Very interesting use of a Ning by a theatre company.

Promoting his new book (which I've not started yet) Scott gives a very basic introduction to the origins of the form and dispells a few myths. 35 mintues of talk followed by Q&A. Worth watching.

10 minute mp3 in which @gandy looks at how we're playing with conventions of audience, power, conversation and more. I aspire to be this coherent and to strike such a great balance between optimism and caution. Highly recommended.

I enjoyed the live video stream of this panel discussion at the Amb:IT:ion Roadshow last week so while we wait for the recording to make it online here's the liveblog transcript.

Mark Ball, previously of Fierce Earth and the RSC and now Artistic Director of LIFT, the London International Festival of Theatre, sumarises how the revolution in digital communication / social media might affect the arts sector.

Relentlessly honest blog

"The problem is simple. Marketers don't understand channels where you have to talk and listen at the same time. Like one of those maddening not-full-duplex speakerphones where you can't interrupt somebody, this is what drives customers nuts. Think about it. None of those talking channels allows a response. None of those listening channels encourages actual feedback from the company."

Sometimes you need to be a bit clever with your search terms. “Craft” is a bit vague and covers a lot of things not related to what you’re after. But a lot of online craft people use http://www.etsy.com/ to sell their work so I tried searching for “etsy” on Vimeo. There’s a few interesting thing there:

http://www.vimeo.com/videos/search:etsy/sort:newest/format:thumbnail

It also brings about 5000 videos up on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/results.php?search_query=etsy

“How much of audience is getting news online and how much via print?”

the shift of traditional news from print to online does have implications (rather than buying one paper you can read bits of the Guardian, Telegraph, Mail and BBC, for example) but a more interesting question might be:

“How much of an audience is getting news via word of mouth and how much via traditional media gatekeepers?”

One of the things social media does is amplify word of mouth to an incredible degree (for good or bad – the medium is neutral to the message being transmitted). I don’t need to meet my friends and peers in person or talk to them on the phone to find out what’s going on – I pick it up from Facebook, Twitter, blogs, etc which allows me to get information from a much larger number of people than before.

This is most striking with major events (Iran being the current example) but it’s happens with the minor, inconsequential stuff.

I jokingly refer to Tweetdeck as crack for the OCD Twitterers as it can encourage information overload, but my personal prejudice aside it’s a really good way to keep tabs on keywords. Set up a couple of searches for your organisation’s name or a subject of interest and see what comes in.

If Tweetdeck does turn out to be too much for you give Twhirl a go. It does most of the same things but takes up much less screen space.

A lot of this article is about the technical stuff, which is interesting, but the universal lesson for any kind of participation is "Your workers are unpaid, so make it fun"

A bit blunt and I wouldn't necessarily agree with some of the assertions but hits some key points on why people share stuff. Suspect it's more complex than this though.

Some common sense stuff but good to see it in one place. I'd be a little gentle on the link bait though. Too much can give the wrong impression (this prob applies to anything though).

Audio of the talk from the author of the Digital Britain report. Worth a listen, in my view

Something I wrote about blogging and Twitter as a way of processing ideas which might be a useful way to think about your blogging.

All the blogs from the Metapod Connect people in one handy place

"Derek Powazek dropped this little piece of truth on Twitter recently:

'Twitter was more fun when I could bitch about a company without them replying to ask how they can provide me with excellent service today.'

Things have changed since Word of Mouth got a permlink. When I'm complaining about a company to my friends or while walking down the street, no one seems to care. When I'm calling a company and complaining one-on-one, I don't always get excellent service. Boy, but if you mention a company on your blog, or even better, on Twitter, you'll likely get a reply in minutes."

Might be relevant to your organisation?

Tom Ewing's response to the Foucault / Panopticon essay.

"The genius of the current model is that we are self-surveillant, of course. We willingly offer our identity, friends, thoughts and so-forth, to the all-seeing eyes of anyone who can be bothered to set up an appropriate search alert. We’re consequently a bit less likely to say or do things that fall outside the accepted models of political and corporate behaviour."

Dictionary of socialmedia terms

Social media glossary, aimed at PR industry

Wiki for social media terms

I often say I don't know what teenagers do online so I can't help you with that. danah boyd would be who I'd turn to if I wanted to find out more. Here's a selection of her popular articles with the youth culture ones at the top.

