Robert Paterson's Weblog

My Radio Userland Time Machine

I like many others, started my blogging life using Dave Winer's Radio Userland. Back in 2002 Radio was the easiest tool for beginners with no technical skills like me.

This December Radio will shutter. What to do? My decision - a selective archive. So, this weekend I went back and looked at every post I made and decided that I would archive the few that I really liked on a Wordpress site. Here is the link.

I am going to do the same with all I own in the next few months - so watch out for Rob's Book Sale. I am embarking on the downsizing of all downsizing's.

Looking at everything I wrote has been quite an experience. Just as looking at all I own and also deciding what few things I will keep is another. 

Posts and things are energetic and are attached to moments and people in my life. I was reminded this weekend of how much I owe to a number of people whom I now wish to thank here today.

Here is my first ever post - a repost of a post by Doc Searls - the godfather of the 'sphere

I would like to thank a few people. Peter Rukavina for advising me to use Radio and to get into Blogging. No other single act has changed my life more and for the better. What about you? has taking up blogging changed your life too?

Thank you Dave Winer for Radio and for all you have done for the world by making blogging and RSS accessible to the unskilled. Who has done more? Dave the Gutenberg of our time?

Thank you Critt Jarvis for helping me as a technical coach - in those days there was no easy way to have a blogroll, insert pictures etc. Thank you John Robb who was the go to guy at Radio at the time and who got me into Resiliency my life's work. Thank you Dina Mehta who established for me that I could make friends again across time, space and culture. Thank you Ross Mayfield whose early thinking about how this new world might work has so influenced me. Thank you Dave Pollard for getting me to think more deeply.

Here is my first blogroll - one of Critt's gifts to me back in April of 2003. What a tiny village the 'sphere was then. Maybe 60,000 people in all. You could "know" everyone. What a gift to have been blogging then.

 

Here are a few posts that I like a lot - they are connected to people that I care about and to ideas that have been growing since 2002.

• On Blogging and Friendship - inspired by Dina - how my life has been refreshed and filled anew by a handful of real friends - Johnnie, Euan, Harold, Dave, Jon to name a few.

• My favorite quote for our time - from Moby Dick - all about the value of sailing out into the deep in stormy times

• My First Post on Magic Numbers thanks to Ross Mayfield - not only has Ros been the other Gutenberg but his thinking about how social networks work has surely been the foundation of the organizational impact of that will unfold?

• My First post on OODA Loops - thanks to Chet Richards- Col John Boyd's Plato
  

• My first post of a New Renaissance - thanks to Dave Pollard who has been such an influence on all out thinking about the nature of the shift to a natural organization

• The beginnings of my work on food and agriculture  Thanks Rory who got me involved

• My First Post on Food Systems and Human History and Culture - the foundation of my work on Fractal History and the role that food has in how humans see and organize their world

• My early work on the Early Years - thank you Ann Robertson, Doug Willms and Fraser Mustard - how we parent is of course the heart of our culture and it is our culture that we pass on to our kids

• My first Post on the Tribe - More influence from Dave Pollard - presaging a return I think to a larger social unit than the nuclear family and a more healthy organizational unit than the corporation

• And of course my first post on Dogs - thanks to my now old friend Jay - man's best friend and mine

The Moment - All there is

Thanks Johnnie

Her mother is a Foodie

Will she want to kill us when she sees this as a teenager?

Seeding the future?

Who knows how the future will turn out? On my property I can only plant and hope. I wonder if my dreams for part of this property will ever be fulfilled.

Social Media has Tipped - What does this mean?

Forrester Research have released this information that shows that Social Media is now Mainstream. Maybe not on PEI - but it will be so here soon. For sure for most of the US and Canada.

Here is how Forrester categories users - see where you fit and then let's look at the shift in usage that shows us that the system has tipped - Not only is the Early Majority in but also the late Majority - the Laggards are almost all there too!

 

Here is how the movement has occurred:

So what does this mean? The people are ahead of the organizations. So the organizations that get this earlier and so better will do well. Those that don't will die.

If you run a business - all your ideas about marketing and research will have to take social media into account. Small business will get a leg up I think. Many medium and large businesses have major cultural barriers in place that will slow them down. A small business can reach a lot of people and find out a lot about their market for very little money. The barriers? Learning how to use the simple tools. Making the time to get good at this.

If you are in media - time is almost run out if you are not making progress for how you will continue. We all see how vulnerable newspapers are but now TV and Cable providers are especially at risk. Video is the new focus. In our household we are planning to switch off cable and go 100% web. We will get more choice and save $600 a year. Everything we need is online already and is only getting better.

The politicians who get this will have an unparalleled finger on the pulse of their constituency and the best connection to their voters - the rest.....

As the newspapers and conventional media distribution die - there will also be an interesting vacuum. What will fill the space? Someone or something will arise to be the new local aggregator and make it easy for people to find what they want.

I am sure that "aggregation" will be one of the areas where value will reside.

