FIRST: "Science is accessible for me."

If you're a fan of the science blogosphere as I am, you've probably heard about FIRST, a not-for-profit founded by inventor Dean Kamen that inspires young people to get involved with science, technology, engineering and mathematics through participation in robotics competitions.  I first learned about FIRST when I read Sheril Kirshenbaum's interview with Dean Kamen.  There was also an ABC television special about FIRST featuring will.i.am, front man for the Black Eyed Peas. (will.i.am is popular in my house, albeit for a somewhat different reason.)

More than 21,000 high-school-age kids are participating in FIRST this year.  Kids join teams in their hometowns and those teams build working robots that are designed to carry out specific tasks the FIRST leadership develops. The teams score points based on how well the robots meet their tasks, and winning teams get all sorts of perks, such as visiting the White House.

The good folks at FIRST gave me the opportunity to talk with one of those teams who went to DC last year - First Tech Challenge team #3489, a group of four smart, ambitious and engaging students from Coatesville PA and who call themselves "Minds In Gear."  While I thoroughly enjoyed talking with the team about what they were learning, it quickly occurred to me that these young leaders are teaching us all a few things as well. This interview with the team is well worth the 16 minutes and 15 seconds you'll spend listening to it.

I was immediately struck by two things in this interview. First, Sasha Wall discussed the complementary nature FIRST has with her classes:

I use a lot of the leadership skills that I gained in first tech challenge and I apply them in in my classes when we’re doing projects… and I’m able to take my math skills and apply them to building a robot.

Second, as I noted that the team had three young women and one young man, Alex McCabe took a question I asked about female role models in science and just knocked it out of the park.

Establishing female role models in science is so important because you turn on the TV and you see a few poor role models, and if you just pay attention to the media you don’t really get the idea “oh, science is so wonderful, science is ACCESSIBLE for me, and I think that’s really important.

I could try to elaborate on this, but it seems to me Sasha and Alex do quite well speaking for themselves. After the interview the team gave me a live video demonstration of their robot from last year - and I'll just put the rest of the FIRST teams on notice - Minds In Gear will be tough to beat. They invited me to chat with them again once this year's competition is over. I'm already looking forward to it.

Convergence through gaming

A while back I wrote a post about media convergence and a study from Latitude.  They've just published another report on gaming (link is to a pdf) and how it's driving new online technology.  From the release:

The study found that the stereotype of the reclusive gamer is outdated; this emerging demographic is social, heavily engaged with the “offline” world, and extremely goal-oriented – with a strong drive to improve themselves and the world around them. The new gamers are not constrained to any single platform, and have many different motivations for gaming in addition to just having fun. Moreover, they expect that online games will continue to move out of the traditional screen environment, blending seamlessly with the “offline” world in new and engaging ways that go beyond just “checking in” with apps like Foursquare and SCVNGR.

This isn't shocking news in itself, but it's interesting to see how game developers are thinking about applications for the technology beyond games.  That's clearly where I want to go too.  Latitude produced a video that's a bit long, but worth watching:


The Future of Gaming: a Portrait of the New Gamers from latddotcom on Vimeo.

The "money" quote to me: "Who wouldn't want to paint the Prudential Building pink and put an elephant on top of it?"  Well, I'm not sure I'd be into that.

But I would geotag a power plant and add current air quality data and send it to EPA.  I'd also geotag a river or stream down from a coal mine and add water quality data.  Or potholes or graffiti with date stamps to see how responsive the local DPW is.  Or a Congressman's office with a voting record on the issues I care about or the campaign contributor data. (or I'd tag the Congressman himself with image recognition technology.)

Governments are starting to figure out there are channels beyond the traditional ones, and it involves bringing the physical and the virtual together with large groups of people.  A science blogger I know found a story about NASA using online fundraiser Kickstarter to help fund their "official" massively-multiplayer online game.  This voluntary funding method might become a model for programs that conceivably have a public benefit but is hard to justify significant taxpayer investment.   Of course "Astronaut: Moon, Mars and Beyond" probably isn't something that will merge the physical and the virtual all that much, but NASA has plenty of Earth-based research and legions of fans.  Games will be the laboratories to work out the technology, and help the rest of us develop strategic applications beyond "World of Warcraft."

I hope the merger of physical and virtual will break down barriers of homophily and bridge communities.  I noted to the folks at Latitude that everyone in the video above were white Americans, and asked if there were other more global examples. To their credit, they were aware of the observation and they've been thinking along those lines as well, pointing to some ideas from the World Bank and a game called Virtual Street Corners.  

While there's a long way to go, we've made amazing progress and I'm looking forward to more from the braintastic crowd at Latitude.

And a little child shall lead them: the future of media convergence

“I’d like to paint and draw right on the computer screen
and have it show up.”
  - 8-year-old girl, Ogden, Utah, USA

We often joke that if we want to understand the latest new techno-gadget, we just ask our kids.  Turns out we might want to ask our kids about the next new techno-gadget and quite a bit more. If we listen to the youngest among us we will hopefully understand that "media convergence" isn't simply when TV stations use Twitter or how Craigslist has replaced old-school classified ads.   True convergence will take place when the virtual merges with the physical in almost everything we do.  And it will be here sooner than you think.

