Manara

It occured to me today that although I have been talking and twittering about the move to Geneva and the herculean effort it requires to relocate to a foreign country, I hadn’t actually announced why I was going or what I was going to do when I get there. (Hint: it’s not just about cheese, although that plays a big part.)

I am so excited to announce that I have accepted a position with the World Economic Forum to help co-lead some of their online community building initiatives. The project is slated to last one year, and includes some travel to places that I’ve never been before, so you can look forward to some international posts!

I will be popping up on CommandN from time to time doing some “foreign correspondence” for Amber,  and I’ll keep you all appraised of my adventures in the land of Chocolate!

The WELCOM Platform:

• WELCOM is a powerful new online communication and collaboration space designed specifically for the world’s top decision-makers.
• With a range of innovative tools for locating and accessing expertise, sharing knowledge, and meeting and working with peers, WELCOM empowers a multi stakeholder approach to addressing the most pressing business and global governance challenges.
• WELCOM enables the peer-to-peer engagements that are the hallmark of World Economic Forum meetings to be extended, efficiently and conveniently, throughout the whole year.

The idea is to create a community that can continue to execute on the Forum’s mandate to improve the state of the world. Cool, huh? It will allow governments, NGOs and corporations collectively work together to help solve some of the world’s biggest problems.

It not a project without challenges, but for right now, let’s bask in the unmarred potential of a new opportunity, and not dwell on the fact that I have yet to find a place to stay.

Think good thoughts!!

In collaboration with GWP Brand Engineering’s CEO, Bruce Philp and his team, Rahaf led a workshop for ING Direct Canada in identifying potential areas of opportunities for using social media to increase customer engagement. We explored the competitive landscape, the importance strategic alignment, creative brainstorming and tactical best practices.

Client Feedback:

“Our session with Rahaf compressed months of trial and error learning into a single fascinating afternoon. Rahaf plainly has a superb command of the social networking space and an infectious enthusiasm for its power, but she also has a rare ability to make it accessible, useful and actionable. Our client was putting the day’s insights to work literally the next day.”

– Bruce Philp, CEO GWP brand Engineering

“Rahaf,

The ING DIRECT team and I truly enjoyed our day with you. It was useful, thought provoking and generated real action items for us to attack. We are much better prepared to drive our social media approach. The best part is we had a great time as well.

Again, thank you and good luck with your new and exciting challenge. Keep in touch.”

– Peter Aceto, CEO ING Direct Canada

Hi Everyone!

My new site is up! A few quick notes:

1) Please bear with me as I update the content and tweak some of the navigation, there are still some design and technical bugs being worked out. This is my fault as I wanted something up and running ASAP, so it will be resolved shortly. Thanks for not making me feel bad about it.

2) I really want to thank  Alan Smith of The Movement, for their incredible design work. Check them out, they are by far one of the best betterment collectives I’ve ever come across. If you don’t know what a betterment collective is, check out the link and join in the fun.

3) Matt from IdiotBanter.com was the developer ninja who put this badass site together for me in record time. Hurray for new site beginnings.

Photo By Darwin Bell

It has certainly been interesting times on the Foush! Last week I wrote about  Digital Broken Telephone: I’m THE Obama Strategist, and how it was important to make sure that you are transparent and honest in dealing with misrepresentations online, especially when they big you up. This week, the pendulum swung the other way, and someone tried to tear me down.

The New Republic’s blog, The Plank, wrote a piece about me entitled “The Foush and The Furious” also titled “Meet The Most Shamelessly Self-Promoting Former Obama Volunteer”, by Amanda Silverman.

Awesome. My favorite part is when I’m called an “intern-turned-mastermind,” I am debating putting that on my business cards.

Dealing With It

Anyway, I sent the Editor of the blog an email correcting the assumption that I acquired these opportunities based solely on my conniving ability to deceive people into thinking that I was the brain trust behind the campaign. (These aren’t the droids you’re looking for.)

When my new site it up, it will include a comprehensive list of my previous projects, speaking engagements and book contributions for those interested. For newbies to my site, I have been in this space since 2006. I have contributed to three business books (Wikinomics, Grown Up Digital and Everything I Needed to Know About Business I Learned From a Canadian) and have been speaking about technology and New Media since 2007.