Post Hurricane Bill - Some Lessons for PEI's Government EMS

We were lucky that Bill was not a problem. But what if it had been? With 2 hurricanes in 4 years, might we get more in the next 4 years? What about Ice storms? We have been lucky so far and missed a full blackout by a narrow margin. Will we be so lucky next time? We are awaiting the return of Swine Flu in the fall. It may be nothing - but then it may be terrible.

Other than the CBC - there was no ongoing information for Islanders.

My Point?

Our EMS on PEI appears not to have a Social Media Plan - or if it does we saw no evidence of it with Bill.

As we have seen with disasters everywhere, Social Media can be a huge help. The excuse that so few Islanders have access to the internet is no longer valid either. Few do not have a cell phone and High Speed is coming soon. Time to act now.

Here is a list of the basics that we should have.

• EMS should have a Twitter Account - not only can they use this to Broadcast alerts etc but also to "Listen" - the best coverage of Bill was via Twitter. The best coverage of any disaster is Twitter - the full intelligence of the community can be found there. Nova Scotia are there.

• EMS should have a blog site of its own and a WIKI page attached to it where it aggregates all the information in one place AND with the Wiki builds out with the help of the communities all the ground layer of detail for each community.

• Central to the EMS web page would be a Google Map where all the resources and issues can be mapped - In the San Diego Fire, KPBS's use of the Google Map helped all know what was happening where and when - fires, firefighters, equipment, evacuations, supplies everything was mapped. The power of this kind of map is that all Islanders can add to it in real time so a true picture can emerge very quickly

• The EMS should have a Facebook Group - EMS would ask all Islanders to join. This enables EMS to text/email anyone on that list. It also allows for the people and the community to add material that will help others

• EMS would have a partnership with all the formal media outlets on PEI where all thjis material would be shared and the material from all the news outlets also pooled

• There should be a number of key partners involved in all of this - Maritime Electric, The School Boards, UPEI & Holland College, Public Health, The Police and the Firefighters - the best approach would be to aggregate all of their work onto the one site and use the same tools

This is not hard to do. Nor would it cost much if anything. There is also a lot of experienced folks on PEI who could make this even easier.

We have been lucky so far. If we plan and build this now we will be really ready and able to cope so much better. Let's Go folks.

Beyond Building an Audience - Building Support

I was talking to Patty Cahill yesterday who is just joining the Board of CPB. We were talking about the future and of course about support and broadening the audience. Until now public radio and TV's support was directly and exclusively tied to listeners and viewers. Tied to the connection to our on air content. For a generation, Radio and TV has tried to expand this audience without weakening the quality of what we produced. This approach does not seem to have worked. Our audience is still locked into the same metrics. Our attempts to reach other segments have not given us the results that we had hoped for.

Patty and I dug deeper into what may be happening to our support now that we are doing this project that focuses so much not only on content but on helping everyone. Might this be the more legitimate way of building a broader base of support? Have a look at KNPR's situation here. My bet is that the secret is here. That the more we support all the public, the more that ALL the public will support us. That it is not all about "audience" or content.

As is always the case, the more we’ve communicated about our activities to our Board of Directors, Community Advisory Board and external groups such as the local Women in Communications chapter, the more positive feedback we get over and above the urgency of the topic. There is a profound resonance that what we are doing is what public media can do as no commercial media can: dedicating our resources to focused on air messaging, providing online resources and getting appropriate messages out to audiences who don’t listen to us. (In particular the Hispanic audience, African American and those demographics not associated with public radio use.)

This project answers the question “what do you mean exactly by community engagement”? we hear this from time to time from our board members. They are overwhelmingly supportive of the use of time and resources in this project and understand that this is not related to building audience for broadcast.

We have reported the specific email traffic in previous questions of the week and we have not received a lot of spontaneous recognition for our project from listeners about how they are using the information. Comments such as “please continue your coverage” are commonplace in regards listening.

However: Spring Arbitron numbers just came in for News 88.9 KNPR and looking at the regular Thursday coverage in 10am hour we can see a significant jump in audience year over year – 30% more listening to the 10am hour. We have covered and branded the foreclosure content in this hour every week since the start of April.

We recently received information from the Mexican Patriotic Committee, a non-profit organization that has been in our community for over 29 years. They wanted us to list a community event they are promoting. We have never received such a request from the Hispanic community. The board member who submitted the request said she respected the way Nevada Public Radio is doing outreach to the Hispanic community. She appreciated the fact we are trying to communicate with them about the foreclosure project.

This is an email I received from our local HUD office contact:

“I wanted to thank you again for all of your help. Since partnering with you & KNPR our call volume has increased dramatically. We have also seen an increase in our “walk in traffic”. I have spoken to people who have heard about our programs on your station. You have helped us reach people we may never have reached, were it not for this partnership. I look forward working with you all for a very long time. Thanks.”
Phyllis Hargrove, Operations Specialist U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Field Policy Management.

We partnered with our local volunteer center to hold a volunteer-a-thon as a way of helping the center receive much needed exposure. We also wanted to give people who had recently lost jobs or hours from their jobs an opportunity to do something meaningful for the community, to have a place to go to during the day, to learn new skills, to share their skills and make valuable contacts.