 I recently had the opportunity to talk with Kim Gaskins, Director of Content Development at Latitude, an international research consultancy based in Massachusetts. We discussed a new study she helped write called Children's Future Requests for Computers and the Internet. From the release:

Latitude asked kids across the world to draw the answer to this question: “What would you like your computer or the Internet to do that it can’t do right now?” The goal of the study was to catch a glimpse into possible futures for technology as seen by digital natives, and to highlight actionable opportunities for new content, user experience (UX), and technology offerings...

More than 200 kid-innovators, ages 12 and under, from Argentina, Australia, Chile, Colombia, Denmark, India, Mexico, The Netherlands, Panama, South Africa, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States participated and submitted drawings of their imagined technologies.

Overall, the drawings demonstrated that kids wanted their technology to be more interactive and human, better integrated with their physical lives, and empowering to users by assisting new knowledge or abilities. Several study participants imagined technologies that are just beginning to appear in tech-forward circles, such as Google’s revamped image search, announced on June 14th 2011, which allows users to place images, rather than text, in Google's search box to perform a query.

Kim and her colleagues didn't set out to prove the "social media guru" crowd is no better than a bunch of 8-year-olds.  (That's actually old news.)  They were trying to demonstrate something about the sources of creativity and they were clearly suggesting that the Internet isn't going to be limited to something with a screen for much longer.

Having worked in a pediatrics department and for a brief time on children's policy issues in Washington, the idea that Latitude sought out children for guidance really resonated with me.  To be honest I hadn't thought of them as a focus group for user experience brainstorming before, but it really makes sense. "Kids are important when you're searching for ideas because they're not as concerned with what’s practical or possible," Kim told me. "They have a great freedom of thought and they're great problem solvers."

That was a great point.  Think about it - the people trying to come up with the next big idea on the Internet are largely cut from the same thirty-something technophile cloth.  Our common experiences enrich our lives but they also limit our perspectives if we fail to explore.  (Ethan Zuckerman wrote a great piece on this in 2008.)  I've written about this before in my attempts to find bridge figures for distinct online communities.

So what did the kids teach us?  There were a number of excellent takeaways, but Kim did a good job summarizing the one I found most interesting - "The experience of content shouldn't end at the computer."  Nearly 40 percent of the children talked about the bridging of the physical and virtual spaces.  Like the girl from Utah who wanted to "paint" on a screen and then the painting showed up in her room. Or taking actions in the physical world - exercising, recycling, you name it - that also manifest themselves online.

We're obviously not here yet. Kim says our current attempts to open this door look a bit like bells and whistles (think the QR codes at Central Park idea) right now and "no one has figured out the transmedia thing yet."  But Kim echoed a relevant question she gleaned from the kids' insights - "why can't the Internet surround me?"

We're already developing the ability to look at an object through a smartphone lens and gain information about that object. For example, I can take a picture of a tree and my phone will tell me what species of tree it is.  I'm also immediately able to catalog that tree and work with others to determine how unique it is to its area, and if we need more of them. We can arrive at a specific address and through GPS get certain information about it. (If it's a restaurant, I can get the menu as well as those of its nearby competitors.)  We're almost to the point where it's just a matter of building a big enough database to just look at an object and have every bit of information about it right in front of you.  You know, like the digital readout in the Terminator's eye but probably without the "killing everything in sight" part. The ramifications of this massive expansion of accessible information are amazing.

We discussed other ideas and I may explore them further on this blog. For example, I found it quite interesting that Latitude partnered with the Lego Learning Institute on this project and released the results with Radical Parenting's Vanessa Van Petten.  Meantime, check out the report and learn something.

News on the iPad - Zite is the early winner

I'm not much of a tech gadget guy, but as a self-confessed news junkie, Zite at first blush seems to be the iPad app I've been looking for.  I've been trying to mold my iPad into a super-news device, and Zite is a big piece.

Basically it's a smart RSS reader that attempts to customize the news you receive based on your preferences and feedback.  The format is crisp and easy on the eye, similar (though not identical) to Flipboard.  I'm surprised at how good the news sources are and I'm stunned that they are offering the app for free.    As they keep learning more about my "preferences" it will be interesting to see what kind of marketing profile I generate, and what they'll actually do with that information, but from a usability and performance standpoint I'm quite impressed.

I'm still looking for a top-notch "breaking news" tool.  That's considerably harder to pull off, though I'm sure it will involve some combination of Global Voices Online people (like Amira Al Hussaini, who just got a great writeup in NYT from Jen Preston), the major journalism-industry sources of breaking news (i.e., the wires, BBC, Al Jazeera, CNN, etc.) and Twitter.  The challenge comes in curating this tool - once news "breaks," you have to identify the most credible sources of information and ping them often for updates.   You also have to be flexible enough to accommodate multiple stories and then manage multiple streams of content with an effective visual interface.  I'm also looking for something that can add radio streams in the background.

By the way, I would pay for these apps and for subscriptions to content.  So there's a business model to be won here.

Climate Change and Strategic Communications

This is how scientists prove their critics are wrong - but line graphs don't shift public opinion

The scientific case regarding man-made climate change has never been stronger.  Climate change is real, our actions are prompting it, and the failure to address this will lead to severe consequences.   (here's how it works - we burn oil and coal and gas, which belches a humongous amount of carbon into the air, which traps heat in the atmosphere, causing all sorts of weird weather and other nasty stuff.  It's more complicated than that, but that's basically it.  It's actually pretty intuitive.  Pour enough crap into anything that supports life and eventually bad things happen.)