Broken Telephone

In the meantime, for your enjoyment, check out what happened when the story was picked up by the Economist Blog in a post titled Cashing in on Barack.  While they got my name wrong (maybe I should have been happy with THE strategist) they didn’t seem to think it was a big deal:

That makes sense—why should one staffer turn her story into profit while the rest of the young volunteers in her position are waiting to hear if they’ve scored a low-level job in the administration? Yet Ms Harfoush is far from the most calculated profiteer of the Barack Obama myth. If you pass on an exclusive speech from Ms Harfoush, look what you can get.

• Barack Obama: Son of Promise, Child of Hope, a children’s book published before the election that tells the then-senator’s life story and is consistently one of the best sellers in its reading level on Amazon.com.

• The “presidential vault”, a collection of campaign trail knicknacks and some of the new president’s speeches.

• Issue #583 of the Amazing Spider-Man, a special edition of the comic book in which the super-hero prevents an impostor from taking the oath of office. It’s in its fifth printing.

• Barack, Inc., a quickie business manual that encourgaes capitalists to apply the lessons of Mr Obama’s campaign to their companies.

So why don’t other members of Mr Obama’s campaign start cashing in? The window is closing, and it’s not like their options are expanding from month to month.

I have to admit, at first I was taken aback by the nasty tone of The New Republic article, and then I realized that there are always going to be people out there who will take pleasure in writing things like this. So, calmly respond to what you can, laugh about the rest and see the silver lining- a bunch of new twitter followers and increased blog traffic.

Hi all!

I am so excited to announce that my new website will be up and running in the next few days! I love this site, but it wasn’t built in a way that made it easy for me to update and so it’s been horribly behind on the projects and initatives that I’ve been a part of over the last year (other then the blog).

I’m working on some great posts, so check back soon!

You have to love the internet. I know I do, but sometimes information has a way of taking little baby steps away from the truth until suddenly you’re single handedly responsible for electing the first Internet President of the United States.

How does something like this happen, you ask? Well let me tell you about my experience with the digital broken telephone and what I and others can learn from this situation.

The Story:

Last August while doing the research for Grown Up Digital, I met Chris Hughes the Director of Online Organizing for the Obama Campaign. Not only had I been researching the campaign for months, but I had also been inspired by the Will.i.am “Yes We Can” video and wanted desperately to be a part of this movement. With Chris’ help, I  packed my bags and joined the Obama New Media team as a full-time volunteer for three months.

As a New Media Strategist by trade, being at Chicago HQ was like Disney Land, your birthday and the release of the iPhone all rolled up into one. I was in geek heaven and took everything in. Being a volunteer is something I am incredibly proud of and getting a chance to work with incredible people like Chris Hughes and Scott Thomas gave me the added bonus of new friendships.

Upon my return I was asked by my friend Alex Manu to give a presentation synthesizing my thoughts on the strategic learning from the campaign that corporations could apply to their brands, which I did. I also presented my insights about community building at OCAD.

So when I got an email from a journalist who was interested in doing a story on me and the Obama campaign, I thought to myself “Wait, a minute. Me? Hmm. Maybe I should do a Google Audit.” I had gotten a lot of press from Canadian media, but an American outlet wanting to talk to me?  And so I started Egosurfing.

At first glance, all seemed well:

• It started off completely accurate, the CBC saying I was a full time volunteer for three months.
• Sacha Chua who live blogged my story and PR in Canada both got it right.

Then came the little semantic changes:

• Malle Valik described me as a “New Media Strategist on Barack Obama’s Campaign.” While I’m a New Media Strategist AND I worked on the Obama campaign, I did so as a full time volunteer.  Did I need to correct this?
• IT Insider.ca and a few others called me a “key” member of the Obama team. Another said I was a “staffer.”

Umm…What?

• Chatterbox PR listed Blue State Digital, Rahaf Harfoush & Chris Hughes as the Social Media Strategy team. They were the only names on the list. They may want to include Joe Rospars (Director of New Media).
• Brand Eye called me THE strategist for the Obama Campaign.

