Originally published on Flip the Media.
2010 was stuffed with technological innovation and gadgets that bedazzle (and break your budget.)
For 2011, I recommend the following five technologies. Some may be familiar, some may be new to you, but all are worth a try.
1. Landline phones
Mobile phones are great on the go, but their voice feature is suboptimal: reception can be spotty, calls get dropped, and noise distortion can turn a conversation into an exercise in misunderstanding.
With close to hundred percent uptime, landline phones are attractive to consumers who are willing to trade portability and location-based check-ins for reliability and sound quality.
Landline phones are a must-buy for entrepreneurs and business professionals. A call on your mobile or on your landline—it can mean the difference between losing and winning a business deal.
Cost: Landline phones are inexpensive ($5 and up), but plans can set you back an extra $40 in addition to your mobile plan. Qwest is a leader in landline phone connections.
Phone features vary by brand and model. A cordless phone provides limited portability within the home, but security experts recommend having at least one corded phone in the home for emergency situations, when electricity may not be available to recharge battery-operated phones.
2. E-mail
Texts, tweets, and status updates: who needs another communication channel? Read more…
Can’t you hear beyond the croaking?—Peter Gabriel, Kiss That Frog
It’s an old story: A frog magically transforms into a prince.
On YouTube, that old tale of instant transformation seems to play out on a regular basis, because of the sheer number of frogs (uploads) and kisses (sharing of videos).
In the past few days, Ted Williams, the now formerly homeless man with the “golden voice” has become the latest YouTube celebrity to follow in the footsteps of Susan Boyle and Justin Bieber.
Williams, who just a few days ago was panhandling holding a sign announcing his voice talent, was hired today by MSNBC to do voiceovers for the network, and earlier was offered a job and a house by the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Suddenly, everyone is hearing beyond the croaking—or rather, seeing beyond the disheveled appearance of a homeless man—to discover the voice within.
In the Multimedia Storytelling class I’m taking this quarter at the MCDM, we’ve been discussing how most stories follow a classic, Aristotelian arc, often featuring a dramatic reversal of fortune and a transformation of the hero.
Williams’ story is a school-book example: a rags-to-riches, obscurity-to-fame story.
His story calls to mind the Brothers Grimm’s story The Frog King. In modern versions of the tale, the frog’s transformation is triggered by a princess’ kiss, but in earlier versions, the spell is broken by throwing the frog against the wall.
Williams’ reversal of fortune seems like an act of love, in which a nation is suddenly embracing his hidden talent, but there’s also something violent and unrelenting in the way he’s been thrust in the social and mass media spotlight.
Meanwhile in Hollywood, a script writer is undoubtedly already working on writing a film about Williams’ life, featuring a hero who overcomes addiction to alcohol and drugs, gets clean, finds religion and is lifted out of his homeless existence through a chance encounter with a video journalist.
That all may sound like a LifeTime cliché, but John Hartley argues in “Uses of YouTube: Digital Literacy and the Growth of Knowledge,” that YouTube’s banality doesn’t preclude an important role in influencing popular culture and even fine arts. YouTube may even restore “an ancient, multi-voiced mode of narration to cultural visibility,” he claims.
Powerful stories illuminate who we are and want to be. Williams’ story resonates because we root for the hero who’s suddenly recognized for who truly is.
It’s not unthinkable that Williams’ story will leap-frog from being an ephemeral trending topic to a modern-day myth.
I’m enrolled in a Multimedia Storytelling this quarter at the Master of Communication in Digital Media program at the University of Washington.
The class is taught by Hanson Hosein, recently named by Seattle Magazine as one of the most influential people in Seattle.
One of the great things about the program is that it usually results in logorrhoea of the brain, a sudden excessive flows of ideas. I will be using this blog to try to structure some of my thoughts throughout the quarter.
Have you ever registered for a class and within five minutes of attending your first class had serious doubts about the wisdom of that decision? When this happens, you’re almost never wrong. (This doesn’t happen at the MCDM, of course.)
Tonight, the opposite happened.