The political position of those who would fight climate change has never been weaker.  Last year the US House of Representatives (under Democratic control) passed a "climate bill" that was widely regarded by pundits as the absolute most that could be accomplished politically - and widely panned by environmentalists as not nearly enough to turn the tide.  The Senate didn't pass anything.  Last year's UN meeting on climate change - the overblown farce known as COP 15 - saw a lot of speeches that said "the time for talk is over, the time for action is now" but produced an "accord" that basically said climate change is a bad thing and maybe someday someone should think about doing something.  Maybe.  Even though the "scientific" arguments presented by climate change deniers are absolutely pathetic (as outlined in Dr. Gleick's piece at Huffington Post), they're still winning on Capitol Hill.

This year, House committees (now under Republican control) will hold hearings designed to smear climate scientists.  A "climate bill" isn't even under serious consideration in the House or the Senate.  (We will see, however, a debate on abolishing the EPA.)  Companies that profit from burning oil, coal and gas have funded all sorts of "think-tanks" and hired a bunch of PR guys to work together to confuse the issue and make sure John Q. Nascar remains focused on the things he can see, like President Obama's birth certificate from Kenya.  (it's on the internet, you know.) The UN meeting on climate change that took place in December (COP 16) thankfully wasn't overhyped, but didn't really accomplish much more than COP 15. And I'm not the only person who noticed that the words "climate change" mysteriously disappeared from the State of the Union address this year.

The problem is simple: those who support the status quo have a coherent, coordinated, and well-funded communications strategy.  Those who support real change (and sound science) do not.

So when I see someone like Chris Mooney - someone who is smart and actually trying to fight this battle - point to a form letter written by a group of scientists addressed to every Member of Congress and suggest it "teaches us a thing or two about communication" - I have to sigh.  Chris clearly has an optimistic viewpoint on this and says he wants to encourage more scientists to get involved in the political process.  He's right about that.  However, since the pro-science (and actually pro-business) message on climate change comes in uncoordinated and often random spurts, it has very little impact.  And when scientists make the observation that their valuable time and effort on outreach like this is being wasted, they are less inclined to try it again.

So my advice - start working more closely together and agree on a strategy, a message, and a set of tactics.   And if all you want to do is criticize how others are doing this, or say it's not worth doing because it's not perfect, STFU and go away.   Here's an outline of what I'd do, as promised in an earlier post.

Topline Strategy: Position your side as the solution, the way forward.  Associate supporters of the status quo with the salient problems of the status quo more generally, and position them as opponents of progress.  You saw something resembling this in the most recent State of the Union Address. The President didn't mention the words "climate change" but he did talk a lot about "winning the future" and the economic benefits of clean energy technology.    Then develop a range of strategic and realistic policy goals and attack.

Identify your audience.  "Everybody" is not an audience. "Members of Congress" are an audience, but the way to reach them isn't a letter.  You need to have face-to-face meetings with them and their staffs.  More importantly, you need to have face to face meetings with the people who influence those Members of Congress most.   I think that means the real audience is the media, business leaders, trade associations, and political donors.   As for consumers - and they're also important, because they vote - Mom is unquestionably the household decision maker for basically everything, so you need to develop a coherent message for moms.

Messaging.  Have a backgrounder available for the paleo-clima-anthropomorphi-techno stuff, but scientists and environmentalists aren't losing this fight on the science.  They're losing on the economics. Right now, the message from the other side is simple: capping carbon = less energy use = less economic activity = less profit = fewer jobs for John Q. Nascar.   But to buy into their mindset you have to believe that we won't or can't change the way we use energy, that efficiency doesn't really move the needle, and that wind power is crazy-looking. I think it's time people realized that we don't have cap-and-trade, and the economy sucks anyway.  While messaging should always be in the authentic voice of the person speaking, I think it makes sense for everyone who's speaking on the pro-science side of the topic to assert the following general points:

• The people who deny climate science support a status quo that works for no one but them. High energy prices hurt the entire economy - except maybe a handful of companies and individuals.  We're looking forward but they're clinging to the past.
• Climate science deniers also deny consumer choice.  The technology exists to give us electric cars, energy-efficient appliances, and so on.  Polls show millions of people want them.  But the people who say climate change is a "hoax" also oppose policies that would make it easier for consumers to get them.
• Climate science deniers oppose innovation.  They've gone all-in for a 20th-Century energy strategy that says "dig it out of the ground and set it on fire." They work hard to make sure the rules favor this strategy, and they're holding on to their advantage for as long as they can.

There are other points to make, but if you notice, these general arguments (opposing the status quo, supporting choice and innovation) are largely generic arguments that "test well" with the public and with policy elites across all sorts of issues.  They're also relevant and truthful.  This sort of thing has to be THE message - not "the sky is falling," not something about tree rings, not something that must be measured in parts per billion.  

I'm sure some scientists are thinking "we've said all that already."  Not really, no. These messages haven't been forcefully, clearly, creatively, and repeatedly delivered to the people who matter.  They haven't been built into a coordinated campaign that includes earned media, paid media, social media, and lobbying.  

As for policy issues, there are plenty of options - but what's most important is going on offense.  A really smart political operative once told me "if you're not on offense, you're on defense - and if you're on defense, you're losing."  If you're looking for specifics I recommend my pal the Ecopolitologist for ideas.  Start with battles you have a good chance of winning, build momentum, and keep pushing.  And stop it already with the "it's not for scientists to decide policy, our role is only to share data and analysis."  Everyone has a right to participate completely in the political process. Everyone.

