Social Media Is Fun. Seriously.

I'm very happy to chat today with Karen Russell's class at the University of Georgia's Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication. Professor Russell is an active and thoughtful leader in this field, and I was flattered to get an invite.

I've been asked to discuss how social media can be fun. It's been a while since college so I don't exactly know what's "fun" for undergrads today, but I have fun collaborating with my colleagues and with others online. I enjoy being part of a community. I asked my social media team for their examples of fun, and that was the basic consensus - joining and participating in community discussions. Collaborating with smart people. The conversations and collaborations take on many forms, and the technology helps us harness creativity, but at its core the "fun" is in the community.

Social media tools give members of a given community the ability to share the fun no matter where they happen to be. For example, there's my wife, who got her Ph.D. at The University of Georgia. She's on the faculty at the University of Kentucky, but that doesn't stop her from wearing red and black when the Bulldogs come to town to play football...

Manic Monday's "Day After" - Who Drives the Discussion?

I've followed two very distinct discussions online regarding the Wall Street bailout bill. One financial, one political.

An observation - the discussions are remarkably isolated from one another.

There's a small but substantial community of traders on Twitter (you can find a chunk of them at Soren Macbeth's StockTwits) that are really focused on the market, and not surprisingly, they're looking for opportunities to make money (or stem their losses). A big topic of discussion: the recently-imposed rules that curb short-selling. They're highlighting individual stocks and looking for value. Of course, talk about filing for cloture on the motion to proceed in the Senate or the debate of an open or closed rule in the House, and you can hear crickets chirp in this community.

There's obviously a huge pool of political bloggers, doing what they do best - blaming the other party for what's wrong. Hugh Hewitt is ranting about "Pelosivilles" and "Destructocrats" and how the Democratic Party is almost singlehandedly responsible for the next Great Depression. Todd Beeton at MyDD blames the vote on "John McCain's Impotence in Washington." But these political bloggers don't have the chops to know the ins and outs of Wall Street. I've also had some friendly political banter with two of my favorite GOP tweeters, Chip Griffin and Jim Durbin.

So who makes up the very small handful of online opinion leaders who can drive discussions on financial policy? Regardless of ideology, I'm looking at the following.

• Paul Kedrosky has had a really impressive run of it lately, providing analysis and a bit of commentary while not going over the top.
• Brad DeLong is talking a lot more about politics than finance lately, but he clearly knows his stuff in both areas.
• Greg Mankiw is a smart deregulator who knows politics - his arguments are clearly market-focused and his background in the Bush White House serves him well.
• Larry Kudlow is a passionate conservative and obviously has been following this closely, both on CNBC and his blog.
• Mark Thoma takes a more liberal perspective, but he's every bit as smart and has done an impressive job talking about political proposals.

I have a fever... and the prescription is...

I want to welcome my new colleague James Walker and I hope you all will check out his blog, Gen Y PR Prescriptions.

I'm heading out of town for a few days and won't be posting until I return - have a great weekend, all...

Beyond Bizlex, Part II: AAEP's Dr. Jennifer Selvig

Yesterday I posted my Business Lexington column's full Q&A with Sally Baker, Director of Marketing and Public Relations for the American Association of Equine Practitioners and the strategic vision behind AAEP's blog, Out of the Starting Gate.

Today I'm sharing the Q&A from Dr. Jennifer Selvig, a first-year equine veterinarian and the voice of AAEP's blog. In addition to her obvious skill in equine veterinary medicine, she's a strong writer and an excellent strategic fit for the blog.

Why did you agree to participate in the blog?

I was originally asked by one of my vet school mentors, Dr. Julie Wilson, who serves on the AAEP student relations committee. She is a great advocate for students, and thought I would be well-qualified for this. I'd like to think she is right - I have always enjoyed writing. During undergrad and vet school I worked at The Minnesota Daily, the largest completely student-run daily college newspaper in the country. I held lots of different positions, including editorals & opinions editor and copy desk chief. So I suppose it was an opportunity to use a skill I have to reach out to future veterinarians.

Did you know much about blogs or social media before you started this project? What have you learned?

Only in the sense that I knew basically how they work and that they existed. I never thought I'd be a "blogger" - I'm not a good creative writer; I'm a much better technical writer. I don't really follow any other blogs consistently. I have learned it can be hard to keep up with demand - when I get "writer's block," people start to wonder what happened to me! It's actually a pretty big responsibility.

Do you think you’ll continue working with blogs and social media to share your stories and experiences with young people?

I hope so! If I have the opportunity and the support of a great community like the AAEP, it's relatively easy. I'm not sure about the long-term plans for this thing - it's kind of taken on a life of its own, but it seems to be popular, so I'm happy to keep going with it as long as it's entertaining and useful to people.

