Web Ink Now

SXSW responds to Japan disasters in real-time

UPDATE March 22, 2011 With the SXSW festivals winding down, $100,000 has been raised by this effort. Congratulations to all involved.

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UPDATE March 13, 2011 sxsw4japan.org was started by Leigh Durst (@livepath), RobWu (@robjwu) and Deb Ng (@debng) in the SXSW blogger lounge. It was not an effort of the organizers of the SXSW festival. So far, over $12,000 has been raised.

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I'm at the South-by-Southwest festival in Austin Texas now having fun, going to parties, meeting people, and I am giving two talks.

SXSW is all about community, so it is great that we’ve come together to support the people of Japan with a real-time .ORG site at sxsw4japan.org and @sxsw4japan Twitter feed to raise funds. As of this writing, nearly $10,000 has been raised.

This is all about real-time!

The disaster happened yesterday. The site went live the same day. And within about 24 hours, nearly the entire fundraising goal has been reached.

A CNET article talks up my friend Hugh Forrest, SXSW interactive director, as he kicked off the campaign. (I went to college with Hugh). "Can the SXSW community raise $10,000 for Japan in 4 days? Of course we can," the sxsw4japan site urges attendees. "We at SXSW Interactive can make a difference. We can raise funds for the American Red Cross to provide disaster relief in Japan. Donate now to the American Red Cross or create a fundraising page to raise support."

I'm constantly amazed by the power of real-time. What can it do for you?

NOTE: Some of you may know that mu wife Yukari Watanabe Scott is Japanese and that I lived in Japan for seven years. All our friends and family are safe.

Baked Relief: Crowdsourced help to feed those affected by Queensland flooding

In our real-time world, one person – such as Danielle Crismani – with passion and a computer or mobile device can make a huge difference in the world.

I've been following the terrible flooding situation in Queensland, Australia. I've been to this beautiful part of the world several times, and I am scheduled to deliver a Real-Time Marketing & PR Masterclass in association with Business Connect in Brisbane, a hard-hit city, in early April. (I’m also presenting in Melbourne and Sydney.)

Yesterday, Mel Kettle, a freelance marketing consultant based in Brisbane, contacted me via Twitter to share a remarkable story of Baked Relief a crowdsourced support for those affected.

Baked Love

Baked Relief - #bakedrelief - is a movement of thousands of people who bake and cook, providing home-prepared food to people directly affected by the floods as well as those Volunteering, emergency workers such as QLD Police, Fire & Ambulance workers and the military.

The Baked Relief movement was started by Danielle Crismani when she tweeted on January 10 to tell her followers that that she would take cupcakes to the volunteer Sandbaggers working near her home.

The next day was the first use of the #bakedrelief hashtag. On January 17, www.bakedrelief.org was launched. The site provides details for those willing to volunteer and those in need. It also accepts donations from people like me who are far away from the devastation.

On January 18, #bakedrelief was the #2 trending hashtag in Australia with #qldfloods in the #1 spot.

Many people are blogging and tweeting to spread the word and Australia's mainstream media has picked up on the movement including this report from The Today Show.

Mel and Danielle assume at least 1,000 people in South East Queensland alone (not just Brisbane) have volunteered. People are driving over two hours away to deliver food, and they know of at least one group - Funky Pies - who drove up from Sydney (about 1,000km and 12 hour drive) to deliver their pies to people working at Volunteering Queensland, Queensland Police and an evacuation centre.

Crowdsourced help for those in need.

This story is a great example of the power of real-time communications. No traditional advertising, media relations, or marketing techniques were used. The entire effort was crowdsourced in real-time.

How are you making a difference in people's lives?

Radiohead and crowdsourced video

In August 2009 a group of over 80 Radiohead fans descended on the Výstavištĕ Holešovice Exhibition Hall in Prague on a mission to capture the band playing live using as many different video camera angles as possible.

Most used inexpensive Flip Video cameras and the 50 or so camera angles were edited into one seamless two-hour concert video.

The band lent support by providing digital masters of the audio track for the entire concert. The result is stunning. Check out the trailer. Widescreen here.