As a veteran MCDM student, with only three classes to go—one of which is a core class—I am trying to figure out which classes will best round out my education as a content strategist.
I am not taking a class this quarter, so I decided to take the opportunity to check out four instructors I haven’t yet taken a class with at the MCDM. They were all gracious enough to agree to me sitting in on a class.
Tonight, I had the pleasure to attend Business Fundamentals and Digital Communications: Foundation, taught by UW Business School professor Rick McPherson.
In this class, students learn how to create a business plan for a new company they want to start (fictional or not). They can choose whether they want to work on an individual plan or work in a team of 3-5 members.
In tonight’s class, the students who want to work in team presented a pitch for their new business idea to try to convince other students to jump on their bandwagon. A tall order, since that would require students to abandon their own, always precious, idea.
It was a real pleasure to see once again the amazing creativity of students in the MCDM program. There were at least three or four presentations where I thought, “Oh, I’d like to work on that project! Maybe I should approach the presenter to see if we could collaborate.” Then: “Oh, darn, I’m not in the class.”
I was also impressed with the way Rick ran the class. He clearly thought through the process of how the class should be organized, but was also very much on top of what was going on. Students who started to drift into details would be steered back to the big picture of their pitch with a dry sense of humor and directness that I would greatly appreciate. A tight ship.
After witnessing McPherson in action, I’m not surprised that fellow MCDM student Jon Hickey, who won the UW’s Business Plan competition with his proposal for YongoPal, credited this class as instrumental to his success.
The class description (below) sounded great, but you never know if you will like a class until you attend it, so I’m happy I did.
To say it with a phrase du jour: a big like.
Of course, this was just a snapshot, but it made me think I’d like to take this class. (Any students from previous years who can corroborate my initial impression?)
My big fear is that I will end up liking the other three classes I plan to check out this quarter just as much. I can only hope that by the time I graduate, MCDM will provide alumni with a good deal on the classes they missed out on.
Class description, from MCDM curriculum:
A practical understanding of key business fundamentals is essential in being able to create and implement digital communications strategies in today’s organizations. This course will be useful for students that are employed in large and small businesses, wanting to start their own business, or for those working in or with NGOs/non-profit organizations.
The learning focus will be on business fundamentals within the world of digital communications companies and departments within organizations. We will cover the following subjects: Marketing/Sales, basics of Finance and Accounting (including understanding ROI), operations, and implementation.
In addition to discussing materials and concepts in these business areas, students will be applying what they are learning by building a business plan of their own or on a team that is of interest to several students.
As a result of taking this course, students will have a better understanding of the underlying issues facing business and be able to develop more relevant strategies and tactics to leverage the opportunities and challenges that digital media presents. At the completion of the class, students will be able present their ideas and initiatives in a more persuasive way to the decision makers in organizations by aligning their suggestions with the needs and issues facing the organization.
Every day you go online, you encounter little annoyances, even things that infuriate you. An entrepreneur won’t just chafe at these irritations, said Posterous co-founder Garry Tan at last weekend’s StartupDay, but turn frustration into innovation—creating a new product isn’t just a labor of love, it’s also a labor of hate.
“You’ve got to connect with what you hate, what you can’t stand. You’re starting up a company because you want to fix it,” Tan said.
At Posterous, Tan set out to build a blogging platform that would skip the annoying step of having to create yet another login. Users can create posts by simply emailing text and photos to the service, which automatically uploads and formats the content.
Tan’s talk on the three steps of a “product-driven state of mind” was a highlight of StartupDay 2010, hosted by Seattle 2.0, an organization dedicated to providing resources for tech entrepreneurs and startups.
