I will be blogging it up for Study Breaks Magazine, covering SXSW for the next week. Expect copious amounts of audio, video and text based coverage. Should be an amazing week.

First, I will explain what I mean by “Micro Age”? I am talking about the proliferation of bite-size nuggets of information that lead to massive amounts of information. I believe that in the future this trend will be accelerated with the increased usage of personal RSS readers, news feeds, streams and other platforms where concise pieces of information are present.

The prime example of this trend is twitter. Twitter started as simply micro-blogging but has evolved to micro-information sharing. Little useful information can gleaned from 140 characters, so many tweets contain links encoded using link shorteners. The same trend is also in facebook, the top social network platform in the world.

Getting viewers to engage in your bite-size information and at the very least look at what you are saying is vital. Without views and interactions, the message is meaningless. The engagement part is especially important. Having 50,000 followers on twitter and 11 followers that actually care about what you say and interact with what you amounts to you having 11 meaningful followers.

Many people smarter than myself have commented on this and given advice. But I will list briefly what I have learned from my own experience using micro content to lead to expanded content. There are several things that must be in place at minimum to set the base for usage and interactivity. This list is primarily applicable to twitter, but it can be applied to other platforms as well.

• Clarity: if people do not know what you are saying they will skim over it in a millisecond. Don’t be vague and expect people to pick up on nuances, unless you already have a dedicated following who do that.
• Interaction: comment on other people’s post. If you never talk about other people, why would they comment on you?
• History: this is fairly obvious. You must build trust with users through time and experience. Any twitter user will attest to spam messages by new members with simply a link. Build your name and then link.
• Quality: along with history, this is obvious. If you have nothing worthwhile after people click your link, they are not going to do it again.
• Humanity: no one likes a machine talking to them. Do not use feeds from other sources of information on twitter or facebook. Of course, there are exceptions but as a rule, be human.

I try to learn new things everyday, so expect this list to be dynamic and updated with new tips and ideas.

Now, to look briefly at the consequence of the trend of micro information leading to massive information. I think it will be different on different people. Some will skim the short information, not delving in. While others sink into massive amounts of information available. This could lead to a fracturing of society, based upon which information if any people delve in to. You can already see this happening thanks to the great variety of information sources available.

Car2Go in Front of the Tower

During the course of my reporting, I became a member of Car2Go. Does that violate my journalistic ethics?

Snapped while rolling down I-35.

This incident brings me to another point. The FAIL trend is really just America’s Funniest Home Videos on the internet. That is not to say I do not enjoy a good fail picture or video every now and again. Some fails set themselves apart due to their nuancedness (yes I made up that word) and hilarity.

It has been somewhat disturbing have heard people say “FAIL” in real life countless times in the past months and year after various missteps. Wikipedia says that FAIL Blog has been around since early 2008. Will the trend continue or is the meme on its way out?

"Braaaaaiinnsss"

I am a zombie, crazy people, pyscho-mutated human movie genre fan. It seems recently there have been more and more movies concerning zombies and it has made me wonder why this has happened and what we, as non-zombie humans get out of watching zombie movies.

The nature of the zombies in different movies is usually slightly different. From Zombieland’s mad cow to mad human explanation to Serenity’s (Zombie = Reaver) government experiment reason. The zombies all have the mad urge to eat other people to sustain themself.

A quick google search of “Zombie Philosophy“ brings a number of sites that ponder this topic. I will briefly throw my opinions on why zombie movies have been so popular.

• The Loss Of Self: In today’s hyper-real society, everyone is expected to maintain a social network page, a reachable phone number and they must respond back within 24 ours. The zombies!? They just eat people.
• Primal Instinct: The urge for carnal gratification is released upon becoming a zombie. This urge is obviously frowned upon in non-zombie society.
• Tangible Fear: In today’s world of 24/7 news cycles and unlimited information, it can get to be too much information. The fear embedded in this information creates a paranoia amongst some. Everywhere dangers are thought to exist. But there is no real tangible danger in everyday life. A zombie trying to gnaw at you is that danger.

All of what I talked about centered on one primary thing, the urge of modern humanity to simplify. The zombie represents the base level of humanity and emotions (gone wrong).

Helpful Wisdom from the Textbook

]]> http://bill-bowman.com/2010/02/15/libelous-journalistic-words/feed/ 0 Bill Bowman WatchOutJournalists http://bill-bowman.com/2010/02/08/distilled-learning-from-self-help-books/ http://bill-bowman.com/2010/02/08/distilled-learning-from-self-help-books/#comments Mon, 08 Feb 2010 06:15:10 +0000 Bill Bowman http://bill-bowman.com/?p=312 ]]> Every Sunday I work at a certain Copy Store. I have worked there for around three years. When I started working there it was more of an actual job, 20 to 30 hours a week. Now I just show up every Sunday and help out around the store. It is often slow on Sundays, so I get time to study or read the books they sell.

They sell an inordinate number of self-help books in their retail section. Perfect for the resume-copiers and workers that frequent the store. Over the years I have read a good number of the books and I think that they have actually taught me some important lessons about life and relationships.

Before I enumerate the things that I have picked up from the books, I ask you to throw away preconceptions about “self-help” things. There is a stigma about “self help” that regards such books as snake oil for suckers. I propose that the books are not. Most of them propose a new way of thinking about life that a person might not encounter in the everyday, 9-5 life.

