Manara

I’ve just come back from the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting of New Champions (AKA Summer Davos).

Each year, the meeting brings together leaders from global businesses, governments, civil society and technology sectors to discuss the challenges of relaunching growth.

This year, we had over 1,300 leaders from 86 countries focusing on future innovations to stimulate a sustainable recovery.

From the Forum’s Press Release:

The Meeting has brought together different groups that represent the future, including Young Global Leaders, Technology Pioneers, Young Scientists and heads of Global Growth Companies that represent fast-growing firms. They are working with CEOs of established global corporations, some of which are mentors to these emerging leaders.

• Videos of the plenary sessions will be available on YouTube in English and Youku in Chinese
• View photos from Flickr at http://www.weforum.org/newchampions/photos

Hi everyone!

Just a quick update from Davos. It’s been a great annual meeting so far. More details to come after, but I thought I would share this brief cameo I made on a German news program discussing what the Forum’s Global Partnership to Assist Haiti’s Economic Development, a partnership we’ve launched with the Clinton Foundation and the UN.

Last week, a 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck Haiti ravaging the country’s capital Port-au-Prince. The International Red Cross is estimating that at least three million people were impacted by the quake, with Haitian government officials citing that up to 200,000 people have been killed. Major infrastructure damage was also reported including the destruction of Parliament and the Presidential Palace.

The Internet community quickly rallied around this cause and provided an excellent case study of how social networks and open data can help in crisis response.

1) BREAKING NEWS: Up to the minute information flow

TWITTER:

Within hours of the quake, Haiti was a trending word on Twitter and users in Haiti provided live coverage of the earthquake including sending pictures, and information about damaged areas. In addition, some users are using their twitter feed to provide the names and conditions of survivors and coordinating rescue efforts in saving people who were still trapped in the rubble.

Facebook:

On Facebook, over 250,000 people have joined a group called Earthquake Haiti. Members are using the social network to post pictures of missing family members, as well as exchanging information on how to locate survivors, donate money and  offer words of comfort and support.

Wikipedia:

The Haiti 2010 Wikipedia Page was created within seconds after the quake and according the HuffPost, the page has received over 168,000 pages views and lists over 106 article sources. Smart Phones have also allowed Haitians to upload footage of the wreckage to sites such as Youtube, Vimeo and other video sharing sites. The day after the earthquake, over 4,000 Haiti related videos were uploaded to Youtube.

2) Coordinated Donation Efforts: Viral Advertising + Easy Call to Action

In addition to quickly disseminating information about the unfolding crisis, social media also provided a powerful platform to let people know how they could help. Users quickly shared information about fundraising campaigns and directed people to links where they could easily donate funds.

The American Red Cross launched an SMS  campaign enabling people to donate $10 right from their cell phones. The campaign proved immensely successful and raised a record $7 million within the first 24 hours.   In Canada, the Canadian Red Cross reported over $15.4 million in donations, with 85% of donations coming in online.

I don’t think it was just the increase of information available, but the fact that we were witnessing this disaster unfold through the eyes of those living it that made such an impact. The human element combined with an easy to do call to action made it simple and intuitive for those who wanted to help.

3) The Tech Community and Global Disaster Relief

Both Google and Facebook launched in Disaster Relief pages.

Facebook:

Facebook recently launched their Disaster Relief Page. According to the official Facebook blog this page is for:

“…the more than 350 million people on Facebook can educate themselves and find out how to help not only in Haiti but wherever disaster and misfortune may strike.

Every minute, people have been posting more than 1,500 status updates on Facebook that contained the word “Haiti.” People have contributed thousands of dollars through the Causes application on Facebook, and groups including the American Red Cross, Oxfam America and Partners in Health have mobilized supporters through their Facebook Pages and raised hundreds of thousands of dollars in the last 24 hours alone.”

Currently, the group has over 100,000 members and the Causes features has raised over $95,000 to date.

Google:

The search engine giant has also created a Disaster Relief page that allows people to easily donate and stay up to speed on breaking events as they unfold. In addition to donating one million dollars to the cause they are also offering free phone calls to Haiti via Google Voice.