Huffington Post - AOL is a bigger deal than you think

"Rosebud." 2.0

So it's all over the news this morning that AOL just bought Huffington Post for $315 million, and Arianna Huffington will be in charge of all of AOL's content development. AOL owns a number of niche media properties - sites like TechCrunch, Moviefone, and Mapquest.  Huffington Post has been trying to diversify its offering into many of these niches.

I think we may be witnessing the first real digital media business model that will be profitable over the long term.  I also think the feisty global digital media startups that have tried to have a global impact could very likely be eaten for lunch.  Consider what Ms. Huffington says in her announcement post:

At the first meeting of our senior team this year, I laid out the five areas on which I wanted us to double down: major expansion of local sections; the launch of international Huffington Post sections (beginning with HuffPost Brazil); more emphasis on the growing importance of service and giving back in our lives; much more original video; and additional sections that would fill in some of the gaps in what we are offering our readers, including cars, music, games, and underserved minority communities.. 

By combining HuffPost with AOL's network of sites, thriving video initiative, local focus, and international reach, we know we'll be creating a company that can have an enormous impact, reaching a global audience on every imaginable platform.

Remember my New Year's resolution? It's coming true -- and it's only the beginning of February. Let's go down the checklist: Local? AOL's Patch.com covers 800 towns across America, providing an incredible infrastructure for citizen journalism in time for the 2012 election, and a focus on community and local solutions that have been an integral part of HuffPost's DNA. Check.

Expertise on local focus, global reach, leveraging citizen journalism to cover important issues, with a flair for politics.  Sound familiar?  That's what Global Voices Online does right now.  (And their coverage of what's been happening in Egypt has been excellent.)  Their model of tracking and aggregating local bloggers in every corner of the world is a good one - but they've done it from a non-profit mindset.  I'd argue they do it from an anti-profit mindset.  GVO has been very resistant to work with for-profit enterprises (though there have been some exceptions) because they see it as a threat to their independence and credibility.

GVO is less than a year away from getting a titanic competitor in the form of a global media network with real financial backing, political clout, and strategically audacious leadership.  I don't think GVO will die - there will always be a place for non-profit media - but I think the leaders of GVO and groups like Internews better be thinking long and hard about evolving, adapting to the new marketplace, and looking for new partnerships.

#TweetMasdar and Much More

scene from #TweetMasdar

Today my pal Tim Hurst was in Masdar City (a client) with my colleagues hosting a "tweetup" for the World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi.   I'm very excited that so many people chose to participate and share their thoughts.  Catch up on the #TweetMasdar conversation and share your thoughts - people keep chiming in.

The conference and Masdar City's leadership in it has been a topic of discussion among some leading green bloggers.  I'm looking forward to reading all the posts, but in the meantime here are a few to get you started:

Masdar: a $2 Billion Clean Energy City Grows in the Desert by Treehugger's Brian Merchant
Personal Rapid Transit in Masdar City by TriplePundit's Nick Aster
Masdar City Gets Real by Marc Gunther

Masdar is an amazing story, and I'm very pleased that so many good writers are out there covering it.  Oh, and maybe I'm just a little jealous of Tim.

Secretary Clinton at Masdar

It's not every day that the Secretary of State visits your client and expresses such strong support:

We have a special connection with the institute because of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one of our nation’s top universities, and because of the Department of Energy. We believe that the work that is being done here at Masdar has the potential to solve some of the most urgent challenges facing our planet. How do we develop sustainable energy sources that can power our cities without contributing to climate change? How do we create technologies that are scalable and both use less power and are widely affordable? How do we supply water for drinking and farming in places where fresh water sources are decreasing? How do we achieve economic growth without relying so heavily on fossil fuels where they’re drilling for them, selling them, buying them, or burning them?

...I want my country to know how advanced you are in pursuing clean, renewable energy. I want the world to know that the United States is partnering with you, because we are betting on Abu Dhabi and the UAE. We are betting that this incredible investment represented by Masdar is going to pay off. And when it pays off, it will not only mean a better life for the people of this country and this region. It will have ripple effects throughout the world.

Getting Serious About Climate PR

It's not often I get to say I'm on the same page as the Union of Concerned Scientists. But back in November I wrote a post about some scientists (specifically the American Geophysical Union) pulling together a "rapid response" team to work with the media on climate change issues. I suggested that was good but not enough, and gave some ideas on action items:

One of the things they could do is hold a press conference in DC before the new Congress is seated and let the political reporters know some basic facts. Not necessarily the science of climate change, because most political reporters don't care about the science of climate change. The basic facts I'm talking about can be summed up thusly: if a politician tells you the jury is still out on man-made climate change, he's lying. Get out there first and define the lie. Yes, it's been said before. But not really in this context - right as a session of Congress is beginning. Make sure everyone knows they're lying - make sure it's the default position. Then let the media investigate the motivation behind the lie.

Then follow up the press conference with editorial board meetings with the newspapers in key Congressional districts (i.e., the members of Congress who chair relevant committees), again with the simple, clear message: if a politician tells you the jury is still out on man-made climate change, he's lying.