Hate the problem is the first step towards creating great products, according to Tan, but completely fixing the problem is not necessarily the best second step. It’s counterproductive to be too perfectionist at the beginning, Tan warned. More important than creating a perfect product is creating any product at all. The second step is to ship the solution, Tan argued, even an imperfect one, because “until you can interact with the product, it doesn’t exist.” And what doesn’t exist, you can’t improve. Read more…
the ambition to become an entrepreneur, you may want to head over to StartupDay 2010 on Saturday, September 25.Presented by Seattle 2.0, the conference features an impressive roster of speakers, who will guide “pre-entrepreneurs” through the process of picking the right idea, building a team, wooing venture capitalists, building a product, and bringing it to market.The conference also features sessions on an often-elusive goal: Making a profit.StartupDay features local luminaries such as Keith Smith, (Co-founder & CEO of BigDoor Media), Monica Harrington (Chief Marketing Officer of Intersect) and Vivek Bhaskharan (Founder & CEO of Survey Analytics), as well as co-founders of LinkedIn, SlideShare and Posterous.
During the conference, attendees will be able to receive individual guidance from experienced entrepreneurs, investors and attorneys. Meetings will be booked on a first-come first-serve basis, so arrive early in the Advisory Room to sign up for up to two meetings.
I will be covering this conference for Flipthemedia.com, the blog of the University of Washington Master of Communication in Digital Media (MCDM) program.
On Friday, I put out a call to contribute to a crowdsourced personal branding experiment (hashtag: #peterluxstory). I posted the concept on my blog, and followed up on Saturday with Twitter DMs (direct messages) and email messages through LinkedIn with a shorter and more direct call to action (a request for a recommendation either on Twitter or on LinkedIn). I also provided a motivation to contribute (I mentioned I was collecting recommendations for a marketing/storyteller job I am applying for). Finally, I mentioned that I had only a short time frame to collect recommendations (by end of day Sunday), which contributed to receiving fast responses.
I wanted to experiment with using Twitter for this purpose, because tweets are concise by design. I also thought I would receive more authentic and personal responses than on LinkedIn, which seems to elicit more serious, “professional” recommendations. In addition, I speculated that I would get a higher response rate if I offered a “twitterecommendation” as an option, because crafting a tweet would be quicker and require less work for respondents.
Above all I hoped for high-quality and sincere recommendations.
The enthusiastic response from so many people surprised and humbled me. Every single recommendation shows the writer took the time to craft a thoughtful, sincere recommendation. Both the Twitterecommendations and the LinkedIn recommendations exceeded my expectations.
High on my to-do list is to reciprocate with my own recommendations for everyone who responded. Not just because it’s what you’re supposed to do, but because I highly respect and admire each and single one of the people who took the time to respond.
For now: Thank you all!
Twitterecommendations (see all at #peterluxstory):
A sample from the LinkedIn recommendations I received (see all at the bottom of my LinkedIn profile page):
“Choosing Peter to be the first Managing Editor of our online publication, Flip The Media was an easy decision. He’s a superb writer, a disciplined manager and a creative thinker. Thanks to Peter’s excellent work, he elevated our digital media graduate program’s “public voice” to another level, invigorating our community, and most importantly, raising its editorial quality. I would not hesitate to recommend Peter for any position of leadership for creative, online endeavor.” — July 18, 2010, Hanson Hosein, Director M.C. Digital Media, University of Washington
“Peter is an intelligent, thoughtful person who always demonstrates his passions and interests in classroom debates and discussions. He is a reliable teammate for any team project, and he has earned the respect of his fellow MCDM comrades as well as the faculty because he consistently exceeds expectations and puts in the extra work to the benefit of our academic community. Any employer would be lucky to have Peter on board.” July 18, 2010 — Paolo Mottola, Social Media Specialist, Eddie Bauer
“I worked with Peter as an editor at Flip the Media, a blog about the digital media revolution. In short, Peter is a terrific editor-in-chief. Not only has he improved the quality of writing of the Flip the Media blog, he also helped redefine and redirect the blog to become more thoughtful, timely and topical. It has blossomed from a student blog to a publication with sophistication and verve. Peter and I also worked on an detailed social media project proposal for the Seattle International Film Festival. As a colleague, he is very collaborative, detail-oriented, an excellent writer, and intellectual. Any organization would be lucky to have Peter.” July 18, 2010 — Suna Gurol, Student, University of Washington
