by Rob Paterson
November 28, 2010 at 12:20 pm · Filed under
Adoption, Andy Carvin, Apple, Barriers, Columbus, Content, NPR, New Realities, Public Media, Relationships, Social Media, iTunes
Most organizations know that the web is important today – even the most dinosauric. But for most, the web is an up and coming “channel” and most still don’t have a clue about social media – they do it because they have to and they do it without much understanding about how it works and how different it is from their old “Normal”.
The final arrival of the Beatles on the web – mainly as we see boosted by social media – shows the new reality. That the web amplified by good use of social media is now the primary way of connecting what you have to the public.
Billboard magazine reports that The Beatles sold more than two million individual songs worldwide and in excess of 450,000 albums in its first week on Apple’s iTunes Music Store. (The Beatles’ catalog was added to iTunes on November 16th.)
According to Experian Hitwise, it was social media — not search — that drove a lot of the online interest and, more importantly, the online traffic surrounding The Beatles addition to iTunes. Consider this stat: On November 16, the first day Beatles songs were available on iTunes, 26% of UK traffic to Apple.com came from social media, about double the amount that came from search.
This nail in the coffin of old marketing is what NPR discovered. When I worked for NPR back in 2005 – attracting a younger audience was thought to be vital. But at the time this meant that somehow the content should be changed. But what they found was that if you changed the medium for connection to Social Media – the young came – they loved the content – they just will not access it in the old way.
In a survey of more than 10,000 respondents, NPR found that its Twitter followers are younger, more connected to the social web, and more likely to access content through digital platforms such as NPR’s website, podcasts, mobile apps and more.
NPR has more than one Twitter account; its survey found that most respondents followed between two and five NPR accounts, including topical account, show-specific accounts and on-air staff accounts.
The data on age is hardly surprising. The median age of an NPR Twitter follower is 35 — around 15 years younger than the average NPR radio listener. This lines up with data we recently found about other traditional news media; the average Facebook user reading and “liking” content on a news website is two decades younger than the average print newspaper subscriber.
Isn’t this what has happened to the Beatles? Good content is good. If you have a product or a service or cintent that is good and is not available on the web via social media – you are punishing your business.
So what does this mean? The jury is no longer out. If you are not using the web and social media well – you are no longer cautious but stupid. You are refusing to see the world as it is. Now I know why you won’t move. Because this is all new and you are not any good at it. It’s like me taking up skiing in my forties. What had held me back was how awkward and stupid I would look and feel. But you know – no one cared about how awkward I was and learning to ski then allowed me to spend 10 winters with my kids having a hell of a time. I am 60. I started blogging back in 2002. I was utterly pathetic at it. But over time, I got ok. You can be too.
The real question is do you want your TV station, store, business to survive? It’s still not too late but it is getting close.
Who can help you? Well there are a lot of shysters out there. “Self proclaimed” Social Media Experts who have been involved for a year or so. So here are a few questions to ask to ensure that you are getting someone who can help for real:
- Tell us about who you have worked for in the past that you have helped make the shift in mindset? They must have been able to help another make this shift in POV
- Tell us who your friends and network are? The shysters know shysters, the real folks know others who know their stuff and their network is as valuable as anything that they know.
- Show us what you have written that moves the cheese! Shysters pound on about Facebook etc, the real deal is part of a larger deeper conversation about what all of this means.
- Show us how knowing what you do has helped you in your own life? Most Shysters still live in the 1.0 world themselves. The real deal don’t – living this life has changed them radically – they have been made different by this and you will know this when you compare the 2 types. PS relentless self promotion is a give away!
Some advice about process:
- There is no formula/cookie cutter – it is not about using Facebook next week – it is about changing your own mindset. So start with lots of conversation about what is going on and where you can start – you cannot know where you will end up right now – don’t try and go there.
- Our mindset is changed not by will but by new habits – try a few smallish experiments and label them as such – look at at others who have done well and see how this may give you a start – Have a look here at how Boingo have used listening or look here about how Kotex have used a deep question. These are powerful places to start to help you be different for in the 1.0 world we don’t listen, we shout. In the 1.0 world we don’t ask tough questions, we live instead in a clean, fun, smooth fantasy world where periods are the best part of the month.
- Hire one or two great young folks. Andy Carvin - just one person has done more for NPR than an army of consultants. Same with Baochi at Boingo who enjoys the confidence of the CEO.
