Brave New Web - MIT Enterprise Forum of Cambridge

Just returned to work from attending the "Brave New Web" Enterprise Forum MIT event , at the Collonade in Boston, MA. The conference focused on Web 2.0 and its implications for the market and society at large today and more specifically, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists.

Have to say that it was an extremely valuable use of my time. I got to meet some great folks like Steve Kaufman of Applied Strategies International -whom I had a great discussion with and brought some good takeaways back home.

One highlight for me was getting to sit down and have a wonderful conversation about technological change with Juliette Powell (from Inspiration Festival) and her mother while checking my e-mail at the end of the day in the lobby. Juliette and her mother participated in a great breakout session named "From Geeks to Grandmothers, Extending the Reach of Technology" framed around discussing barriers to various non-technical audiences becoming involved in technology. It really brought to light some interesting broad technological adoption challenges in a personal way, with many of the attendees sharing their hilarious stories of their own non-techno parents' mishaps with technology.

See some additional wrap-ups of the events of the day:

• MIT EF "Brave New Web" Conference / A Call For New England Startups

• In the moment… notes from the MIT Enterprise Forum 2007 Winter Conference

• Brave New Web
  
  
• The Brave New Web? It's all business
  
  
• Steve Garfield was also there - here is his take on the event
  

This blogging thing is as tough as some say it is

I have committed the first sin of blogging- not posting frequently to maintain an active and engaged audience! When I set this blog up I thought there would be plenty of time in my day to write an entry, and like anything else that is worth doing in the world, the time is not there unless you make it.

I thought I would get back to the original idea that made me create this blog. As a higher education professional (and also a citizen of the 21st century) I had an aha! moment. I realized the information world was being flipped on its head. The real information age is just beginning, we are just starting to realize some of the benefits, and pitfalls, of such a world.

Many thought the Internet bubble/burst was the "internet revolution". I now look at it a pre-revoolution period that set the stage for what we are beginning to see now.

An incredible display of this is when I wanted a generic news update on the Mars probe missions, and expecting a bland discussion and maybe a couple of photos, I got this surprise !!

I think the example above illustrates that as technology folks building some of this stuff, we need to be aware that serving our audiences needs does not mean merely meeting their expectations of what they want to find on our site. Serving the audience means much more now, because sometimes the audience doesn't even know what it needs when they get to your site.

Sometimes a visitor thinks they need a news report, when in reality they really just need Martian clouds.

Explaining RSS to the unaware(which means everyone)

In a meeting the other day, it occurred to me that trying to describe RSS in a straightforward way to those unfamiliar with its benefits is not the easiest thing to do.

Usually I will start with a description of its advantages, such as "content consumers can choose the newsfeeds they want to subscribe to and have the updates pushed out to something called a feedreader. "

Then I realize the term newsfeed and feedreader are foreign to most in the room as well. So I usually backtrack to a real world example: magazines. I tell the group or individual that it is like subscribing to a magazine, but instead of a magazine you get specialized pieces of content in a reader.

Usually, most people are excited about the possibility when they grasp it remotely, but according to mStoner's recent entry, almost NOBODY knows what RSS is. I encourage everyone to read his posts, because he beat me to the punch with many of his thoughts on this matter. Sure they may use a portal page such as myYahoo! that uses RSS feeds, but the average users have no idea where that content is coming from.

Sometimes I resort to saying, "it's easy to understand once you use it a bit", and let them know that they can download many browser plugins such as Sage to begin utilizing RSS. But what are the chances they will take time out of their life to do this!

On the plus side, RSS functionality has been added into the students' webmail package here on campus. As Michael Stoner said in his post(I am paraphrasing here), add RSS to my e-mail client, and then maybe we can see some adoption.

I really hope so, it would be a shame to have such a great, simple technology go to waste and die an early death because of low usage across the general population.

Back from vacation

I am now back from vacation and plan on posting a bit more later this week, but as it always happens, I am buried right now for the next couple of days playing catch-up. Sometimes I wonder if that vacation is worth the 70 e-mails when I return!!

All about the numbers?

Just read here that mySpace-related searches account for 8% of all Google searches and 5% of total internet search traffic!!

"Little wonder, then, why a search and advertising powerhouse like Google wants a piece of the action given that MySpace generates more than 8.5% of all Google's traffic and 5% of all general Internet searches, according to Hitwise. The billion-dollar question nagging at News Corp. executives is how to enter an alliance with the likes of Google and not lose control."

Is this why Marketers are currently in a frenzy to enter these arenas? To get a piece of the action by reaching vast amounts of visitors? Is it the sheer numbers that are drawing everyone's attention to social media, podcasting, and consumer generated content?

I think it is only a tiny piece of the puzzle. There has to be more to the attention these media are receiving than just, "they have come, now you build it". (the opposite of "if you build it they will come").

Speaking of "if you build it they will come" -- isn't that way of thinking one of the main contributors to the dot-com bubble burst??

They had the "who" and the "what" down fairly well. No one ever addressed the "why" and thus failed in the end to become viable businesses.

Those are just some thoughts on that way of thinking, which IMHO is deeply flawed.

Mainstream "traditional" media picking up on new trends in media

Not suprisingly, the mainstream media has been giving a great deal of attention to new social media trends. SecondLife, the online virtual world that , has recently been featured in high profile articles in magazines and newspapers around the country. The latest coverage comes from the Boston Globe's article on SL

The use of SL as a new marketing tool has been the subject of most of the articles that I have seen. When CC Chapman's blog post "Not Getting It (which I highly recommend) pointed out this post knocking SL it got me thinking-- Is all of this SecondLife hype and coverage a big PR scheme for companies and institutions to cash in on??

My opinion is no. SL and other future iterations of the same idea will change the way companies, and institutions do business. That is the reason for the PR rush. Like any new trend, it will have it's doubters and be labelled by some as "just a fad".

I bet the Recording Industry was hoping that downloading music was "just a fad" for "computer nerds only" when Napster came out. Seems like they miscalculated...

First Post - Welcome Everyone

Greetings everyone! This blog is aimed at addressing the ongoing media revolution, in paticular its implications on the higher education sector. My name is Dan and I work in a higher ed institution as the main person responsible for digital marketing. Folks in my age group have narrowly missed out on some of the new media trends that those a couple of years younger have helped to create. In my current position, I can't afford to be left behind these trends, and neither can you if you are involved in the web and Marketing at an institution of Higher Education!!

For example, I watch my younger sister spend countless hours using social media on the internet (myspace, facebook, AIM etc). This is an intricate part of her life, and the life of most Millenials (those aged roughly 13-24). It is now my job, and the aim of this blog to figure out what this all means, and how it can be used to advance my institution.

These new media trends, according to many, promise to change many fundamentals of our world as we know it. I'll be discussing some of these radical changes and their potential (hence the use of the term "Revolution" in the blog title) in the upcoming months.