The AAEP blog is making you a bit of a celebrity and an ambassador for the profession. How does it feel to be AAEP’s answer to CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta?

This part is kind of surreal. I have been to a couple of continuing education events since I started this and it's weird to be recognized by people I don't know, even if only by name. America's Horse, the AQHA magazine, published my first blog entry as a feature, complete with a gigantic picture of me with two of my horses, and it was very odd to have clients and friends come up to me and say, "Hey! You're famous! I saw you in this magazine that goes out to thousands of people across the country!" When I finally got a copy of the magazine, it was pretty weird to see that spread. At least all the feedback I've gotten has been positive!

As far as being an ambassador for the profession - I guess mostly it's daunting to be held up that way when I'm really just a first-year veterinarian. I graduated from vet school less than a year ago - by a lot of people's standards, I don't know anything yet! I just try to do right by the profession and the horses, practice good medicine and keep learning. I hope the more seasoned members of our organization see that.

Part of the way this blog has taken off is with non-veterinary students and non-veterinarians. The original intent of the blog was to give veterinary students considering a career in equine practice a little window into what their first year out might be like. But now it seems my audience is so much broader - so I have to try to balance writing for my original intended audience and remembering that, apparently, a lot of other lay-people will be reading it too. I don't know about being on CNN, though!!

What do you have to say to young people considering a career in veterinary medicine?

My ultimate goal is to balance my career with my life. I have a fiance - I'm getting married in June - and three horses to ride. I want to show the profession it's possible to have a good work ethic and put your time in without burning out, and still practice good medicine. I worked really hard to get where I am - every would-be veterinarian has to work hard. But it IS worth it. Even though you're scared to death the first time you have to make an honest-to-goodness critical decision for the life of a patient, it's still worth it.

My biggest piece of advice for students thinking about vet school: Make sure this is what you want to do - if your reasoning is that you want to be a vet because you like animals and not people, you're heading in the wrong direction. Veterinary medicine is a very human-oriented profession. And then get experience. Work at a clinic cleaning and walking dogs or doing barn chores - it's how I started. You never know when they'll need an extra set of hands to help with an interesting procedure. And it's never too early to start networking and building a reputation as a hard worker.

For the equine vet students, my advice is: Go after the job you want. If that's a prestigious internship, go for it. I was fortunate to have made the connections I did early that allowed me to get a job I love. I have a classmate who turned down a prestigious internship for a job on the other side of the country because he didn't feel right about it - and he's having a blast in the job he ended up with. There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to go after graduation - look for something that makes you happy and fits in your life where you're at, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. You won't practice good medicine and you won't learn anything if you're not enjoying your job.

Preparing for Cuba 2.0 with Social Media Tools

A few months back the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce held a crisis simulation for its students. The scenario was Fidel Castro's sudden death and the emergence of tensions between the American navy and Cuban armed forces. I wrote about the simulation for Business Lexington and wrote a companion blog post here.

I was particularly impressed that the faculty incorporated simulated blogs into their exercise. Professor Robert Farley (a fella with some pretty solid blogging credentials) created "Man About Havana" to simulate the first-person citizen journalism one may see in this kind of situation.

I wouldn't be surprised if some of Professor Farley's older colleagues dismissed the idea of adding a blog to a global crisis exercise. But interestingly enough, we're seeing the blogosphere play an important role in marking the history of another global "crisis" - Kosovar independence, from both sides of the issue.

And wouldn't you know it, thanks to Global Voices Online's Cuba page, you can already find some blogs providing perspective and commentary on the latest in Cuba.

Giving Science a Grand Stage

"How can we get the presidential candidates to talk about our issue?"

This is a common question PR and issues management firms like mine receive from clients and potential clients. While the answer usually comes in the form of a multi-page proposal with a laundry list of tactics, another option is to point people to Science Debate 2008 and say, "maybe you should try what they're doing."

WASHINGTON – ScienceDebate2008.com, the citizens initiative calling for a presidential debate on science and technology policy, today announced that it has formally invited the presidential candidates to a debate on April 18 at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, four days before the Pennsylvania Primary. The invitation to the candidates can be found here.

I learned about ScienceDebate2008, not surprisingly, from a discussion with some science bloggers. The coalition they're putting together is very impressive. Headlining organziations (there are dozens) now include AAAS, the Council on Competitiveness, the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine. The Chairman of Intel has signed on, as have a number of nobel laureates, college and university presidents, and members of Congress.

Politically, it's a gutsy move. We don't know what the political landscape will look like just before the Pennsylvania primary, but it may very well still be competitive. Three of the four (if not all four) major candidates may still be left standing. From a PR standpoint, setting the time and place definitely sends a cue to the candidates that even if they don't show up - and personally, I hope they will - they should expect questions about science and technology, and stock answers like "investing in R&D is critical to our success" won't be good enough.