- Persevere!!! This is really really hard to execute – the tools are simple – it is the shift in mindset that is so painful. I have found that as much as I and others know the direction the day to day part of the journey is stressful. Think of Christopher Columbus on his first voyage. He “knew” that there would be land if he sailed long enough west. But his crew did not. They also had to deal with storms etc, When they arrived, it was land but not the Indies – the destination was different. People got upset. When you do this – all of the trials of Columbus will come your way – Doubt, fear mutiny, disappointment – the lot. But there is no going back – you just have to push through.
- Last point – anyone who tells you that this is easy and they can show you a step by step formula is a Shyster
So stand up for our species. Be a Sapiens and not a Sap and good luck to you.
by Rob Paterson
October 18, 2010 at 8:18 am · Filed under
Adoption, Barriers, Economics, KETC, NPR, Organizational Design, Public Media, Social Media, education
After many years of thinking and talking, here Sir Ken I think nails the problem and gets the direction for the right new path correct. Helped a lot by the guys at RSA.
So what can we do with this insight?
My experience in public radio and TV – which also is at a crossroads from one culture to another – is that we must not underestimate the power of the entrenched culture. Most people inside pub radio/TV and in education are so invested in the old that they can only fight an alternative. This is not because they are bad or stupid – it is because they are human and their identity is the system as it is. So to change it means that they have no place. So they cannot go to the new.
If you long for a better education system – you are also worried about how to breakthrough all these barriers. You don’t know how to change the system. I think that we can look at what is happening in media and find a way.
So where is the change happening in media that we might use to help us in education. As I write them I can see how these factors apply to education - can’t you?
- The long term effects of the poor economy is pressing the system
- The school system is under huge funding pressure too
- In higher ed – the degree also costs too much now and drives loans that canot be repaid
- Kids will seek out new ways – they have to
- In the next 10 years the pressure to find a new way for the money will become unbearable – thus creating the same kind of context for change that we see in media
- There are organizations like Craigslist that are killing the economics of the old and forcing economic pressure – the old way leads to economic starvation and sets a context for change
- There are new online schools such as the Khan Academy that offer kids a wonderful alternative to school
- Great Schools like MIT have put a lot of superlative content online
- Kids are voting with their feet - better content will be available online for next to free as with Craigslist and personals that will ad to the economic pressure
- The web has a bunch of new tools such as Twitter, YouTube, Netflix, iTunes, Apple TV etc that are empowering new sources and new ways of finding, producing and using content
- Same for Ed - iTunes, YouTube are already there
- Why take Math with Miss Jones when you can get the world’s best math teachers on your time at your pace?
- Parents will buy into this too
- There are entirely new organizations – Huffington Post, Daily Beast, Politico – Greenfield that go through no transition but start with the new model – they are forcing competitive pressure
- There are a few old leaders who get it and have enough critical mass inside to go for it now – The Guardian in the UK and NPR – they are forcing change on their system
- Athabaska and Phoenix come to mind in higher ed – they are moving to the mainstream
- Soon there will be Grade Schools that have the same features
- There are few local small organizations that have the leadership to go for it too and are making enough progress to show the rest - KETC is the one I know the best.
So what to do?
Don’t think about changing the whole system!!!!! It’s too big and powerful.
Instead take advantage of these powerful forces.
If you are a learner – Explore the new world of resources – do not feel trapped in school as it is or feel that you have to wait – enough change is here for you to take full advantage now
If you are a parent – see the whole picture for you child – help line them up into that is now available that is more fitted to them and at a cost you can all afford. Vote with your feet.
If you are a school board - Learn how to make the shift from the old to the new – Do a KETC – pick a school with the right leadership and try the new in ONE place – learn from this – use this test bed to expose others to the new from their peers.
If you are a teacher – Learn how to be the new – participate in the new world – be a citizen teacher – offer content or coaching – learn how to be an entrepreneurial teacher who can hang up their shingle on the web or locally. Be the math coach or the history coach in your place or globally!
If you are a social entrepreneur - Build the new a place together so that you are the convener of the a place where kids can be together and yet be part of the a larger universe of resources that fits them!
It’s coming folks – the forces in play are too great to stop it. BUT you have to be a player now if you want to benefit.
by Rob Paterson
August 16, 2010 at 1:53 pm · Filed under
Adoption, Gaping Void, Hugh McLeod, Innovation, KETC, Management Theory, Organizational Design, Public Media, Public TV, Robert Scoble, Seth Godin, University, education
Few people are as passionate about Education than BG. Here he is talking about what he has learned by a lot of experiments.
- That K-12 is best as an immersive system with long days – best 6 days a week and in the summer as well. The best charter schools know this and practice it. Having had all my school like this myself – my sample of 1 agrees with this.