And so on.  So it's quite heartening to read this in Politico:

Expecting a surge next year in Republican-led House hearings on global warming science, the Union of Concerned Scientists sent experts out earlier this month to Washington and New York for meetings with reporters from 60 Minutes, Time, USA Today, Reuters, Bloomberg, MSNBC and other news organizations. Frumhoff said the journalists “were keenly interested in understanding how casting doubt about mainstream scientific findings that upset powerful financial interests, from the health risks of tobacco to the reality and risks of global warming, is a tactic that has been used time and again to delay or avoid regulation.”

UCS has also been leading behind-the-scenes efforts to get its scientists on television, radio and in print stories, as well as in front of Rotary clubs and editorial boards.

This suggests to me that scientists are thinking more strategically about communication and how it relates to policy, and this is a very good thing.

Of course, there is considerably more to this than just meeting in advance.  What does their messaging look like?  Has it been tested with focus groups or surveys?   Are they addressing the economic issues that critics leverage so effectively?  Are their spokespersons well-trained and all on the same page?  And do they have the commitment and resources to sustain a coordinated and aggressive campaign?

Here's the thing:  groups like UCS and AGU clearly have the science on their side, and they actually want more, not less, transparency in this discussion.  But critics have more money and more at stake in the short term, and they have much more experience developing and implementing effective, strategic communications campaigns.

In a future post I'll review some of the strategic pressure points advocates can use in their messaging to move from defense to offense, and win more of these PR skirmishes.

Hello, NW CleanTech!

Welcome to the Greenosphere!

Some colleagues of mine in Seattle who work in social media and green PR decided to launch a little side project they're calling NW CleanTech.  I couldn't be happier for them.  I'll let them describe it:

The mission for NW CleanTech is simple: create an online environment to facilitate conversation between the players in cleantech – from emerging inventors to established innovators – and help strengthen industry cohesion in the Northwest.

What I like most about NW CleanTech is that it's not another green PR blog or another social media blog.  Rob Gara and Evan Scandling may know green PR, and they may know social media, but they're building an online home for people in the cleantech sector talk about the things that are most important to them.  It seems that paying huge PR firms a lot of money isn't always top of mind with cleantech execs.  (Shocking, yes, I know.)   They're looking at industry trends, venture capital demands, policy issues.

They've also decided to focus on the American Northwest, a region of the country that has made a concerted effort to be a leader in this sector. They've built a valuable map of the industry's regional footprint.  They're encouraging regional industry leaders to use the site to discuss important policy and business issues, and they've already gotten some impressive participation.

NW CleanTech also has a valuable Twitter feed and a Facebook page if you're looking for updates that fit your social media persuasion.  I've had the chance to watch Rob and Evan build this project basically from the day they thought of it, and I'm very impressed with their patience and persistence.   I hope you'll check it out - whether you live in the Northwest or not.

So I bought a "book."

In case you never heard of the term, I looked it up.

book  Pronunciation: \ˈbu̇k\ Function: noun  Etymology: Middle English, from Old English bōc; akin to Old High German buoh book, Gothic boka letter  Date: before 12th century
1 a : a set of written sheets of skin or paper or tablets of wood or ivory b : a set of written, printed, or blank sheets bound together into a volume c : a long written or printed literary composition d : a major division of a treatise or literary work

It's great to see someone you like and respect have success.  Susan Getgood not only has the best name in social media marketing, she's also very smart.  She put together a valuable and clear guide for people who want to write, publish online, and maybe make a little coin while they're at it.  Susan sets herself from competitors by being an effective advocate for bloggers - as a co-founder of Blog With Integrity and the author of i-don't-know-how-many posts on how (and how not) brands and bloggers should interact, she really sets the standard for the rest of us.

In addition to the bloggers many people knew she'd highlight in the book - smart, entrepreneurial moms like Liz, Kristen, Julie, Joanne, Devra & Aviva, Mir, and a bunch of others - I was very pleased that she went beyond the mom-o-sphere and looked at some pals of mine like Chris, Preston & Jeff.  The book blends the case studies with the useful advice quite well, and it's worth a read for anyone who wants to do this social media stuff for real.

Congrats Susan!

Build Your Own App: Crisis Communications Game-Changer

So Google's open platform has sparked the next big innovation - Android operating system-based phone users will now be able to build their own mobile applications.   It's a great idea for consumers, who want to pick and choose the features they like. Google has a cute little video that shows you how easy it is to use. 


It's also enormously intimidating for those of us who practice issues management and crisis communications.

I saw this and immediately thought of what I wrote about the Good Guide mobile application:  

Now they've added a barcode scanning feature so you don't have to work your way through their lists to get the info you want right away. Nice time saver. So I tried it out on a box of cereal.

And I learned immediately that the company that made the cereal has "violated the Clean Water Act."

And then I realized it's just a matter of time before I'm going to learn if a company discriminates against gay people, or is a union buster, or has a CEO that denies climate change, or has a political action committee that gives only to Republicans, or has a slew of OSHA violations, or doesn't pay any taxes, or has another product that's being recalled - ALL AT THE POINT OF SALE.

The Android inventor labs already has a GPS feature, and a host of social network features.  If they don't have a barcode scanning feature - the video seems to suggest they do - I'm sure it will be added soon.  Google has also been working on a lot of image scanning and searching technology, so I wouldn't be surprised if you will soon be able to get a wealth of information about something immediately just by taking a picture of it.

