity and ease of use added to the substantial return it offers is a reason why it may finally be the Trojan Horse that breaches the walls of the traditional institution - already if you claim to be a news organization and you don't use Twitter well - you are really losing out. It infects. It is truly viral.

• That the best way to use it is also within the reach of all of us - you don't have to be a Scoble with 48,000 followers to have influence or to find stuff - what you need is to have between 30-100 people in your core group who care for you and you care for them. This core group is enough to open up the full power of the total 'sphere - This is not just my opinion - I include the science

• Twitter is not only good for you because it is useful. It is good for you because it can offer you the endorphin high of grooming - laughter, friendship and yes love are are the heart of its appeal and impact. Nothing helps our health and stress like this - and this is the time for getting and giving strokes. Just as language itself enabled early humans to reduce the time and expand the space needed for grooming (45% for apes and 25% for us), so Twitter may enable us to groom across time and space.

So check it out - Have fun

More twitter Feeds for the DNC

Andy Carvin is running a wiki on Twitter "Correspondents" Here is the current list for the DNC

DNC, Denver

http://twitter.com/ashoupster

http://twitter.com/gallafent - Alex Gallafent, reporter, PRI's The World

http://twitter.com/totn

http://twitter.com/MMStewart

http://twitter.com/JustinKaufman

http://twitter.com/myrnatheminx -

http://twitter.com/laura_pbs - Laura Hertzfeld, PBS Vote 2008 producer

http://twitter.com/sgleason - Susan Gleason, media & outreach, YES! Magazine

http://twitter.com/pbsvote2008

http://twitter.com/DNCjournalists Poynter Institute project to aggregate journalists twittering each convention. e-mail Steve Myers, smyers at poynter.org, if you want to join and have your tweets re-broadcast through this feed. Or send Twitter IDs of journalists you know will be Twittering. Steve will be twittering too: http://twitter.com/myersnews

http://twitter.com/Chuckumentary

http://twitter.com/WBEZpolitics - WBEZ Chicago Public Radio convention coverage

http://twitter.com/jasonbarnett: Executive Director of The UpTake

www.twitter.com/noahkunin: Senior Political Correspondent from The UpTake

http://www.twitter.com/theuptake: Citizen journalism media organization out of MN and CO

http://www.twitter.com/silbatron -- Michael Silberman, EchoDitto, and 1Sky campaign

http://www.twitter.com/AskYourLawmaker -- Ari Mukherjee, AskYourLawmaker.org

http://www.twitter.com/CNCNews -- Ari Mukherjee, Capitol News Connection

http://www.twitter.com/AriMukherjee -- Ari Mukherjee, Multimedia Manager, Pundit Productions

 

http://twitter.com/creepysleepy - Dan Patterson, UN Correspondent, Journalist

Monitter - Searching the corners of the Twitterverse

Jon Husband has pointed me the way of monitter: a tool that gives you 3 search/feed panes that enables you to search the full Twittervse. I have set up Denver, NPR and Obama and it is as if I am in Denver.

Again if Twitter can hold it together - these kind of tools are going to be very valuable not just to us regular folks but to those in news who want to use the power of the Twitterverse to cover any breaking story

Puts a whole new twist on Citizen Journalist

The Future of Twitter - The Effect of TweetDeck

This week in Denver will be a new test for Twitter - will Twitter stand up to the pressure of all the Twitterers in Denver?

Many public radio and TV stations are attending - even the NewsHour is intending to use Twitter as an adjunct to their traditional coverage. Here is a small fraction of who will be there with Twitter

Laura Hertzfeld, Vote 2008 producer: http://twitter.com/Laura_PBS
PBS Vote 2008: http://twitter.com/pbsvote2008
NewsHour: http://twitter.com/NewsHour
Tavis Smiley:  http://twitter.com/tavissmiley

Let's assume that Twitter holds up - how will we make sense of all the noise?

Here is my post on my hope - TweetDeck

If Twitter gets more stable? If Twitter is proved to offer more context for events? If Media widely adopt Twitter, as many businesses are now? If more people use Twitter?

Then the key issue will become NOISE!!!!

So back to the core issue I think for the web. If content is infinite - what will be scarce is not content but "Meaning". Only aggregation, and parsing can re-offer meaning.