- This means that for K-12 Place is key – like going to Boot Camp. But there is a real role here for online in that it expands the scope of the place
- BG feels (2.50) however that shifting the formal system to either of these ideas – more immersive and more online – can never happen – the cultural barriers are too high
- On the College and university front, he points out that here the issue is access. The main barrier to access is “Place” that drives direct cost and prohibits the student from having any flexibility.
- Here he anticipates big movement driven by the economics. Place drives costs of up to $250,000 for a BA. He thinks that the target is to reduce this not to $20,000 but to $2,000
I think this is entirely possible. But what established university will have the guts to do this? Will they all end up like the newspapers? Hanging on for dear life?
I think that most will rather die than change. As many of us are finding in the front lines of change – it is impossible to underestimate the power of the establishment.
But I think that maybe a few established universities might go the whole way. I think that those who do will win the most. There is something very important about having an establishment organization or person as part of a revolution. Martin Luther had his Prince who defended him from both the Pope and the Emperor. In newspapers it may be the Guardian. In public TV it may be KETC. (Here is KETC Immigration page where they are putting the Public Into Public TV).
I think of my university here on PEI – What if UPEI had another 25,000 online students? here is a snip of a larger idea like this that I wrote 5 years ago:
Come to PEI for the summer and meet the other students and then go onto take an online Master’s degree in the Natural Economy. The Master in the Natural Economy (MINE) is a master’s degree course that engages the learner as many of the ideas and practices of the new ways of organizing and acting as possible. It embodies the ideas of our new time. It draws on hundreds of “Gurus” that live all over the world that bring their own story and experience to bear. Students, who nearly all are employed, develop their own path of study within the context of the course intention.
The school initially emerged out of one course, Marketing as a Conversation inspired by Cluetrain and by the ongoing thinking and blogging of by people like Seth Godin, Hugh McLeod, Johnnie Moore and Jennifer Rice. Their marketing revolution was the first breach of the old system that took hold.
There are a number of paths that students can take but all the work is founded in the ideas of how real relationships and real networks work. Paul Hawken is Dean Emeritus and the current Dean of the School in Natural Economy is George Dafermos who’s early writing on the use of Open Source, as an organizational model, has been so influential. Robert Scoble is the Visiting Guru this year and will be on PEI this summer offering workshops in Voice and Culture. He replaces Dave Pollard who will be sorely missed.
Students spend a month in the summer here on PEI where their task is to get to know each other and to decide on their focus for study. They then return home and form groups that are facilitated by the gurus. The full Masters degree costs only $7,000 and has of course no other costs. There are now 17,000 students in the system that is 4 times the size of UPEI, conventional undergraduate school.
MINE Graduates are in extreme demand as organizations struggle to understand the shift that they have to undergo. The traditional business schools have had great difficulty in moving this fast because they have such an investment in the old. Similarly, the major consulting firms have all but collapsed, as they too could not reframe their costs and their competence.
In their place have emerged networks of “Gurus” like the Hughtrain Alliance that are recognized as the key talent that shook the marketing world. These networks have a very different model and become partners of the host organization. They are not report writing organizations with expensive offices and extreme hierarchies but are much more like coaches of a team. Most of the students of the Natural Economy work and most of their study is in the context of solving their real challenges.
In effect, consulting has become an extension of the education process.
As with Luther – the big change will happen on the edge where the “field” is weakest. A small undergraduate university, like UPEI or back in the day Wittenberg, is less gripped by the power of the prevailing culture and can see the gains that might accrue to them.
by Rob Paterson
May 19, 2010 at 7:45 am · Filed under
Adoption, Public Media, Public Radio, Public TV
We have intuitively known for ages that the gateway to a 2.0 world – a world of participation and real partnership – is not merely the adoption of a new set of tools – but the mindset of the influencers in the organization. Now we know that this is an empirical fact.
In 2009 I was advising KETC, a public TV station in St Louis, as they tried a something truly novel. The Station had in its own market just completed a project funded by CPB, to see if it could use its Trust to convene the community to help each other get through the Mortgage Crisis. The challenge being that St Louis was locked down with fear and shame and it was all but impossible to find safe sources of help. The project was to find out who could be trusted and to help them set up a network of support and to connect this to the people. It forced the station to itself work across the silos and to connect TV with the web and with its outreach. The success of this experiment caused CPB to fund a much bigger test. 32 of the hardest hit markets in America were chosen. In each market CPB asked the TV and the Radio stations to partner and the entire group partnered as a group. Again the task was to reach into the community, to find those who could help, help them partner and to connect them to the people.
Here is a link to the full details of the project. We were in effect using the Mortgage Crisis as a Social Object.
View Facing the Mortgage Crisis, Participating Stations and Markets in a larger map
Here is a map of the scale of the work. If you expand it you will see the names of the stations.