This is an email we received from the Volunteer Center:

“United Way of Southern Nevada’s Volunteer Center had the opportunity to partner with Nevada Public Radio during National Volunteer Week in April 2009. Our ‘bright idea’ was to partner our request for volunteers with Nevada Public Radio’s expertise with pledge drives and their breadth of loyal listeners. Imagine our surprise when 460 new volunteers signed up on our website and pledged 11,655 hours of service to the community over the next 12 months! These 460 volunteers were from a sector in the community that we might not ever have reached without this partnership. We are indebted to Nevada Public Radio and value our collaboration. It is our hope that this partnership endures for many years to come.”
Robin Kelley, Volunteer Center Director

Heat getting you down?

Our place Jan 05

NPR - On the Tipping Point?

With the launch this weekend of the new NPR Mobile App, I can look back over the last 4 years and see a pattern emerge that tells me that NPR is poised to be the first major new organization to break through into the new Media Reality.

That's a bold statement so let me try and back it up.

First of all, NPR and the public radio system have got something that no other media has in America - Growth in audience.

 

Why? I suspect that a large part of the answer is to be found in one word - "Trust". As our world becomes more uncertain, it is also clear that much of the media was either complicit in hiding the truth about what was going on or that they just missed it. The non profit aspect of NPR and its system, I suspect helps keep it more trusted. The second point is just good journalism. As all other sources of media have retrenched on their staff, NPR and its stations have continued to invest in great staff.

But there is more going on here than the core journalism - NPR - like no other organizations except the BBC - is there a pattern here too? - Has made a decisive push to make the web work for it, for the stations and for the audience.

Here is the "Story" as revealed in a "Power Curve".

This suggests that NPR is at the Tipping Point. Why? Because we can see both the acceleration and also the growth of the supporting system that will facilitate the growth.

We see a long gestation period from 2005 - 2007. Podcasting began then - greatly facilitated by iTunes.

It is in 2008 that we see progress begin to accelerate. In 2009, NPR is positively rocking.

How did this happen when so many other media organizations are merely hiding behind the castle walls?

I think the answer is in the New Realities Process that NPR undertook at the end of 2005 - May 2006. Over 800 people were involved in "Exploring" what the web might mean to NPR and the system of stations.

This was the basic problem presented to all.

Please let me explain. Remember this was done in early 2006. The core assumption was that by 2009, the web would be ubiquitous. NPR's relative position versus the web at the time was that tiny black line.

The question was this - How did we get to scale on the web in time AND still not piss off the audience AND the Stations?

Looking back, the time line we posed was correct and it seems that we have solved the key question.

So how did this process of mutual exploration help NPR and the stations do this? My answer is this - It gave everyone a real voice. ALL the issues were on the table. A real common view emerged.

In every meeting, groups came up with the same big idea. That we had to be able to offer the audience what we did "Their Way". This appears to have been an underlying idea that has been realized by the Mobile App - many groups even envisaged a device like the iPhone that would enable this.

Surely this is no small thing? Most media organizations still insist controlling everything.

The underlying constraint was what would be the role of NPR and of each station? At the time, many believed that NPR had a "secret plan" to go it alone. In truth many at NPR also did not know what to do. They talked about working with the stations but were uncertain.

A major result of the process is that the senior NPR folks realized that they HAD to work with the stations. It has taken years for much of the fear that NPR would go it alone to dissipate but it is. NPR have proved by their actions that they are in this together.

For another common theme that kept coming up again and again was this. That the end game would look like this - a REAL NETWORK based on Natural Systems. This was the systems' great hidden strength.

This idea of a large natural system is now even bigger than anyone envisaged in 2006. For the CPB has been making major investments in creating a Public Radio AND TV system. The Facing the Mortgage Crisis project is one of these investments where radio and Tv stations in 32 markets are working together. NPR and the NewsHour are working together to offer the best news service in the nation. Key local stations are creating local news hubs.

All this is going to come together in late 2009 early 2010.

2010 will be I think THE year. The product will be unparalleled. The Web approach will be ideal. The resources will be all that such a network can supply.

With the audience, with the engagement and with the web fully supporting the air all that is left is this..

I think that with the underlying audience, engagement and a network - it should be possible to make the money and the system work - don't you?

So in closing I return to the question of our time. How do large organizations make the changes that they have to? How do they do this when the New is often the opposite of what they are and what they do today?

I think that the answer for NPR and Public radio is that they overcame the huge natural resistance by investing in a shared and deep exploration of what confronted them. What they have done since has come from the genuine emergence of ideas and of a language that they created for themselves.

It has not been easy. I admit to being in despair in 2007 when I could see no visible progress. But in retrospect I was naive. The laws of nature demand a period of gestation. 2007 was that time.

What is remarkable now is that NPR and the system has fully met the challenge set out in the starting question of the process. They have kept their audience, kept the system together AND become a leader in the web.

Now they have to turn this into revenue. I think that they are up to this.