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Links of Note – November 12

by Martin · Nov 12, 2006

– New York TImes: Entrepreneurs see a Web guided by common sense – welcome to Web 3.0… (via CNET News.com)

– Four second cut-off: 75% of shoppers would not return to a website that took longer than four seconds to load according to research by Akamai (via BBC News). Once again it seems I am part of a minority. But my spirit is with the 75%. Don’t make sites fancy, make them fast and easy to use.

– The BOBs: The results of Deutsche Welle’s 2006 blog awards are in…and the winner is The Sunlight Foundation (via heise.de). The awards highlight many other interesting blogs this year. Wish I would speak Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, Persian, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish, too, so I could read them all.

Dear Steve Watt, experience means nothing.

by Martin · Nov 6, 2006

There has been so much talk about transparency in the blogosphere recently, you’d almost think it is an issue exclusive to how you handle yourself on the Web. But it really is an issue about integrity in general.

So here is my own little rant about something that made me angry today. It deals with the current elections for Toronto City Council and specifically with the Ward I live in. Before I start: yes, I am biased. Until this morning I was only biased in favour of one of the candidates, the incumbent Karen Stintz. Based on what I have seen and read, I think she has done a great job for the community in which I live. And no, I don’t work for Karen Stintz’ campaign but I would vote for her if I could (I am not yet a Canadian citizen, so it is all a spectator sport for me). I really didn’t know too much about the other candidates. Now I am also biased against one of the other candidates. Here goes…

<rant>

Today I got around to reading our local community paper, the North Toronto Post, which featured interviews with the City Council candidates for the Wards in this area, including Ward 16 where I live. All candidates were asked where they live. All answered except for Steve Watt who left it “unanswered”, which I found curious. Then I walked by one of his campaign signs, which are plastered all over a new store that just signed a short-term lease in the RioCan plaza on Avenue Road. Steve Watt’s campaign sign provides the URL for his website, so I thought I’d find out more about his community involvement on his site.

First, the web address stephenwatt.ca, which is printed on the campaign signs, leads to a “coming soon” placeholder site with ads. That’s embarrassing but okay, after an educated guess I did find his real website at stevewatt.ca. Again, nothing about what he has done for the community so far or where he lives. But he provided a link to a Rogers cable television station where he and the other Ward 16 candidates had recorded short videos for their campaigns. The other candidates talked – among other things – about how long they’ve lived in the community. He didn’t.

So I did a little more web searching and came across a National Post article from a few weeks ago, which provides an explanation. Steve Watt doesn’t live in Ward 16. According to the article, he lives in Rosedale and was “advised” by his friend Mayor David Miller to run in Ward 16 “where Mayor David Miller openly yearns to take out the incumbent” Karen Stintz (described as Mayor Miller’s “nemesis”, which made me smile). So he isn’t running because he is interested in the community in Ward 16. He has simply agreed to help an old pick-up hockey buddy from university days who is now running for re-election as Mayor of Toronto.

The article also mentions a “glitch at the printer’s” because Steve Watt’s campaign signs weren’t ready at the time. And now that they are ready they include the wrong web address. Attention to detail doesn’t seem to be one of the strengths of Steve Watt’s campaign. But I guess that’s not very important if his intention is simply to take away votes from Stintz. I find it ironic that Watt accuses Stintz of being negative when he is running a campaign that doesn’t stand for anything but helping Miller get rid of a critic. Not to mention that having a different opinion from Mayor Miller doesn’t necessarily mean you’re negative. You just have a different opinion.

Steve Watt’s big words to describe himself are experience and leadership. Sounds good. But integrity is part of leadership. It would be nice for Steve Watt to display integrity throughout his campaign by openly mentioning on his website that he doesn’t live in Ward 16. He should have done it in the North Toronto Post article, too. It may not be a big deal for him or other people. But I find it deceptive and annoying.

Maybe it is just me but community involvement matters and I find a candidate who actually lives in the community more credible. But even if Steve Watt disagrees, he should be open about it, and not just when a National Post reporter calls him on it. He could have turned it around and on his website said something like “I don’t live here but I saw that Ward 16 is in desperate need of leadership, so I am stepping up and here is my commitment to the community…” But the National Post article just ~~exposes him as~~ [correction] makes him look like a fraud whose intention is to stifle opposition to Miller on City Council.

Steve Watt also emphasizes his experience and his years of working as a lawyer with municipalities. He supports the RioCan project, a huge community issue (read more about it here and here). In the National Post article he comments on Karen Stintz’ fight against the project: “Based on my 100 appeals to the OMB, the project is going to get built.” He may be right.

He goes on to say that an “experienced councillor should understand that. You can’t just say no.” Apparently Steve Watt thinks that City Councillors should just be yes-men (yes-persons?) to the Mayor and to developers. Karen Stintz has put up a passionate fight and got City Council to vote against the project with a large majority. She understands that this is a fight not just about one development but about the future of the neighbourhood. Even David Miller agrees that a study of Avenue Road should be completed first before the future of the RioCan development is decided.

In the video on Rogers cable, Steve Watt accuses Karen Stintz of preventing $400,000 from flowing into Ward 16 for community projects because of her opposition to the RioCan project. What he fails to mention is that the $400,000 would be paid by RioCan for breaching existing bylaws to increase height and density of a development. No wonder his campaign signs have popped up on RioCan property but on almost no front lawns within the community.