The Issue Now:

I love New Media. I love talking about New Media and how technology can help people. Deconstructing this campaign is something that I enjoy doing, and judging by the slew of other people (both on the campaign and not) who are talking about it, I’m clearly not alone!

As an active member of the tech community I have been speaking a lot about this topic, partly because I’m doing a lot of research for my upcoming book and partly because I still get chills when I remember being in Grant Park on election night celebrating the historic win.

What I don’t want is inaccurate information to get passed around about my involvement in the campaign or to take credit for work that I didn’t do. One of the main reasons I went down to Chicago was for the chance to learn from the best in the field.

What I Did:

I’m usually on top of this stuff but a hectic travel schedule delayed my routine Google Audit. Audits are a really thorough way to keep track of your brand online and to spot potential issues before they become a PR nightmare. It’s also important to note that you need to manage ALL the information that is being written about your brand, whether it is good, bad or just inaccurate. A flattering post with a few semantic twists can cause as much trouble as someone slamming your product.

1) Google Audit: Seek and Destroy all inaccuracies. I googled for any topics relating to my experience with Obama. It’s better to know what’s out there!

2) Make Contact: Once I had my search results I started systematically going through them, contacting the appropriate person and letting them know about the inaccuracies. I followed up an email with a comment on the actual blog post so that if others came across the post before it was corrected they would see my comment.

3) Be Open and Transparent: These things happen, and hiding them or hoping it will go away on it’s own is a guarantee that things will blow up in your face. Letting people know what’s going on, and how you’re handling it is a pretty good idea.

4) Laugh: At the end of the day, it’s just the internet. The errors were made by well-meaning people without any type of malicious intent.  So it’s ok to not take it too seriously and to understand that these things happen.

5) Follow Up: It’s important to do regular audits to make sure that changes have been made and that no new issues need to be dealt with.

As a blogger, I know this experience has also highlighted the importance of being as accurate as possible when I blog an event. I always try to contact the person who I’ve blogged about in case they have any changes or corrections.

So the lesson here is Google yourself. Frequently.

I’ll let you all know if I’ve suddenly become the go-to person for all of these stimulus packages, because after electing a President all by my lonesome, fixing the economy should be a piece of cake.

The randomness of  viral videos fascinates me. I’m always surprised at how certain clips  seem to capture the public’s fancy and  quickly take off, amassing millions of views. What’s really interesting is the set of responses that have been created when a video takes off.

The latest one to hit my inbox is the clip called David after the dentist, a seven year old’s funny reaction to being medicated after a dental procedure.  At the time of this post it has already generated 7 million views!

Here’s the video if you haven’t seen it:

Funny right? I love the part where he asks “Is this real life?” Poor little guy. Let’s take a look now at the different ways that people interact with this video. I’ve categorized them into a framework that I’m testing that I’m calling the 5 Rs: Reposting, Remixing, Re-enacting, Reacting and Reinventing. You don’t need to watch every video all the way through, but it’s interesting to get a taste of the different types of ways that people interpreted and played with this content.

1) Reposting

The easiest and most passive way for people to engage with this content is to simply repost a copy of the video on their own channel. This differs from embedding or linking the original video because it represents the desire for someone to create a carbon copy and pass that around. There are several copies of this video available already.  People could do this for several reasons: to jump on a hot topic and increase their channel views, or because they like the video so much that they want to “own” it and push it out from their channel. Either way it adds to the viral-ness of the content.

Remixing…continued after the jump!

2) Remixing

The viral video remix is a relatively new genre that I find to be really entertaining. Someone takes the original video and re-cuts it, adding music and/or effects. The two most common types is the time-lapse version where the editor either speeds up the video or slows it down, and the musical remix. The musical remix is a type of digital homage that can surpass the original video if done right.

The Electric remix:

Time Lapse:

3) Re-enacting

Re-enactment is where someone acts out the viral video (of a kid reacting to medication!) Maybe it’s because I’m a generally busy person but the fact that someone would spend the time to re-enact a home video baffles me. I wonder how many takes they had to film in order to get it just right. Nonetheless there are several versions. There are several ways that people do this, some act the entire thing themselves, others use the audio track.There are the dedicated re-enactment folks who add a brand new element like a different setting or a popular character who stars in the clip.

