revolution - TheWayoftheWeb

Just off to another brilliant example of Twitter for events

April 15, 2009 By Dan Thornton Leave a Comment

I’m just about to pack up my laptop and head over to Aperitweat, a cool gathering of Tweeple organised by the inimitable @tojulius.

It’s been publicised via his Twitter friends, registration was via Twtvite, a live Twitterstream will be at the event (hashtags #aptw or #aperitweat), and the whole thing is being streamed live via Ustream.

So in addition to the skills and contacts Julius already has (see the eventmanagerblog for examples), the marketing cost is nothing for a brilliant range of coverage which has packed the place to capacity.

Another example of the ability for self-forming events for little or no cost.

And that’s just a relatively low-profile example in a week when Twitter was used to attempt revoluation in Moldova (see some coverage via Nick Carr and All Things Digital).

And it’s in the week when the first drill has been created with some of the amazing $250,000 raised by the Twestival event in 2020 cities worldwide.

Twestival Well Drilling – Day 1 from Ethiopia – charity: water from charity: water on Vimeo.

See more of the Twestival videos on Live Earth.

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Filed Under: Case Studies, twitter Tagged With: #aptw, aperitweat, event management, events, hashtags, marketing, moldova, moldovan, organising, protest, publicising, revolution, twitter, twtvite, ustream

The corporate IT revolution is happening – just without IT

November 20, 2008 By Dan Thornton Leave a Comment

In an example of timely thinking, Accenture has released a report which tallies with my recent revisit to how the IT departments of most companies need to radically change to meet the needs of a very different and constantly changing environment. My original post ‘IT could lead the revolution‘ and ‘Still waiting for the IT revolution‘ both talked about how users, particularly in a creative environment, need to find ways to implement new technology quickly and efficiently – often in the face of restrictive IT policies.

And then ReadWriteWeb covered the Accenture report with ‘Millennials Will Route Around IT Departments‘.

Some key points:

More than a third of Millennials also indicated that they were dissatisfied with the technologies their employers currently provide.
Over a quarter of the employees surveyed by Accenture to use technology that is unsupported and unsanctioned by their corporate IT departments.
Almost half of all Millennials who use social networks, blogs, vlogs, or Twitter do so without support from their IT departments (and often against the IT policies of their companies).
A quarter of those who use online collaboration tools and open-source software also do so without support.
60% of the employees surveyed by Accenture argue that they are unaware of their companies’ IT policies or that they are simply not interested in following them.
Over half of the respondents in this study (52%) said that a company’s use of technology was a major factor when they select an employer.

Add in the fact the survey also reinforces the shift away from email as the primary form of electronic communication, and it’s clear that the revolution is happening. It’s just that in most cases, companies aren’t listening, and are investing in the wrong areas.

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Filed Under: Digital Culture Tagged With: accenture, Digital Culture, IT, it policies, it support, millennials, Online Tools, revolution, technology

Still waiting for the IT revolution…

November 16, 2008 By Dan Thornton Leave a Comment

Back in January 2007, I wrote about how ‘IT could lead the revolution‘, hypothesizing how the IT Support in a company could become valuable for more than just supporting locked down computers – and how they could lead change by allowing everyone to download, install and play with new internet technology, and that responding to the risks this inherently raises means they would be up-to-date and possibly even generating their own ideas and technology.

Since then, the rise of social media etc has seen even more demand for toolbar plugins and access to Adobe Air etc, yet i’m not aware of any firm with IT support that actively operates in this way.

So I’ll throw it back out there and see if anyone knows of a proactive IT dept which encourages users to experiment, and enjoys dealing with the challenges this creates – because there’s even more of a need for that support now than there was 22 months ago.

Particularly as it’s a great way to ensure that human on-site interaction is needed, safeguarding jobs and possibly driving new revenues, rather than increasing automation, documentation and distance encouraging outsourcing.

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Filed Under: Business, Digital Culture Tagged With: Business, company, corporate, Digital Culture, formal, improvements, information technology, IT, it support, revolution

Worth repeating?

September 26, 2008 By Dan Thornton 2 Comments

Writing about how the election coverage on Twitter and C-Span points to the future of media coverage, I came up with a little gem that I thought might be worth repeating for any of you who don’t crossover to my microblogging blog, 140char.com:

‘aggregation of sources of information provides a starting point for a media company to add its own expertise and reason to provide something of value.‘

That’s it really. A mainstream media source can’t just aggregate content. Anyone can do that and the winners are decided by those who obtain a reasonable community and audience. And there’s already plenty of people out there, from Yahoo Buzz to Digg, to Mixx, to Sphinn, to microblogging.com.

But by aggregating and adding interpretation, it not only creates dynamic changing content, but actually opens up and highlights the expertise that a good journalist can bring on top of raw information. One of the mistakes we’ve continued to make in mainstream media is to underplay how good many journalists are at going beyond raw data, and the myraid ways in which they add value to it.

I’ve long believed it, but not managed to sum it up quite so succinctly before. And it’s not a new idea for plenty of notable people, e.g. Scott Karp, Jay Rosen, Pat Thornton (still no relation!), Howard Owens, Jeff Jarvis, David Cushman. And there are many, many more people I could name, and I’m sure that’s just a small proportion of a collective wisdom which suggests numbers and expertise big enough to hopefully break out of the social media echo chamber. And we can see it with the adoption in growing ways by a small number of titles (I mentioned the LA Times and The Guardian, here). Now we’re adding C-Span to the list.

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