This crowdsourced project shows that fans will support you if you let them.

Here is the complete concert video.

Last week I spoke about this project to a professional cameraman. He was hostile the idea. He said the video would be shaky. That amateurs can’t do it right. He told me without a proper setup with booms and cranes it won’t look good.

Last I checked, Radiohead was doing just fine thank you. And this project cost them nothing and gained more exposure for the band.

(I’d like to try this sometime duding one of my speeches…)

Gotta pee? The mobile potty finder

I'm obsessed by mobile applications that combine valuable information with real-time GPS capability. Geo-location applications will see explosive growth in coming years and therefore are important for marketers to understand.

You can engage some of the people in real time some of the time. You can engage desktop-computer users when they’re at their desks. Sometimes you can engage notebook users at Starbucks.

But only when users go mobile can you engage all of the people in real time all of the time. That's why mobile devices are the fastest-growing and most fascinating field in the Real-Time Marketing & PR world.

For example, consider the SitOrSquat bathroom finder application for iPhone and other devices. It contains (as of this writing) nearly 100,000 public restrooms, all geo-located.

While the application is global, at this point most potties are located in the US.

If you've got to pee and you are in New York City, you're in luck! However, if you're feeling the urge to tinkle in Helsinki, well, you've got to hold it a bit longer as there are only four loos listed in that city.

Find a place to go when you are on the go.

The SitOrSquat bathroom finder is sponsored by Charmin, from P&G, America's most popular toilet paper for more than 25 years. Gotta love that sponsorship!

The press release sent in March 2009 announcing the sponsorship must have been fun to write.

"For nearly a decade, Charmin has been dedicated to giving consumers a great public bathroom experience. This commitment started in 2000 with 'Charminizing' public restrooms at State Fairs, then the mobile unit 'Potty Palooza' from 2003-2005 and finally, with the next evolution, The Charmin Restrooms in Times Square."

GPS-enabled mobile apps

Adding GPS capability to a mobile transforms a general window on the online world into a lens focused on its proximate surroundings.

With GPS, a mobile gains awareness of nearby people, objects, and offerings that trumpet their location online. So even in unfamiliar territory, the user is richly informed: "Oh, I see, that’s the subway entrance over there, and the post office is next door. I can grab a burger on the corner or a coffee across the street. And when I need to poo, I've got that covered too."

Anyone got any fun GPS-enabled apps to share?

How to integrate social media into a conference or event

The conference as we used to know it was very stiff, structured and didactic.

It's been the same since Cicero—the speaker spoke and the audience listened. Maybe the audience had a chance to ask questions at the end, or chat about the content at coffee break, but like television it was essentially one-way communication.

I speak at about 50 conferences and events all over the world each year. The best are those that integrate the physical event.

Integrate Social Media at your event

Now, at conferences all over the world, audience members connect with one another in real time while speakers are up at the podium. This "back-channel" is truly revolutionary as it allows listeners to discuss content as it is being delivered. What’s more, it brings a new virtual audience into the room—sometimes from the opposite end of the Earth.

Hashtags allow people in the audience and everywhere else can tune into the back channel. Many attendees post photos and video clips in real time too so people can see what's happening.

Crowdsourcing - when others post content to your conference site - is a terrific way to build valuable information.

It's not just Twitter either. Some people at conferences now use GPS-enabled mobile applications like Foursquare—which allows you to see where your friends are in the conference hall (or playing hooky at the bar). And with live video streaming services like Qik, anyone can upload a speech to the Internet in real time.

Alan Belniak, Director of Social Media Marketing at PTC, wrote about how he integrated social media into the PTC/USER World Event 2010 held a few weeks ago in blog post How to Leverage Digital and Social Media at Events/Conferences.

Here are some of the things Alan did:

Developed a single page where all of the social media feeds could be found.

Gave about a dozen people Flip Video cameras and had them create videos that were uploaded onto a YouTube video channel

Created a Flickr feed

Established a hashtag - #ptcuser10 – and then archived the Twitter feed

Aggregated 35 different bloggers posts.