ImaginehowharditwouldbetounderstandwhatIamwriting: if I did not break the words up and use punctuation and paragraphs?

1,000 plus feeds into your Twitter stream with no parsing would be just noise that only the Scobles of the world could make sense of.

TweetDeck is helping Parse my Twitter world into groups. I can also use the search function to explore issues, news, people and events.

TweetDeck is a meaning maker - this is surely where the value of all social media will lie?

It enables me to set up the parsing process to make meaning on my terms

Twitter - Small Beginings - Future of Public TV/Twitter

One of the real pioneers of the new media is not in Radio or TV but serves on the force of the LAFD. Brian Humphrey who is one of the blogging team on the LAFD's blog. The LAFD have found that Twitter and Google maps are very helpful - they bring the community INTO the LAFD. Here are a few words of good advice from Brian for all of us who care about public TV and Radio:

While no funds have been earmarked for these projects, and Humphrey and Myers spend time on and off the clock working on them, the LAFD has more than 80 Web 2.0 projects in the pipeline that it is testing.

Humphrey advises other government agencies testing the waters of Web 2.0 not to fall into a common misconception about the technology: That it will allow an organization's voice to be heard louder, more clearly and over a greater distance.

Instead, "having this Web 2.0 presence ... allows us to listen more clearly and more accurately over a greater area," he said. "It is all about getting much more feedback [from the public]."

But, the department's journey to the Web has not been without its challenges. As Humphrey, a 22-year veteran of the department who has a propeller placed under his fire helmet in his office likes to note, "I don't have a problem running into a burning building ... but stepping out into the Internet was very intimidating."

Now to the main point of this post - how things begin: Here is an interesting insight spotted by Brian into how small TV was at the outset and how covering a disaster was part of it being taken seriously.

Only 350 TV sets in LA in 1947. The geeks of the time?

Lesson for us all? I wonder if in 50 years people will talk of KPBS and Twitter in the same way?

    The City Then and Now ___________________________     By Cecilia Rasmussen
    Deadly Blast a Proving Ground for Live TV

Since the film industry moved west shortly after the turn of the     century, Los Angeles has been on the cutting edge of what has come to be called the information age. And, though it is seldom recalled, the first convergence of live television and disaster--a staple of today's TV news--occurred in response to the city's most deadly industrial accident.  

Television made its American debut at the 1939 World's Fair in New York. Within a year, Paramount had dispatched the brilliant Klaus Landsburg to build an experimental TV station--W6XYZ--in Los Angeles. Landsburg, who had invented a widely used FM radio receiver while in his teens, fled his native Germany shortly after the Third Reich classified his pioneering work on radar and sonar as a national secret. In 1936, however, Landsburg had participated in experimental television broadcasts of the Berlin Olympics.

He arrived in Los Angeles with an unequaled technical background and an abiding belief--gleaned from his Berlin experiment--that live television had the power to fundamentally alter people's understanding of the world around them.

There were 350 home television sets in Los Angeles on Feb. 20, 1947, when Landsburg's system was put to its first great test. At 9:45 a.m., a vicious chemical blast at the O'Connor Electro-Plating Co. ripped apart a four-block area in the manufacturing district on Pico Boulevard between Stanford Avenue and Paloma Street, leaving 17 dead and 150 injured.

Within minutes, W6XYZ reporter Dick Lane--later an institution on local TV--was broadcasting live from the scene to a tiny but transfixed audience.

The explosion that destroyed or damaged 116 buildings had opened a crater 22 feet wide     and 6 feet deep. The blast shattered windows across a 1-square-mile area and was felt as far away as Long Beach and the San Fernando Valley.

Twitter - A Fly's Eye?

This is the eye of a fly - it's a composite eye - with many lenses.

Last night I discovered something new about Twitter. I was in the lounge at YUL (Montreal) with a 4 hour wait. I was on Twitter. I was watching two items. The Debate covered by Tom at NPR and 3 others and IMA 08  covered by Andy, Tim, Todd, Laura and John Proffitt.

I have to tell you I was amazed.

It was a totally absorbing experience to get multiple views of the same event in real time.

When the guys put together the Twitter AP, they should think about the power and the impact of using Twitter as a composite eye at events and have multiple Twitterer as part of the design