So let's sum up - regular joes and janes will soon be able to go anywhere, scan any barcode or take a picture of anything, and access the news and databases - accurate or not - of their choice about the things and places around them.  Things like "there has been a rash of violent crime near this store" or "that place has a discrimination lawsuit filed against it" or "this product kills kittens" or anything else.

And they'll be able to share that instantly with people they know (or in the case of some Facebook friends, people they barely know.)  They'll be able to upload a blog post or a video of them talking about what they've just learned.   And that information will be shared several times over before any company has a chance to monitor it, let alone respond.

"Real time" just got more real. Maybe we should call it "surreal time."

Open for Questions... Who's Asking?

I've noticed that scientists are dusting off some decent ideas to gain greater acceptance among the general public - there's a flurry of "ask me" going on.  First, a UK-based group of paleontologists and biologists has relaunched Ask a Scientist, where anyone can submit a question about science, and someone from their rather impressive list of scientists tries to answer it.  In principle, this is an outstanding idea.  Arizona State University has a similar program, designed mainly for kids. Nice, engaging website.

The White House has launched "Ask the President's Science Advisor" that follows roughly the same concept - email a question to OSTP Director John Holdren and, starting tomorrow, he will respond each Friday to one of the questions he gets by writing a brief blog post about it.  It seems to be more casual than technical:

So now is your chance to ask America’s scientist-in-chief for his personal take on anything with an arguably scientific or technological bent: why some wines tickle his fancy more than others (and what are the chemicals that explain those preferences) or what subjects in school left him cold? How about whether he prefers academia or government, or which installment of Star Wars or episode of Star Trek says the most about modern scientific society. We want you to have fun with this and, frankly, ask some of the tough questions about Dr. Holdren that the staff here at OSTP would like to know the answers to but, well, hasn't quite gotten around to asking.

To be honest I think this is important, but I'd rather have the President's science advisor focusing less on telling me what wines he likes or his favorite Star Trek episode and more on, you know, advising the President on science issues.  Still, there is a place for advocating the importance and relevance of science, and I'm pleased that there's at least some attempt by the White House to give it some priority.

Bora Zivkovic wrote about the relaunch of Seed Media's "Ask a Scienceblogger," which also is impressive in principle. Real scientists who like to write, answering real questions from real people.

This is a very important first step.  There's a very important next step, however, and it goes back to what I said about science having a PR problem: 

Science has a serious PR problem, and it's this: Critics of science are searching people out and talking with them in the simplest terms possible. Scientists and "science writers," if they talk at all, are basically talking with each other.

So I asked Bora - a very smart and very thoughtful guy who definitely gets this - a question in the comments:

Bora, how are people who don't necessarily read scienceblogs learning about this? It sounds very VERY cool, but if I don't know about scienceblogs already, how do I know I even have the opportunity to ask?

 And Bora - again, because he really gets this - responded:

Well, this is an internal Scienceblogs.com thing, revived again after about a year or so of silence. It is targeted at regular Sb readers, but there is always hope that our links on social networks and feeds will bring in new readers as well. There is no special effort with this to bring in new readers - it is up to us bloggers to promote within and outside the network as we see fit.

So Bora is definitely out there, actively promoting this effort on his blog and through his social networks - of scientists. But how does one promote outside one's network?  If it's just for existing readers, don't they already know they can ask questions in the comments?  I know I have.  I don't want to sound like I'm dissing this idea - I think it's actually quite awesome.  I'm just saying it's important to let everyone know what you're doing.  And by everyone, I mean EVERYONE.

The people who read the Office of Science and Technology Policy blog are people who probably already know a lot about science and technology policy.  The people who read Scienceblogs - according to their own market research - are far more likely to have graduate degrees in science than the general public.   Where did I learn about Ask A Biologist?  On Scienceblogs.

The science writing community is chock full of talented people who know how to make science engaging, interesting, cool, even relatively simple for the lay audience.  But they're still preaching to the converted - they're really only speaking to people who already have an interest.  Science needs better PR - it needs people who have the ability to find bridge figures to introduce scientists to new communities and find new points of relevance.  It needs people who can identify opportunities to introduce important scientific ideas into ongoing discussions.  It needs people to connect the dots.

I want to be one of those people.

Lending Status

A very smart and creative colleague of mine let me know about The Status of Africa yesterday.  The African Medical and Research Foundation has developed a Facebook application where you "lend" your Facebook and Twitter status messages to someone in Africa for five days.    Your account then sends out tweets as if you were that person, and it includes links to relevant AMREF websites.  It strikes me as a creative awareness tool.

I should note that the status messages were actually drafted by AMREF, not necessarily the individuals they identify.  Technically that's probably the best you can do at this point. They disclose this readily, so there isn't a transparency issue in my mind.

It's enormously difficult for non-profits to break through the media noise without massive resources.  Instead groups must rely on creativity and social networking.  I don't know if this application is part of a larger strategy, and I'd like to know what they're doing about garnering traditional media attention.   Still, kudos to AMREF for showing some initiative, overcoming fears, and of course, doing the truly important work of working to improve health and development in Africa.

My Mom Is NOT a Porn Addict

Facebook's QA Team

I generally don't write about family stuff here but this time I got permission.