Alan’s example is a good one. Check out his blog post for details on how he did it.

Archive the content forever

Here is a final, but critically important point. You need to archive all this great content so that people can find it in years (and decades) to come.

Sadly, many companies re-use their conference web sites year after year and delete last year’s conference content to create this years’. Don’t!

Keep each year’s content so people can go back and check. Additionally, the inbound links will help in your natural SEO.

Cicero Image: Shutterstock / Jozef Sedmak

Disclosure: I have done some coaching work for PTC.

Shortest marketing conference ever

On July 6 at 6:00 pm eastern, 60 thinkers speak for 60 seconds each about how to increase your digital influence.

The Influencer Project

I’ll be one of the presenters. It is a stellar lineup.

It’s kind of liberating to only have 60 seconds to speak. I boiled down a typical one-hour keynote into one minute. And 59 others did the same.

Cool.

The organizers setup for our short talks was: We want to empower as many people as possible to make a big impact in the world—ideally while pursuing their deepest passions. What are the critical tactics and strategies you need to be implementing online right now in order to attract more customers and earn greater trust with prospects?

Learn more about The Influencer Project. If you register, you'll also receive a full MP3 recording and PDF transcript of the event.

Conference organized by ThoughtLead, sponsored by Hubspot with additional partners MarketingProfs and Read Write Web. Social Media Press Release announcing the event here.

I've got this marked in my calendar. I'm looking forward to hearing what the other 59 people have to say in only 60 seconds each!

Hashtag = #influencer

Kickstarting Dorm with you as a movie producer

Last year, I wrote about Ryan Gielen, a NYC-based Indie film director and producer. What interested me was how Ryan made much the soundtrack of his film The Graduates available for free download.

This strategy built buzz and helped propel The Graduates to the #1 position on Hulu and iTunes and made it a successful indie film of 2009.

Now Ryan is back with a new film called "Dorm". And he is again getting creative about building buzz for the film.

The film is about four freshmen trapped in their dorm during the biggest snowstorm of the year. They have enough booze and hormones to entertain themselves for a week, but one newcomer is hellbent on pushing the freshmen to the edge of sanity.

Dorm has a modest budget and the producers are using Kickstarter, a site for crowdsourced funding, for seed money. Donations of various levels entitle you to swag (such as DVDs of the finished film and even a producer credit. Check out the funding request here.

Ryan is using social media to drive people to the film’s Kickstarter page to learn more.

"We haven't used Kickstarter before," Ryan told me. "But we've heard one or two successful fundraising stories, so we figured we'd give it a try. They don't seem to have a truly active community, it seems to work as simply donation collecting website with a clean interface, but it's completely up to the artist to drive traffic and donations. Everyone we've met on there is supportive, but the pool seems very small."

I asked Ryan how this approach differs from traditional film finance?

"Traditional film finance requires either known actors, directors or producers to entice money from a studio," he told me. "Traditional independent film financing is usually accomplished through either very small studios financing passion projects, backed by independent wealth, or a group of family, friends and business associates lending small amounts of money to help patch together a budget."

"So Kickstarter is a cleaned-up, web friendly version of traditional indie financing. The big goal is to create a place where indies can congregate and support one another, and indies can direct their large network of online friends and contacts to donate small amounts. It's a great idea, but the reality requires a tremendous amount of hustle from the artists, which is a good thing, because it forces artists to become more like businesspeople, or to adopt a more biz-focused mindset..."

So if you ever wanted to get a movie credit, here is your chance. For a relatively modest financial contributions, you can become an Associate Producer or Executive Producer of the film.

Video conversation with John Suffolk, CIO of UK government, on social media and data mashups

At the NASSCOM India Leadership Forum in Mumbai, I had an opportunity to sit down with John Suffolk, Chief Information Officer of Her Majesty's Government.

In this six minute video we discussed the role of Web-based information for citizens to have self-service access to government services, social media including guidelines, and the availability of over 3,000 data sets that anyone can use to create mashups. This is a fascinating interview. The UK Government is a leader in these areas, and everyone – companies, nonprofits, and governments can learn from John.