60 minute documentary about social media affecting society. Notable because it looks at British examples, albeit mainly from a politics / democracy POV. The stuff about the football club is interesting - moving fans from supporting a club to participating in running a club by turning it into a game of sorts.

A fair amount of what I know I leaned from Meg.

"Social media is sometimes waved around like a magic stick, or an enchanted bean, which only some people - hallowed (mostly) self-identified consultants - can manipulate or unlock the secrets of.

But it’s not. Among other definitions, and at its most basic, social media is tools, situations and applications which enable people to talk to & with other people, about stuff they’re passionate or curious about.

Consultants can tell you interesting things about social media, and how it’s being used, and how it might develop or change over time, and how people might use it, but anyone - including me - who tells you that you absolutely MUST do X or Y to definitely make your magic social media beans flourish and grow, is making it up."

I found this irreverent talk to be rather inspirational, but then I'm a fan of both speakers. Your mileage may vary especially as they're talking to a room full of people-like-me so injokes abound. But I hope there's some good stuff in there. "We talked about building a blog you can be proud of, trying to improve the quality of your work, reaching the people you admire, and maybe even making a buck (in a way that doesn’t blow your deal)."

Lloyd Davis ponders how theatres could use blogs. This is from 2005 when blogs was pretty much all there was. Add Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, etc as appropriate. "A young lady in South Carolina was asking about advertising for theatre. It struck me as ironic – and I said so – that just as advertising and marketing folk are realising that they have to go for authentic emotional engagement and telling a good story, theatre people, for whom this is their stock-in-trade want to know from advertising bods how to go about it. Obvious to me it is that a blog about the production would be a really cool way of generating and sustaining buzz. So I stuck my oar in."

My report on Gail Durbin's presentation at C:Cubed last December where she talked about the online participatory stuff they've been doing at the V&A including the serendipitous beginnings of The Beach Project. Very inspiring and applicable to all sorts of organisations and establishments.

Tom Ewing provides one of the best guides I've seen as to what Twitter is, what it isn't, why it matter and why it doesn't. In 84 paragraphs of less that 140 characters. You'll want to skim this but there's some good stuff in there. He's writing on a music site so watch out for that focus.

"The famous hockey player Wayne Gretzky once said: “A good hockey player plays where the puck is; a great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be.” In this post I want to uncover the obstacles to self-promoting music and suggest an alternate path that will take you where the puck is going to be."

"Tom Steinberg once said that that, on the web; ‘If you don’t want a fight, don’t set up a boxing ring and invite people in‘. Good community sites follow this maxim and create a climate in which people don’t get abusive. Traditional newspaper websites of course don’t – by setting up a story as a ‘controversial issue’, you invite people to have a scrap."

"Recently I wrote an article for A List Apart, the site for people who make websites, on applying the Wisdom of Crowds to web communities. One of the interesting things about this stuff is, once you start seeing it, you realize it’s all around you. Here’s a list of places you can observe the wisdom of crowds in action. Note the common theme in all of them: many individual decisions that, when aggregated, say something more."

"It’s one of the most important concepts on the web today—perhaps the most important for social media—but it’s one of the least understood. When James Surowiecki wrote The Wisdom of Crowds in 2004, he explored the stock market and other classic social psychology examples, but “web 2.0” was still nascent. It’s time to connect his ideas to the social web, where they can reach their full potential. The Wisdom of Crowds (WOC) theory does not mean that people are smart in groups—they’re not. Anyone who’s seen an angry mob knows it. But crowds, presented with the right challenge and the right interface, can be wise. When it works, the crowd is wiser, in fact, than any single participant."

Nice start from Becs at using Delicious to organise resources.

Jon Bound's talk from Friday night at Metapod Connect

Video showing how when we add data and metadata to the Internet it effectively learns. Hard to boil down to a soundbite. Well worth a watch or two. Don't worry if you don't understand it all. It'll come in time.

Classic video where Jon Udell looks at the evolution of a relatively obscure Wikipedia article and in doing so uncovers how the Wikipedia community collectively writes, edits and manages the site. It's about 7 minutes long.

Michael Grimes has adapted the US Airforce blog assessment chart into plainer English "more suitable for UK Third Sector organisations" and provided a high resolution PDF to print out and stick on your wall. A handy, level headed guide for when someone writes something about you online.