Most interestingly, they have released a new data layer for Google Earth that allows users to see satellite images of Haiti post-quake. They have made this feature available via plugin, which you can get here. Users are encouraged to upload any information, pictures or footage and tag it through their Google Map Maker feature.

4) The Need for Open Data

Many news organizations have created “Peoplefinder” sites, a way to enable people to find information about missing family members. Boingboing published an open letter from Christopher Csikszentmihalyi, Director of the MIT Center for Future Civic Media, on how to make these initiatives more effective by opening their data:

“In the response to the earthquake in Haiti, many organizations worked to create sites where people could find one another, or least information about their loved ones. This excellent idea has been undermined by its success: within 24 hours it became clear that there were too many places where people were putting information, and each site is a silo.

We recognize that many newspapers have put precious resources into developing a people-finder system. We nonetheless urge them to make their data available to the Google project, and standardize on the Google widget. Doing so will greatly increase the number of successful reunions. Data from the google site is currently available as “dumps” in the standard PFIF format (on this page), and an API is being developed, and licensed through Creative Commons. I am not affiliated with Google — indeed, this is a volunteer initiative by some of their engineers — but this is one case where their reach and capacity can help the most people.”

Ultimately, creating data silos will not do anyone any good. We need to have open and transparent data that can be easily accessed and shared by various NGOs, governments and other interested parties who (like Google) can use it to create applications that can help and add value in a time of crisis. The New York Times has already indicated it would make it’s data available to Google and I hope more news organizations will follow suit.

While still in its infancy, I am happy to see that social media is creating opportunities for large groups of people to quickly share information and mobilize in support of those who are in need.

My cat interrupts my 12 seconds video to say hi. on 12seconds.tv

Yesterday, our beloved cat Josephine had to be put down after her kidneys failed in a sudden and unexpected attack. Josephine had been my boyfriend’s cat for the last 18 years – he purchased her when he was 10 years old with his paper route money.

I was devastated to come home from a weekend trip and find her in her  little cat bed, too weak to stand up on her own although she did try to get up and greet me. The vet informed me there was nothing they could do, and so we put her to sleep since she was suffering and in pain.

It was one of the saddest experiences of my life. I stroked her head and spoke to her to let her know that I was there. She lifted one of her little paws and laid it on my arm and looked right at me as the vet administered the shot. I am so upset that I wasn’t there for her when it happened. It kills me to think that she was scared and in pain and alone during those last few hours.

The house now seems so empty and much too quiet. Josephine’s favorite place to be was beside us on the couch and she would purr contentedly for hours. She loved lying on anything that belonged to us and I had become accustomed to finding her snoozing on our freshly folded laundry, coats that had been carelessly thrown on the bed and suitcases that were left open. I’m going to miss her crazy yowls and the chatty meows she would often insert into the middle of a conversation we were having. Most of all, I’m going to miss how she always seemed to know when I was sad or upset and would just curl up next to me.

I’m sad to start 2010 without her.

Josephine

I had the pleasure of speaking at the British Columbia New Democratic Party convention yesterday to share some thoughts about what Canadian politicians can learn from the Obama campaign. For many, Obama has become the new standard for political campaigns, validating the power of these tools when embedded within an overarching communication and branding strategy. While I do agree with using this particular example as a case study to showcase the potential of these tools, I caution organizations from jumping in and blindly imitating the tactics.

Social Media is a reflection of your organizations’ brand and should therefore be custom tailored to communicate to your audience. This means that not all the places that Obama was present online will offer the same value as others. Not everything they did will work for you. Below are some of my thoughts, that I will flesh out in the coming weeks.

Some Lessons Learned:

1) Building a Sleeper Community:

Unlike our American neighbors we don’t always have the luxury of knowing well in advance when a Federal election will take place. Last October’s election left politicians with less than a month to ramp up and get organized. This is not enough time to educate, excite and inspire people to participate in the political process.  For us, the challenge will be establishing sleeper grassroots communities – groups of people who engage in activities during the year and who can be called to action at a moment’s notice.