While the bloggers I talked with seem to lean left of center, this isn't a partisan discussion at all. For example, investing in Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics education can be viewed as an economic issue, even a security issue. So much of our economy depends on science and technology, but in just a few years the overwhelming majority of science and engineering graduates will live somewhere else. Democrats don't own this issue. Neither do Republicans.

I've read some of the naysayers who question the utility of "politicizing" science through a debate, and that scientists might be better served by doing the tough work of lobbying and talking with policy leaders at every level. But the truth is this - science is already politicized, and it has been for quite some time. Scientists already engage in conversations with political leaders at every level, and have been for some time.

Frankly, I think the naysayers miss the point - you don't have a "science debate" to try to convince presidential candidates that science is important. They already know it's important. You hold a "science debate" to educate the public. You demonstrate that the people vying to be the leader of the free world consider this a priority. You give science a stage. Hopefully then politicians and scientists won't always have to make the case that science is important - the public will make it for them.

So tell a friend about Science Debate 2008.

Getting to know you... Getting to know all about you

I need to lighten up on the political stuff for a day or two.

One of the best parts of my job is I get to read content from a fairly wide range of bloggers - I have a diverse group of clients and social media folks know it's important to find the most relevant people for any topic. So my RSS feeds are pretty much all over the place, and reading up on all this stuff means I have some mad Trivial Pursuit skilz.

Every now and then one of my favorite bloggers shows off a sense of humor. Friday, Dr. Jonathan Gitlin of the science juggernaut Ars Technica shared a video of what happens when you drop a gummy bear into a test tube full of potassium chlorate. It was just tucked into a bunch of quick links.

It's kinda like taking mentos in the coca-cola bottle to the next level. Do NOT try this at home.

Gooooooo DAWGS Sic'em Woof Woof Woof

As my wife always says, it's great to be a Georgia Bulldog. In addition to outstanding gymnastics and football programs (you know I had to say that), they have Karen Russell and some pretty impressive students of Public Relations. Dr. Russell tweeted about one of her colleages, Kaye Sweetster, and her students.

Sweetster's students took a look at how well campaign blogs speak to potential voters. I know the folks at techPresident have weighed in on this, but I think it's great they looked at it from a dispassionate, academic perspective. From the release:

From their study, the group found that Democratic candidates made up 65 percent of the sample, which indicates that the Democratic Party has embraced blogs as a campaign tactic more than Republicans since the 2004 election. They also found
that presidential candidates displayed the most dialogic features, which they attributed to the money, manpower and voter base behind high-level campaigns. Those running for Senate and governor came next followed by House candidates.

The team chose to investigate the dialogic capacity of campaign blogs due to their interest in the upcoming presidential election. "We wanted to see how well presidential candidates used new Internet features to relate to potential voters," said Holly Stiles, a junior public relations and speech communication major from Murphy, N.C. "We started with the presidential race and then it just grew from there."

And as any good student of social media would, they have a pdf of the paper and a podcast describing the results (found at the link above).

I've had some great conversations with Dr. Deborah Chung, a professor here in Lexington at the University of Kentucky who studies social media and journalism, and I seem to recall her singing the praises of Russell and Sweetster. Seems their students have some mad social media skilz too.

And I hope when those students graduate they send me their resumes.

Econo-blogs...

I am NOT an economist, but I did advise a senator on economic issues for a time. (yes, it's like not being a doctor but playing one on TV.) My job, in part, was to keep track of smart economists, try to translate their stuff into English, and synthesize it all into a meaningful commentary that would inform policymakers and shape policy. The best economists could do my job for me, and I would just send a note to the senator and say, "you should read this."

Of course, that was before many economists wrote blogs. Today, young and eager legislative assistants on the hill read blogs before most other things, and the smart ones go beyond the hard-line political blogs for economic news and views. Here is an abbreviated list of my regular reads.

Republicans I know often visit these folks:

• Greg Mankiw's blog
• Cafe Hayek
• Knowledge Problem
• Marginal Revolution
• Asymmetrical Information

Democrats I know often visit:

• Brad DeLong's Semi Daily Journal
• Economist's View
• Environmental Economics
• Oligopoly Watch
• Calculated Risk

Of course, I realize that most (if not all) of these economists/writers will resist being folded into D versus R categories, and there's never a perfect fit. Some wear their politics on their sleeves, most don't. I've found each of these blogs to be useful and I note that all ten of these blogs often link to other economists that have very different perspectives than their own.


Who else should I be reading?

Why Robert Farley ROCKS, part 1

Because very few people can pull off "Sunday deposed monarch blogging" with style.