Acting the whole thing out:

Using the Audio Track:

Darth after Dentist:

4) Reacting/Responding

Finally, an interesting spin is people who video tape their own reactions to watching the video. In this case, a woman video tapes her daughter’s response to the remix. The reaction can also be expressed in a response video where the person faces the camera and verbally explains what they thought of the footage.

5. Re-inventing:

Re-inventing uses the original story line as a jumping off point to take the story in a whole new direction. In this case it was David after Dentist: Years Later. A not so funny video about David’s nightmares to the experience.

Some Thoughts:

The first thing that came to my mind is I wonder how the parents feel at watching a home video they have uploaded take on a life of it’s own! Can you imagine uploading a family moment and then having people re-enact, remix, and repost it? The second thing I think about is for David, the kid in the video. I wonder how he’s going to feel when he’s 14 years old and there is embarrassing footage online. Is this the digital and viral equivalent of your parents showing your baby pictures to your prom date? If so, it is SO much worse, lol.

The Wall Street Journal interviewed the boy’s father who said:

David’s father, also named David DeVore, says his son was safe the entire time and finds the video very funny. Mr. DeVore says he filmed his son to help ease his fear of doctor’s appointments. “I was trying to teach him that the anticipation is probably much worse than the actual event,” Mr. DeVore said. “This might not have been the right case to give an example.”

The New Video Consumer:

I think this is a reflection on our changing relationship with video and how we, as viewers, enjoy watching footage and then making it our own. In my opinion these types of videos only add to the experience of the original. Seeing how much pleasure people take from this, it seems odd to me that broadcasting companies are so strict with copyrighted clips being used on Youtube.com, when it provides a creative outlet for viewers to show their amusement and engage with the content. In essence it builds community, and shouldn’t broadcasters be encouraging this?

Where did January go? Last time I checked it I still had a few days left, lol, next thing I know it’s the second week of February! I’ve just come back from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. It was a truly remarkable experience to be able to see some of the brightest people get together and exchange ideas.

I’m finally back in Toronto and really diving head-first into my writing. I was inspired by Elizabeth Gilbert’s TED Talk on Genius and the anguish that is normally associated with the creative process. Gilbert’s last work, “Eat, Pray, Love” was an international best-seller and she is now struggling with her next novel, wondering how she can top her last success and fearing that her biggest accomplishment might now be behind her. Her fear around creativity definitely resonates with me, as I muck through my own writing processes.

Why You Should Watch :

Elizabeth Gilbert faced down a ­pre-midlife crisis by doing what we all secretly dream of – running off for a year. Her travels through Italy, India and Indonesia resulted in the megabestselling and deeply beloved memoir Eat, Pray, Love, about her process of finding herself by leaving home.

She’s a longtime magazine writer – covering music and politics for Spin and GQ – as well as a novelist and short-story writer. Her books include the story collection Pilgrims, the novel Stern Men (about lobster fishermen in Maine) and a biography of the woodsman Eustace Conway, called The Last American Man. Her work has been the basis for one movie so far (Coyote Ugly, based on her own memoir, in this magazine article, of working at the famously raunchy bar), and now it looks as if Eat, Pray, Love is on the same track, with the part of Gilbert reportedly to be played by Julia Roberts. Not bad for a year off.

My Favorite Parts and Thoughts, after the jump!

My Favorite Part:

“Excuse me, can’t you see that I’m driving here?” Ha, I’m going to do that next time I get inspiration and I can’t stop and fully embrace it.

My Take:

I think what I loved the most about this talk was how she described her own writing process: messy, hard work. It doesn’t always look pretty or feel good, but you do your part and you show up and trust in the universe to take care of the rest. My writing teacher once said to me that it’s astounding how musicians and artists spend years studying theory and techniques and we expect writers to sit at a keyboard and have the perfect sentence just flow right out of us. I’ve had a tumultuous and stormy relationship with writing for as long as a remember, and can definitely understand the darkness that can plague some writers – I have SO been there.

What do you think?