This means that for politicians who are looking to engage voters, the activities must go beyond election ramp up. If you want people to be involved you need to give them something valuable to be involved in. Parties need to find initiatives that encourage voters to develop the right skill sets (canvassing, phone banking, online organizing etc) that can then be easily transferred to an election setting.

This is far more challenging as it requires constant effort and input on behalf on both voters and politicians.

2) Finding the right Messaging:

During the 2008 US Presidential Elections, the one thing that struck me was the “do-or-die” mentality that was visibly present in so many of our volunteers. Many were feeling the impacts of the economic crisis first hand: reports of foreclosed houses, out of control debts, unemployment, and lack of health insurance were common. People felt threatened. They felt that they had to act – or else the consequences would be dire.

Luckily for us, Canadians have not felt the impacts of this crisis as strongly. Instead, we hover around a sense of national complacency where we are mildly concerned with what is happening, but not motivated enough to act. Politicians will need to find a way to communicate the necessity and urgency of defending some of the very things that make us Canadian: our healthcare and education system, protecting our natural resources, maintaining our reputation abroad as peacemakers.  Personally, I fear that we are losing some of things piece by piece, and that we won’t notice the full impact of this loss until it is already too late.

3) New Types of Engagement:

Finally political parties need to be ready to listen to voters, and recognize that these tools have changed the way we communicate with each other. If voters are more comfortable with using some of these online tools to organize and communicate online, then it is up to the party to figure out the best way to leverage these online behaviours into value adding campaign activities. People want to be involved, they want to be heard, but they want to do it in their own way and using the tools that are comfortable for them.

Final thought:

It seems to be that this shift in social media is indicative of a deeper shift in the way that people want to interact with government in a way that goes far beyond mere communication. Government itself will have to evolve to adjust to these new expectations. The time for change is now, and the Party that recognizes these changing trends and moves to embrace it will reap unprecedented rewards.

ps: Check out this crazy picture of me speaking at the convention, I look SO intense!

November 2008

It’s incredible how much can change in one year. At this time last year, I was working as a volunteer on Barack Obama’s New Media Team in Chicago. It was Election day and everyone was wound up tight with anticipation, excitement and fear. I had spent the last few months working with some of the brightest minds in digital media and strategy and it all came down to this day.

In celebration of that historic win, I am sharing some of my personal videos of my time at the campaign.

Sharing Some Down Time:

Everyone on the team worked long hours, 7 days a week. It was nice to find a few minutes to be able to unwind and have a little fun.

We Win Michigan:

We just won Michigan, and the whole office was gathered around the television, cheering and clapping.

Trolley of Change

As soon as we were sure of the results, we hopped on the trolley and headed down to Grant Park.

November 2009
Exactly a year later, I had written a book about my experiences and am now living in Geneva to work on a project for the World Economic Forum.

I still vividly remember the morning of November 5, I felt like the whole world was different, a little brighter. I knew it wouldn’t last forever, so I just savored the day, and the feeling that we could accomplish just about anything we set our mind to.

Happy November 4th!!

An article from the Times&Transcript

The laughter and the note taking, the applause for making some of her remarks in beautiful French, and especially the rousing standing ovation at the end of her speech all said Rahaf Harfoush had connected with the more than 250 people who came out to the Delta Beauséjour to hear her yesterday afternoon.

Enlarge Photo

GREG AGNEW/TIMES & TRANSCRIPT

Rahaf Harfoush, new media strategist and former Obama campaign team member, chats with Mayor George LeBlanc yesterday during the Intelligent Communities Summit in Moncton.

But the best praise for her insightful look at how she and the rest of the Barack Obama campaign team used technology and social media to get his message out came after the audience members had returned to their seats.

When the Canadian new media strategist and current associate director of the Geneva-based Global Co-operation Initiative invited questions from the floor, the first to jump to his feet was none other than Premier Shawn Graham.

For the record, the premier asked her opinion on why President Obama’s new team didn’t use the same social media strategies to deliver his message in the polarizing U.S. health care debate. And for the record, Harfoush admitted she was disappointed in how the health care debate was handled, and suggested the difference between candidacy and the White House is how presidents find themselves more boxed in by bureaucracies.