I will briefly list the things that the books have in common or connect on. I draw heavily from “The Secret” by Rhonda Byrne, “Your Best Life Now” by Joel Osteen, “The Last Lecture” by Randy Paust and “ The Four Hour Workweek” by Timmothy Ferriss. I have also thrown in some of my own opinions and observations.

Gratitude - be thankful for what you have. Consider the poor and suffering in the world and count your blessings. Accordingly, try to help others in the world by giving or helping when you can. If you are reading this, you have internet access so your are better off than 85 percent of the planet (made up statistic).

If you have food and water, can you really complain about life?

Positivity – it is my personal belief that thoughts have a great influence on reality. Do not be a “blind optimist” but always see the the silver lining. Looking for the good in situations will make every situation better. Support your friends and acquaintances in every new adventure.

... so which is it?

Confidence – to succeed in life you must believe in yourself. This is an unorthadox view (from what I have seen), but I believe that if you say you have that skill or talent, you will aquire it. I have previously used Lil Wayne as an example of this concept.

Which came first: the chicken (saying it) or the egg (being it)?

Vision – along the lines of “swagger”, having a vision for where you want to be is important. Visualization is discussed extensievely in self-help books. Basically, picture your future and it will come true (like Indiana Jones crossing the invisible bridge).

If Indy can do it, so can you.

Order – to do great things, your possessions and affairs must be arranged. This is not to say everything must be perfect, but the knowledge of where necessary things are located is essential.

Body – the base of the being is the body (say that five times fast). Keep the body and mind sharp. I try to stay in good enough shape to be able to outrun a dog for several hundred meters (I practice on Lady Bird Lake).

I think Lance could outrun rabid dogs on Lady Bird Lake.

Connection – maintain contacts with the positive people you have known in the past and cultivate new relationships with those you meet everyday. People are the true conduits for happiness and success.

Forgiveness – do not hold grudges against anyone. Holding a grudge does not hurt the “grudgee”. It only serves to embitter you and make you more negative. Do not hate others, but understand. In my life, I have found this hard to do, but realized its importance.

Open-Mindedness – do not discount other’s ideas because they are not like you. Listen to what they say and understand their perspective. Do not close your mind to others points of views because they disagree with yours or contradict your schema.

Simplicity - Having little and knowing much should be the goal. Bruce Lee said this:

One does not accumulate but eliminate. It is not daily increase but daily decrease. The height of cultivation always runs to simplicity.

I take this to mean a person must be unencumbered by the trappings of modern life. Be iterate and flexible.

Humbleness – I think it was Socrates that said:

The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.

Now, everyone knows something, but the intent of the message is to be humble No matter how much you have done or seen; there is always more to learn. More to see and hear. Do not be content with yourself. Keep learning.

I will close in acknowledging that I am not a master in any of the above skills. I am still learning and seeking my own way. I hope that every person can strive to do their best and live their best life (now I am sounding like Joel Osteen).

I hope this post will serve as a work-in-progress for the concepts and ideas that influence me. I welcome any comments or criticisms!

What do you think?

If Turbotax says it, it must be true.

While doing my taxes, I got a little bit of wisdom courtesy of Turbotax… and a pretty nice refund.

Could the iPad Reinvigorate Print?

I will preface this post saying that I am not an expert on any of the new technologies I am about to discuss, nor the various pay models involved in making journalism financially viable. But, this is my blog, so here I go.

The iPad was introduced yesterday and many sources, more informed than me have commented on its potential effect on the media, specifically magazines and newspapers. The new revenue would come from subscriptions to an app that the company would provide.

Now, I will list off some thoughts on what the effect that truly mobile, live, easily accessible news and information will have on people, the media and society. Some of these are already happening and some are just hypotheticals that I am thinking off, as I sit here.

• Geographic News – get content related to exactly where your device is.
• Augmented Reality – similar to many apps available. Get historical news on locations seen via screen.
• Facial Recognition – a person of importance will be seen and news/info relevant to them are displayed. A facebook profile could be the source of information for average people.
• New Reporting Methods – using devices to not only record voice and video but analyze on the spot for deception.
• Dynamic Text – not just linking text, but mouse-over video, audio, charts, in the article.
• Splicing – could multiple news stories be compared and analyzed a la Minority Report?
• Projection – could news be displayed in 3 dimensions, like the projection phone from last year?

Now, the iPad seems to missing some things that would make the aforementioned reality possible, namely a camera, but as we have seen in the past, Apple often times introduced something that spawns countless other imitators and imitations

Most importantly, it occurred to me that the new apps and programs that could be created with future platforms might reinstate the old world media dominance. In the past, newspaper and magazines relied on printing presses to get the leg up on the average citizen. In the future, developers and complicated coding be an equivalent of huge infrastructure and give large companies a head up on “citizen journalists”.

A single journalist could not do all the things that are possible with these devices. The new technologies include accelerometers, GPS, live video streaming and multitouch functionality. Will utilizing these new technologies require massive capital, or could an average, educated person use them? And will the difference between the new technology spur people to pay a fee to use them? That will determine whether large, structured organizations will once again have a leg up.

Is mobile, fully multimedia based news and information the Holy Grail to the struggling print industry? No. But it will bring about a new way to inform people and create revenue, far more complete than the past.