What am I looking for in a City Councillor? I look for integrity, competence, passion and community involvement. Somebody who is open and honest and doesn’t try to hide things. Somebody who displays transparency – on the Web and anywhere else.

Experience would be nice, too. But the the thing with experience is…well, let me put it in the words of writer and journalist Kurt Tucholsky: “Experience means nothing. You can do something badly for 35 years.”

</rant>

Links of Note – October 30

by Martin · Oct 30, 2006

More podcasts: ITBusiness.ca debuts a new weekly podcast series which will feature “conversations with vendors, with IT managers and CIOs, industry analysts and our newsroom colleagues”.

Less readers: Circulation for big U.S. Metro newspapers continues to decline. It is the fourth consecutive semi-annual report to register a drop, according to Editor & Publisher. Only three of the top 25 papers reported an increase.

Same old (now online): Toronto’s top three mayoral candidates have all posted videos to YouTube, the Toronto Star reports. So who will be the first to open a campaign office in Second Life? Sigh.

Chancellor 2.0 – Bonding with citizens on the Web

by Martin · Oct 28, 2006

First German Chancellor Angela Merkel started her own video-podcast series. Then a bunch of smart students and university graduates turned the tables on her and launched Direkt zur Kanzlerin! (“Direct to Chancellor!”), a platform where citizens can post questions for Angela Merkel. Anybody can submit a text, audio or video message for her on the site. Then people can vote for their favourite questions by mouse click.

After getting blog buzz and media coverage for their idea, the students got Angela Merkel’s attention. The Federal Press Office has now stepped up and agreed to answer the top three question each week on behalf of the Chancellor.

It is a different kind of Web 2.0 success story – a great little example of the potential that the ongoing spread of new, user-friendly technologies holds. What a great example of a couple people getting together and trying to make a difference through tech-driven grassroots democracy!

Consultant and author Anthony D. Williams recently blogged about the question: “is government ready for the Web 2.0 era?” Looks like the German government is playing catch-up with its people. But the Federal Press Office deserves credit, too. At least they are ready to participate in the project. It’s a start.

Note: The “Direct to Chancellor!” site is only available in German.

(via Welt.de)

"Radio into Talkies" – Visionaries are still in demand

by Martin · Oct 25, 2006

Ryan Anderson over at The New PR has a great post about how “we’re married to our media of choice” and slow to adapt to change.

I just read an old Time Magazine article from 1929 called “Radio into Talkies” about radio and television pioneer David Sarnoff. It talks about Radio Corporation of America’s change from “communications company” to “entertainment company”. RCA entered the entertainment business as an outsider because David Sarnoff saw the potential of the “talkies” while many of the established entertainment companies were still lingering somewhere between silent movies and talking cinema. He went on to grow RCA into a radio and television empire (also see his Wikipedia entry). A lot of his entertainment competitors went under while others were able to adapt and change.

Today, it is the news(paper) business that is changing. I don’t know if blogging and online formats necessarily mean certain death to print newspapers (the death of radio has been announced repeatedly since the 1950s). But one thing is still the same after almost 80 years: established players are afraid of change and it still takes visionaries like David Sarnoff to drive change.

I think we’re at a stage where more and more newspapers are switching their priorities to put more emphasis on online editions. The next step will be that they treat print editions as an afterthought and, to Ryan’s point, we will probably see an established newspaper switch to online-sooner than later. But it will be just as interesting to watch the ongoing development of existing online-only players and blogging networks to see if one of them can become as strong a brand as, for example, the New York Times.

The Time article from 1929 includes a great quote by David Sarnoff: “While the sylvan mouse-trap maker is waiting for customers and his energetic competitor is out on the main road, a third man will come along with a virulent poison which is death on mice and there will be no longer any demand for mouse-traps.”

He was talking about how phonograph makers adapted to radio while the “pre-radio phonograph is absolutely dead”. Today, it could be somebody like Steve Jobs (iPod vs. radio) or maybe Michael Arrington (blogging vs. newspapers) making similar statements. Visionaries – right or wrong – are still in demand, especially when the rest of us are still trying to figure out what’s good and bad about the changes we’re experiencing.

We’ll see how the newspaper business will develop but in the meantime, I agree with Ryan that “it’s important to remember that those who accept change have the biggest successes and the biggest failures. Mediocrity is rarely rewarded either way.”

How about a gaming panel at mesh?

by Martin · Oct 24, 2006

The mesh conference is back. That’s good. What I would really love to see at the next mesh conference is a panel on gaming and virtual worlds. Since getting “a better understanding of the impact of new developments online” is part of the mesh conference mission statement, I think we’d be missing out a huge part of the latest online developments without it.

When I look at our consumer and interactive entertainment divisions and what kind of new work has emerged due to these online developments, and then I think back to the ancient times where I typed program code for games into my Amstrad computer or my friend’s Sinclair ZX Spectrum…we’ve come a long way! And yet it feels like the real deal in online gaming and virtual worlds hasn’t even started yet.

Being in the PR industry, I agree with David Jones that a PR panel at mesh would be nice. But if I only had one vote (not that I have any vote in it), it would go to online gaming.

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