It is disappointing to think the U.S. president’s advisors aren’t paying more attention to what his campaign team did, because Harfoush’s presentation described just how much of a home run the social media aspect of his campaign was.Using things like Twitter, Facebook and iPhones, and detailed metrics, the Obama team raised $750 million for the campaign $5 and $10 at a time, largely through word of Net. It was a figure double that of what rival John McCain could raise, even with wealthy Republicans in his corner.

But more than raising funds, Obama’s social media experts, which included one of the founders of Facebook and a number of former top Google employees, excelled at raising voter engagement through hyper-segmentation of marketing.

The millions of Americans who registered with Obama’s MyBO website created basic profiles and consented to basic data tracking that allowed campaigners to direct specific messages that reflected specific voters’ specific key interests.

If that sounds intrusive, it was actually less so, said Harfoush. “It prevented us from spamming people with every little bit of information.”

Similarly, donations to the campaign were carefully tracked so that those who had just scraped together money they didn’t really have because they thought they could change America didn’t suddenly get offensive form letters asking for more. The numbers are staggering. The Obama team sent one billion messages during the campaign, two million people placed profiles on MyBO, 35,000 volunteer groups were formed, 400,000 blog posts were made and 200,000 off-line events were organized, including a Yes, Wii Can event that saw Wii gamers raise campaign funds.

When John McCain’s running mate Sarah Palin belittled Obama’s past job experience as a community organizer as hardly fitting a future president, Obama’s thousands of community organizers were insulted. An e-mail went out from Obama headquarters calling on them to be heard and in just 24 hours, $10 million more was added to the campaign coffers.

That balance between online organizing and real world action was a key point, Harfoush said, noting businesses would do well to always evaluate how much its digital marketing, whatever the buzz it might create, is actually translating to the real world. After all, a web is still made up more of the empty space between threads than the threads themselves. “As exciting as online marketing is, it didn’t get Obama elected,” she said. “This wasn’t a win for technology. The technology was just tactics.”

Since I’ve been spending an increasing amount of time on planes, my Kindle has become my absolute favorite thing. I was quite eager to get my hands on a copy of Mitch Joel’s new book “Six Pixels of Separation.”

I first met Mitch at the SES Toronto 2008 conference where I heard him speak on a panel. He was also the first IDEA NINJA that I profiled! I am happy to announce that I officially consider his book a Foushy Good Read!

The Book:  (Via Amazon)

Is it important to be connected? Well, consider this: If Facebook were a country, it would have the sixth largest population in the world.

The truth is, we no longer live in a world of six degrees of separation. In fact, we’re now down to only six pixels of separation, which changes everything we know about doing business.

This is the first book to integrate digital marketing, social media, personal branding, and entrepreneurship in a clear, entertaining, and instructive manner that everyone can understand and apply.

My Thoughts:

I would consider this book a Social Media 201 course, meaning Mitch pretty much assumes that you have a basic understanding of most social media tools and builds from there.  I really liked all of the practical tips that were included to help readers get started on applying the lessons learned to their own businesses.

Cool Ideas

EMBRACE SLOWNESS: Mitch debunks the myth that social media and digital communications are instant-fixes. Instead he (correctly) argues that building community, integrity and social capital takes time and effort. This is the one message I often emphasize to clients: just because it takes five minutes to create a Facebook profile doesn’t mean you’re going to start seeing the value right away.

BE CONSISTENT: I am so guilty of neglecting my poor blog when other factors get in the way. That’s not an excuse, says Mitch, and I shamefully agree. He urges that providing consistent content is a way of building trust and relationship with readers. They come to depend on your content and won’t appreciate a sporadic post schedule. Since reading this book, I have put a recurring appointment in my calendar to carve out some time each week to blog and update The Foush.

GIVE FREELY: Always think about what value you can provide the community (a handy book review perhaps? lol) Promote great content even if it’s not your own. Comment on other people’s posts and share your thoughts and feedback. Respond to all emails and comments in a timely fashion. Ask not what your community can do for you, but what you can do for your community!