So what happened? What happened is that some stations did brilliantly. Some did ok and others went through the motions. What was the difference? We found that the difference had nothing to do with any tools – we all used the same ones and we ll helped each other use them. No the Difference was mindset. The Mindset of the leadership of our a group of leaders at each station.
We were able to categorize the stations as you see in this chart. Here is more detail of what these categories mean. I offer it up because you can assess your own organization by using this screen.
Tier 1
• The station knows that they must shift their work patterns and focus on the external—they have a positive and open mindset
• They seek to shift their norms—despite what resources are available to make this shift
• Core beliefs inside the station have shifted and there is an emotional attachment between the station and the people they serve
• Communication is strong internally and externally
• Internal collaboration has become the norm, silos are minimized
• They are able to utilize all of their assets, leveraging the broadcast component and maximizing social and online media, community involvement and partnerships
• They listen first to their partners and their community, and they understand the value of these relationships in helping define a course of action for their work
• They are able to take direction from their community advisors and have a willingness to cede control of certain aspects to other organizations.
• Station leadership is strong and backs the work directly or makes certain that key staff are supported
• Relationship between TV and Radio is secure (where applicable). Both organizations experience the benefits of working together to help their community
Tier 2
• Internal collaboration is emerging and is valued, silos are beginning to minimize
• They’ve made relative progress from where they started and very much want to make the leap, but don’t have the capacity, skill set, people or road map to shift their focus beyond the traditional work.
• They’re beginning to make the leap from station at the center to ceding control to partners
• They are exploring what social media and online can mean to their work
• Station leadership wants to make the leap to this new kind of work, but the shift is nascent
• Relationship between TV and Radio (where applicable) is improving
Tier 3
• They think they’ve done this before, but do not understand the nuances of why this work is different
• Staff work in silos, but collaborate ad hoc
• Still working through old processes/norms
• Station leadership is supportive, but invested in traditional work and won’t alter investments to new work
• Little or no collaboration between TV and Radio
Tier 4
• Regard this as just another project with funds attached—a beginning and an end—rather than a capacity builder
• Traditional approach with station at the center
• Unable to form meaningful and equal partnerships with community organizations—station is still very much in control
• Use social media very little and do not leverage multi-platform—broadcast is still only priority
• Station leadership regards this as business as usual
• Staff work in silos
These characteristics are meaningful—they are not simply an assessment of how the stations performed in this initiative. The characteristics of the top performing stations help us understand how to make the shift to public media. These characteristics are the key to making the case for the relevance and significance of public media in our communities and in our country. This is the case for the sustainability of our industry.
MINDSET = IMPACT = SUSTAINABILITY
The evidence is clear—Tier 1 stations generated more external grant resources, dedicated more staff, forged more partnerships, hosted more discussions — on-air and online—produced more reports, and spurred more talk in their communities. This in turn had big implications for community outcomes in terms of citizen resource utilization and other media attention—meaning more calls were generated to 211 in these communities and there was more media coverage beyond the station.
Later I will post more about our findings but I wanted to get the mindset issue on the table.
My dear pals who work with me here on Fast Forward Blog will chip in. Where is the leverage – who has to get it and how do they get it. How do you move up? What are the barriers?
More soon
by Rob Paterson
March 26, 2010 at 10:04 am · Filed under
Public Media, Public Radio, Public TV
Things are moving so fast! In a month the iPad will be here. The shift from traditional computers to Mobile will take off.
But Pub Media are still coming to terms with the web itself. There are still holdouts for Digital Radio. Many hope that Digital Stations for TV are the future. After all huge sums have been spent on them. Many still deny the web. We can see this in the resources applied to it – in most stations less than 20%.
But it is clear now. The Web is it. The web is where we will consume media.
The decisive shift will be 2011 after the iPad has taken hold.
And the part of the web that will be THE place will be Mobile and I include iPad in Mobile.
So is all lost? No!
The Public Radio Player is surely the place to use as a beach head? It has been very popular with 2.5 million downloads in the Apple Apps store (includes upgrades). It has great functionality. It ties nicely back to the stations.
Let’s get a project to build of this and to include TV!
The iPad is ideal for watching video – please please please – make it easy for me to watch the great content of the public system and to integrate it into radio too.
Here is my vision:
- Radio and TV content is integrated – I can search for say Jane Austen and find video and audio and text – I can find other Jane Austen fans in my city – we can get together – we can create a community around out topic
- I can do this for news and opinion – I can follow a topic and draw on all sources – AND from my local community
- I can do this for music, documentary, whatever
The key is to offer the place where the full resources of all the system comes together in one device and in one place and where the community is added too.