My favorite quote about social media:
“We’re saying these tools are available. We’re not saying you must use every single tool. What we’re saying is use tools that appropriate for you to help you engage with citizens to understand what their needs are because that helps you design better policy.”

Direct link to video here.

In case you want to jump ahead, here are some timeouts:

:00 – 1:10
A little about John’s role as CIO.

1:10 – 2:16
Delivering Web-based services to citizens to do everything from apply for patents to renew a fishing license using self-service online services.

2:16 – 5:00
How the UK government worked with Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the world wide web, to launch data.gov.uk, a new British government website offering free access to a huge amount of public-sector data (over 3,000 individual databases) for private or commercial reuse including mashups.

5:00 – 6:50
Discussing social media guidelines and open source policies for UK Government employees.

Note to music fans:
In his John Suffolk - Government CIO blog, John throws in the odd music reference, just like I do. For example a slightly wild and crazy recent post starring "inky, pinky and stinky" had a reference to a Madness song. John has excellent taste in music (I saw Madness in New York City in the mid-1980s so I was right there with this reference).

How to crowdsource videos for your company

Wouldn’t it be cool if people created videos for you? Perhaps like HP, you could hold a contest to get students to put forward their best efforts.

The contest was simple. "Present an idea which promotes HP Workstations ability to bring to life anything the creative mind can conceive." This video filmed, edited and directed by Matt Robinson and Tom Wrigglesworth for the contest is just terrific.

Please take a just 80 seconds to watch this amazing video.

Direct link to HP Invent video by Matt and Tom here.

While in Amsterdam this past week, I met Jan-Paul de Beer of BrandFighters, a company that helps companies create video contests. In this video interview, I ask Jan-Paul about the video contests his company runs.

I especially like what he did for Heineken. The contest was to produce a new “walking refrigerator” (What Men Rally Want) video. The winning entry is really fun. I hope you watch the interview, which is just 5 minutes, but you can jump to the end to see the winning Heineken video if you prefer.

Direct link to interview with Jan-Paul de Beer.

See the other entries in the Heineken video contest organized by BrandFighters.

Jan-Paul says the filmmakers not only gets prize money if they win, but can also become famous. How else can a young filmmaker have an opportunity to make a film for a big brand?

For the brand, Jan-Paul says a big benefit is that you can interact with your target audience (buyer personas).

DSBtheMovie: Crowdsourced film created quickly and with zero budget

While in Amsterdam where I keynoted the Marketing Pioneers event, I met Jan Willem Alphenaar, Producer and Director of DSB the Movie.

The film tells the story of the Netherland's DSB Bank NV which was declared bankrupt by court in October, 2009.

Amazingly, Jan crowdsourced everything for the film including the film's logo, producer, scriptwriters, soundtrack, editor, camera, actors, and publicity. The film will be completed in just four months and with zero budget.

Here is my interview with Jan which includes the film's trailer at 0:55.

Direct link to my video here.

Direct link to the film trailer here.

Jan tells us that no money changed hands in producing the film! People wanted to be a part of the project and to get a credit in the movie.

He put out the call on social networking sites including Twitter, LinkedIn, and Hyves. Then the media picked up on it from the social networking and the project scored a front page story in the largest newspaper in the Netherlands which then generated even more media coverage and social networking interest.

When Jan put out the call for logos, he had 42 submissions to choose from!

Just think about the normal way to do a film. It takes more than a year and a large budget. Jan did his film in just a few months and at no cost.

I agree with Jan that crowdsourcing has huge potential for marketing projects. (I’ll share another example in a few days.)

“Your audience is willing to help you,” Jan says. “They don’t need money, they just want credit.”

Here is some great information (in English) on how Jan created the film.

Crowd Sourcing And Humanistic Psychology

View more presentations from JW Alphenaar | Power PR.

Thank you to Remco Janssen for introducing me to Jan Willem Alphenaar.

Note: When I asked Jan if he had an English language site for the film, he responded to me via Twitter to say that he had crowdsourced a translator and an English language site will be up in a few days! (How fast is your site creation effort?)