THE TRUST ECONOMY: When I first interviewed Mitch I had just launched my blog and had often read Six Pixels (the blog) I was so nervous to ask him for an interview and was just blown away by how nice he was and how easily he made time to patiently answer all of my questions. I never forgot that first encounter and you can bet I’ll be supporting him whenever I can because I know he is a genuinely good guy- welcome to the new Trust Economy.

BONUS FEATURE

On Friday, October 16th, 2009 Mitch will be speaking in Toronto at an event titled, The Art of Management. This full-day event will also feature best-selling business book author Tom Peters (In Search of Excellence, Re-Imagine!, etc…), Marcus Buckingham and the Getting Things Done guru, David Allen. all live and in-person. There is special pricing for this event if you mention the Six Pixels of Separation Blog or Mitch Joel’s name. You can get more information here: The Art of Management

Stay Tuned…

In Part 2, Mitch answers some of my questions about his book!

I recently presented a keynote about Yes We Did at the American Chamber of Commerce Executives in Raleigh, North Carolina. In fact, I originally wrote this post from the airport where my flight has been DELAYED and my internet wi-fi connection was spotty at best, despite paying $7.99 for highspeed access. Thanks AT&T. (Hence the delay in posting)

In spite of these developments, I am happy to say that I really enjoyed the time I spent in North Carolina, ACCE is an association of people who are genuinely interested in improving their communities. I met so many great people and had some wonderful conversations.

One of those conversations got me thinking about Social Media and its impacts on existing business models. I frequently get asked about how Obama’s social media strategy holds up post-election. Would the tools that were so powerful continue to have such impact after Obama was elected? Or was it a one time shot?

Despite rebranding Obama for America into Organizing for America, it seems the response in using the community building tools introduced during the election to help promote the Administration’s legislative agenda is having lukewarm results. Efforts to push Obama’s health care reform and stimulus packages have seen limited successes.

1. Tactics vs. Strategy

One of the major themes in Yes We Did is the importance of differentiating between strategy and tactics. The Obama administration is at risk of falling into the same trap that claims so many social media initiatives. Just because the tools for Obama for America proved to be effective in an election process doesn’t mean that they will have the same impact now that Obama is President. For one thing, now that the Administration is in power, the sense of urgency and danger has faded.

One of my jobs as an Obama Volunteer was to call supporters who were organizing events all across the country to make sure that they fully understood how to use our site’s tools and to offer any support or resources that I could. The one thing I remember is that so many people approached this election with a “do or die” attitude. That has now mellowed and I feel that most people, while very supportive of the President, have slowly faded back into a distant interest.

2.  Supporting Faulty Systems

The second thought that struck me was that maybe the lesson here isn’t to try and mold social media to fit business models. Instead, maybe New Media is indicative of a deeper social shift that is exposing the inadequacy of these systems, be it government or business, that can no longer keep up with the way that we communicate and participate with our community. So instead of figuring out how to get people to knock on doors or write letters to their elected representatives, maybe we should be examining the way we invite people to get involved in the political process.

Social Media isn’t a shiny new coat of paint to slather over an old, antiquated model. Social Media is a reflection of how we are evolving the way we communicate and are running into issues when we try and apply this new model to stagnant and out dated systems.

What do you think?

By now, many of you might have seen the the JK Wedding Dance, the latest viral video to hit the web. The video shows couple Jill and Kevin’s creative spin on the traditional entrance of the bridal party at their wedding. Set to the song “Forever,” by Chris Brown (incidentally who was recently charged with assaulting his then-girlfriend) the video soared to instant popularity online. Even traditional media picked it up including CNN and Good Morning America. Here’s the video below:

Now the interesting thing is that I have been hearing rumbles about the authenticity of the video as well as the role that Sony (the label who owns the copyright of Brown’s song) played in promoting it from all corners of the web.

The Charges:

a) The video is totally fake, and was created by Sony to help bolster Chris Brown’s flailing career

b) The video is real, but has had a “corporate helping hand” in promoting it to help bolster Chris Brown’s career

c) The video is real, and everything we are seeing is the result of content going viral, organically.