My mom joined Facebook yesterday - at least she tried to.  Folks have been telling her she should join because she has a local business, and she likes seeing the pictures that other family members post there.  So she went through the steps, and started building a profile - name, hometown, interests.  She uploaded a handful of pictures she took, all rated G. (Not even one breastfeeding pic.  We all know they're sensitive about that.) She followed the automated steps and sent out a couple of friend requests.

Then she got that all-too-familiar email:

Your account was disabled because it was in violation of Facebook’s Statement of Rights and Responsibilities. Nudity, sexually explicit, and other graphic content is not permitted on Facebook, nor is any content that contains self harm, depicts violence, or attacks an individual or group. In addition, harassing others through unsolicited friend requests or messages is prohibited.

Unfortunately, we won’t be able to reactivate your account or respond to your email directly. This decision is final and cannot be appealed.  You can visit the Warnings section of the Help Center for more information: 

http://www.facebook.com/help/?page=421

That was it.  Account terminated, no appeal.  Ciao, bella.  Not sure whether Facebook will claim ownership of the half-dozen pictures or demographic information she entered.

It's obvious Facebook made a fairly innocent mistake here.   But this is just the latest indication that Facebook has reached "too big to fail" status and quality control has slipped.  They just don't have the resources to properly evaluate and review disputes because they're much too busy converting your personal information into marketing profiles for companies. 

It's not a new concern.  Let me put it this way - when the Attorney General of New York calls and says you better do something about sexual predators on your network, you don't ignore him to the point where he has to issue a subpoena.   I'm sure those couple dozen messages just "fell through the cracks."

It's also clear that they're leveraging this new status to make it more complicated for people to protect their information.  They've taken "opt-out" to the next level - so far that members of Congress are again planning to regulate them more strictly.

But here is Facebook's conundrum: it requires significant resources to do real quality control and pay real attention to settling disputes when your network is 8.2 gazillion people.  What little resources the company actually has are mainly dedicated to serving advertisers.  If they move to an opt-in system, they know they will lose all sorts of information and value for advertisers and won't make as much money.  If they do real quality control and have human analysis for everyday disputes, they'll spend a lot more money.  "Less money in, more money out" isn't the best business model.  And asking subscribers to pay to make up some of the difference?  Ask the folks at Ning how that's going.

UPDATE: got this from a pal who works at NIH...

@dwescott1 for some reason your blog is being blocked by NIH's firewall.less than a minute ago via TweetDeckJonathan Gitlin
drjonboyg

Geez, you use the word "porn" in a blog post title ONE TIME...

UPDATE 2:  turns out NIH was blocking all blogspot URL's for some reason.  Susan was right.  Apparently I'm not that much of a rebel...

What Cable News Looks Like

What Fox News covered this weekend

A few years ago my friend Brad Levinson and I were talking about how one might use text clouds as an analysis tool rather than an organizing tool.  Social media in public relations and issues management was a relatively new concept at the time, and we felt strongly that companies in our industry focused far too much on things like "your company needs to build a blog" and not nearly enough on online communities and the opinion leaders in them.  So when we set about developing the ideas for Virtual Vantage Points, the blog at our company, we thought it was important to put the focus on what other communities were talking about, and we came up with the "community cloud" idea.

All we did was mash up the RSS feeds of leading blogs in specific communities - environmentalism, medicine, education, and so on - and pushed the combined feeds through a cloud generator that we had one of the developers at our company build.  We paid particular attention to political blogs - liberal blogs and conservative blogs in the US, and four communities of political blogs in the UK - Labour, Conservatives, Liberal Democrats, and Greens.

What MSNBC covered this weekend

After a few months we weren't surprised to see that the various online political communities used very different terminology to discuss things - but we were a bit surprised to see how little the discussions changed over time.  While there are a few exceptions, the most prominent American political bloggers generally talk about their adversaries more than anything else.  Even when the topic is a particular issue, that issue isn't described in depth nearly as much as the outrageous thing someone on the other side said or did.  Using our company's blog to say "bloggers are talking about the other side again today" grew old quickly, so we decided to expand the roster of contributors there and focus on more substantive things.

Now we live in the world of increasing "media convergence." Bloggers are more involved in the news as pundits, reporters, and sources, and news networks are using social media tools more often.  Nowhere is this more obvious than on cable news - the 24 hour news cycle forces networks to leverage the blogosphere and social networks for content.   And of course, politics (and political viewpoints) dominates cable news.

So are cable news networks acting like political bloggers?  Are they just talking about their perceived adversaries?

What CNN covered this weekend

I've pulled the "top news" rss feeds from Fox News, MSNBC, and CNN and pushed them through Wordle's cloud generator.  The pictures in this post represent the "top stories" each network covered over the weekend.  I'll be checking the clouds from time to time to see what kind of news they're reporting from the 30,000 foot viewpoint to see if convergence has bled into perspectives as well as tools.   I have some technical kinks to work out (notice "undefined" and other silly words in the clouds right now), but this could be interesting.

The Scariest iPhone App EVAH

I mentioned the Good Guide iPhone app in a podcast with Maria Surma Manka a while back. It's a database of consumer products and corresponding ratings based on health and nutrition value, impact on the environment, and commitment to social causes or priorities. Until recently, the shortcoming of the app was its usability - you had to work your way through categories and brands etc to find the product you wanted, and if you're at the market it becomes a time suck.

Now they've added a barcode scanning feature so you don't have to work your way through their lists to get the info you want right away. Nice time saver. So I tried it out on a box of cereal.