The Evidence:

I am listing all the points, even the flimsy ones:

1) Many people have mentioned the consistency of the song quality throughout the whole video is incredibly good considering it was recorded on a handy-cam. Some speculate a higher quality version of the song was added after the video was shot.

2) The video was uploaded on July 19, on July 25th the entire wedding party was on Good Morning America. To get national media attention within 6 calendar days seems a little fast, even for the web. Other people have also mentioned that the video while entertaining, wasn’t hugely innovative compared to the thousands of other “funny wedding videos” available online. They were a little surprised to see all the media coverage.

3)   Go-Digital.net Blog reported an interesting discrepancy betweeen the number of views and and trends on various social networks including Twitter, Google Searches, etc. They hypothesize that the promotional activities (ie/ the aforementioned Good Morning America appearances, etc) created the initial push which THEN gained momentum online instead of the other way around.

4) According to Ad Age’s Viral Video Chart, all of the videos that made its top ten list took between three and six months to fully gain momentum.

5) Google reported on their official blog that instead of using copyright infringement as a reason to pull the video (as Sony and other labels routinely do) Sony capitalized on the video’s popularity by running text ads during the video and placing click to buy ads below:

At YouTube, we have sophisticated content management tools in place to help rights holders control their content on our site. The rights holders for “Forever” used these tools to claim and monetize the song, as well as to start running Click-to-Buy links over the video, giving viewers the opportunity to purchase the music track on Amazon and iTunes. As a result, the rights holders were able to capitalize on the massive wave of popularity generated by “JK Wedding Entrance Dance” — in the last week, searches for “Chris Brown Forever” on YouTube have skyrocketed, making it one of the most popular queries on the site:

This traffic is also very engaged — the click-through rate (CTR) on the “JK Wedding Entrance” video is 2x the average of other Click-to-Buy overlays on the site. And this newfound interest in downloading “Forever” goes beyond the viral video itself: “JK Wedding Entrance” also appears to have influenced the official “Forever” music video, which saw its Click-to-Buy CTR increase by 2.5x in the last week.

The Outcomes:

• As of today the video has over twenty million views.
• The Wall Street Journal reported that Brown’s song, Forever, climbed the charts landing at No. 4 on the iTunes Single Charts and No. 3 on Amazon’s best selling MP3 List, no easy feat considering the song was released nearly a year ago.

Interestingly enough, Softpedia reported that  Sony wasn’t totally sure about its approach, initially disabling the embedding feature and then changing their minds afterwards.

The Verdict:

I think after looking at all of the evidence I am going to go with option B. The video itself is real, but someone at Sony spotted an incredible opportunity to help one of it’s troubled artists and jumped on it. Both parties made some money and Brown’s song increased in popularity. Everyone wins.

What this means for Viral Marketing:

Spot the Good Wave. I find this case study particularly interesting because it challenges the traditional pressure faced by marketing folks to go and “create something viral.” Instead, a brand manager’s role now involves focusing on spotting vehicles like video that can help a brand gain online momentum.  This allows companies to avoid the pitfall of manufactured content. With the JK video the world was entranced by a human moment, something that an organization would have had a difficult time recreating. (Unless I’m totally wrong and the video is completely fake and Sony has fooled us all, lol) Much like surfing, marketers will need to develop a skill to differentiate the real gems from the thousands of other videos out there that can give their brand that extra boost.

Consumer Generated Content Can Be Your Friend. One can hope that this example has opened the eyes of Sony execs to the potential uses and profitability of user created content. Instead of forcing people to pull their content down, there is a possibility of both parties benefiting from making it available online.

Tactics will change and evolve. As more videos become viral, viewers will become increasingly suspicious of popular content which will mean that brands will need to invest in their online relationships in order to understand how consumers wish to be engaged.  If it’s interesting, I will watch content whether it is created by a company or not, I just want to know up front. Others might be completely indifferent. Knowing these nuances will spare companies a lot of headaches in the future.