And I learned immediately that the company that made the cereal has "violated the Clean Water Act."

And then I realized it's just a matter of time before I'm going to learn if a company discriminates against gay people, or is a union buster, or has a CEO that denies climate change, or has a political action committee that gives only to Republicans, or has a slew of OSHA violations, or doesn't pay any taxes, or has another product that's being recalled - ALL AT THE POINT OF SALE.

This means that a company will have nothing more than the time it takes to reach for the next product on the shelf to present its side of the story and restore its reputation. And if it hasn't built up its relationship with a customer ahead of time, and inoculated its reputation against this kind of "breaking" information, it's about to go the way of the dodo.

The Day I Became an Environmentalist

This post is my contribution to sustainablog's Pedal-a-Watt Powered Blogathon this weekend. The long-running green blog (and new green shopping site) is publishing for 24 hours straight to raise funds for the Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage in Northeastern Missouri. Go join the fun: read post contributions from around the green blogosphere, leave a comment to be entered in a drawing for some great green prizes, and join in the Tweetchat at #susbppb.

I'm not what you'd call the granola-crunchy type. I don't drive a hybrid, I don't look for organic cotton, I'm not a vegetarian, and most of the time I even leave the water running while I brush my teeth. (I'm trying to stop that.) I am, however, an environmentalist - at least in the sense that I understand that smarter choices lead to healthier, more sustainable lives.

"Environmentalism" has been a big deal in my family for a long time. When I was in high school quite some time ago, my mom would take me to town meetings about the possible siting of a sewage treatment facility in my town, and she told me that trucks with chlorine gas could be driving through the town, and if something happened to one of those trucks it could be very, very bad. It was all very important, but it was also very abstract - these things weren't happening yet, and I never thought anyone would allow a system where an entire town gets wiped out because a truck turned over. The treatment plant got built, but the trucks with the chlorine gas never materialized, and frankly not many people are all that upset about the whole thing anymore.

The light really switched on for me in my first week as "assistant to the Chairman for special projects" in the Department of Pediatrics in what was then called Boston City Hospital. The Chairman was a great guy named Barry Zuckerman. In addition to being this amazing physician and researcher, he just "got it" - he understood that a child's health is affected by dozens of things most doctors can't address.

Barry may be best known for developing the model and co-founding the Reach Out and Read Program, a "nonprofit organization that promotes early literacy and school readiness in pediatric exam rooms nationwide by giving new books to children and advice to parents about the importance of reading aloud." But what did it for me was another project he started with a lawyer named Josh Greenberg called the Family Advocacy Program. It grew into the Medical-Legal Partnership. Josh and Barry told this great story.

Doctors were seeing young children from housing projects show up in their clinics with some pretty nasty asthma. We all know that environmental factors such as allergens and pollution can exacerbate the symptoms of asthma, so in addition to prescribing medicine the doctors would tell the parents about not smoking around the kids, limiting exposure to cats or dogs, and so on. Still, the kids would come back, far too often, with terrible symptoms of asthma. Eventually they discovered that housing projects were carpeted, and those carpets had gotten wet, dirty, and moldy, and the mold was triggering asthmatic attacks.

Of course, a doctor can't prescribe removal of a moldy carpet in a state-administered, federally-funded housing project. And that's where Josh came in. He would navigate the legal bureaucracy to get things done. It was typically a bunch of inside-baseball stuff - it's not like you need to stage a rally decrying the evils of "Big Carpet Corporations" - but it meant a lot to the children and families affected by it.

In truth, the carpet story was just one of many things they did, and I never got the impression that Barry or Josh saw themselves as environmental crusaders. They were child advocates. Barry recruited tons of people to work on dozens of innovative ideas that could improve the health of children - the Child Witness to Violence Project comes to mind. I was really just along for the ride for a few years.

But I never forgot that story about the carpet in the housing project. I understood, in concrete terms, the public health impact of changes to a specific environment. I saw it again in the winter when the hospital's Failure To Thrive Clinic reported children were malnourished and losing weight because low-income parents were using some of the meager food budget to pay for heat.

Why is this story relevant now? Simple. In December the US Environmental Protection Agency announced a determination that greenhouse gasses are a threat to public health, and the agency asserted its authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate the emission of those gasses. The EPA has started a fairly gradual process of data collection and is considering next steps. This action has led to an uproar among the largest emitters of GHG's and their supporters.

But it's really not that far-fetched to suggest there are significant (if unintended) public health consequences to the things we do, and it's not all that bad if people outside the traditional health care profession take meaningful steps to address them.

My friends over at sustainablog are going to be at the eco bed & breakfast The Milkweed Mercantile throwing a blogathon to raise money for Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage. One of the longest-running blogs on environmental issues, sustainablog also recently launched an eco friendly products comparison shopping site, selling everything from green cleaning supplies and organic clothing to energy efficient appliances and composting toilets.

The blogathon will raise funds to support residential learning opportunities at Dancing Rabbit in organic gardening, natural green building, and wind and solar renewable energy design and installation. Interested in checking out Dancing Rabbit for yourself, or taking advantage of some of their educational opportunities? Read more here. And consider making a pledge to support this sustainable community's efforts.

Media Convergence Done Right

Global Voices Online and BBC News team up.

Congratulations to Ivan, Solana, and everyone at Global Voices - and to BBC News for having the courage to try something new.