Todd Van Hoosear, one of the principals of Fresh Ground, a Boston-area communications firm, joined me on my Disruptive Dialogue podcast to discuss his recent trip to the DEMO Spring conference in Palm Desert, California. Presenters at the event get 6 minutes to convince an audience of media, investors, and entrepreneurs that their new product is the Next Big Thing.

I have attended DEMO a number of times and often come away with a sense as to some of the trends in high-tech products and services, and always a few new ideas. I wasn’t able to attend the latest edition in person, but Todd does a great job of sharing with me and my listeners some of his observations.

[podcast]http://media.libsyn.com/media/chipgriffin/dd-toddvanhoosear-2010-03-29.mp3[/podcast]

Some of the companies mentioned include:

• eXaudios
• Gwabbit
• Phone Halo
• SocialWish
• Teneros

You can download the complete podcast in MP3 format.

Julie Germany will be discussing online politics at the South by Southwest conference in Austin, TX this coming weekend

My colleague, Julie Germany, joined me for a conversation on Disruptive Dialogue about her upcoming trip to South by Southwest where she will be speaking about online politics. As the former Director of the George Washington University Institute for Politics, Democracy, and the Internet, as well as the current Vice President of Digital Strategy at DCI Group, she is well positioned for this talk.

In this interview she addresses:

• a sneak peek at her talk scheduled for this Sunday in Austin
• expectations and advice for SxSW
• views on the importance of geeks engaging in politics at all levels

[podcast]http://media.libsyn.com/media/chipgriffin/dd-julieg-2010-03-08.mp3[/podcast]

This is a topic I touched on yesterday in my post “A Tech Geek’s Guide to Politics,” but you can expect a lot more detail and color in Julie’s presentation, I expect.

I plan to have Julie back for a conversation after she returns to Washington, DC to see what she took away from SxSW.

Don Bates discusses tips for good PR writing in this episode of Disruptive Dialogue

Next week my good friend Don Bates will be teaching a seminar on PR writing in Washington, DC. This practical and informative session is being sponsored by the PRSA National Capital Chapter and will be hosted at George Washington University on March 16, 2010 from 9 AM to 3 PM.

In advance of this gathering, Don joined me for a conversation about PR writing in general and this workshop in particular.

[podcast]http://media.libsyn.com/media/chipgriffin/donbates-2010-03-08.mp3[/podcast]

We cover a lot of ground in 10 minutes including:

• How PR reps are like car salesmen (and how they’re different)
• What difference in writing for marble and email
• Why generational differences in PR writing exist
• What you can expect to learn if you attend this seminar

I have the privilege of joining Don for part of the day to talk about writing for social media. We have teamed up on this before and the feedback we consistently get is very positive, so I encourage you to attend if you can.

In the meantime, go ahead and listen to our conversation.

Most of us have signed up for LinkedIn, a business-oriented social network, and many of us use it occasionally, but we haven’t really figured out how to get the most of it.  So I asked a longtime friend and former colleague, Jeff Taylor, to share his advice.  Jeff, a Senior Vice President at Fleishman-Hillard Government Relations in Washington, DC, has had more success with the service than anyone else I know.

(Listen to the 11 minute interview.)

“In the early going I had no luck whatsoever,” Jeff Taylor told me of his experience with LinkedIn, likening it to his golf awakening.  “For many years I didn’t play golf very well, then one day I hit the ball straight and I hit it 280 yards.”

And one day he received a lead from his LinkedIn connections that ended up netting his employer at the time, a law firm, a $500,000 account.  He quickly became a believer.

Whereas many of us use LinkedIn rather passively, Jeff has jumped in with both feet.  He says he currently has more than 4200 connections.  He advises people looking to get the most of the service to use things like LinkedIn Answers to build better relationships with your network.  By answering other people’s questions, you show expertise and generosity.  By posing questions, you can gather valuable intelligence.

Early on, Jeff found that he needed to spend a lot of time cultivating connections, but now he is in maintenance mode and gets an estimated 20-30 connection requests each day.

Jeff notes that there are two schools of thought on how to build your network.  Some (like me) choose to connect only with people who they actually know.  Others (like Jeff) are much less discriminating in an effort to build a larger network for potential business use.

In addition to the passive results he gets, Jeff also uses LinkedIn proactively to find contacts at companies he is trying to pitch. He has even been able to rekindle old friendships in the process.

(Listen to the 11 minute interview.)

“We don’t even have to really debate whether or not people can start web companies in a variety of places,” Brian Oberkirch says, “but how do you do it when you are not in a place like the Bay Area?” That’s the topic of discussion in the latest Disruptive Dialogue.

(Click here to listen to the 13 minute interview.)

The discussion took place in the wake of a blog post that Brian wrote recently titled “Location, Location, Location (doesn’t matter as much.”  Based in Louisiana, Brian knows a bit about working outside of Silicon Valley as a web entrepreneur and advisor.

Topics discussed include networking ideas, thoughts on sharing office space with other web types to build a greater sense of community, and the notion of companies having remote, virtual teams.

I suggested that perhaps companies in the technology hotbed may focus more on building to flip, while outside of the Bay Area, entrepreneurs seem more focused on building sustainable companies that may well get acquired, but that’s not the sole focus.  Brian thought that the there is definitely a different mindset in a “company town” like the San Francisco region that looks to behemoths like Google and Apple, but he wasn’t certain that there was a difference in the sustainability aspect.

Brian notes that talent in Silicon Valley is just as hard to find as elsewhere, just for different reasons.  The talent pool may be larger for engineers in San Francisco, but the demand is much higher as well.

Bottom line, according to Brian: “Location may not be as much of a barrier as it used to be.”

Chris Brogan graciously agreed to speak with Disruptive Dialogue about his advice to “media makers” who want to make a living off of creating media.  This is a topic he has written about on a number of occasions, but perhaps most comprehensively in a blog post over the summer.

(Click here to listen to the 15 minute interview.)

In the interview, he stressed that his advice applies primarily to those who want to make money directly from their media content, as opposed to people who create media for their friends and family or even professionals who simply aim to raise their profile and build their reputation.  This is, in his words, for “someone looking to pay their way.”

At first, many successful podcasters or video bloggers “lived by their show name.”  Chris wanted to make sure that people understood that what they ought to be creating instead is a production company brand rather than simply a show brand. In so doing, it becomes easier to create spin-off enterprises, to sell a particular effort to another company, or fold a failure without taking the brand down with it.

In addition, Chris talked about how he has a less than 2 minute segment in each Marketing Over Coffee podcast to help build his own brand (“Social Business Class”).  This represents an example of what he describes as designing content that can be “slotted in” to a larger content production.  He notes that sometimes larger media enterprises may be looking for chunks of content to incorporate into their efforts, and if a media maker creates his material in such a way that it can be easily adopted, it may be able to expand its reach through partnerships.

The comments on Chris’ original post were echoed in this interview in which he discussed the fact that a successful media enterprise will often create a community which will enable revenue opportunities beyond advertising.  But fundamentally, media creators must be sure to understand the needs of advertisers and ensure that they are collecting the appropriate traffic and demographic data that potential sponsors will want to know. He laments that many content builders don’t have the “business sense” that they need to make a living at what they do and urges them to gain that knowledge.

The interview then turned to a discussion of the merits of audio versus video as a business model, including a brief look at Shel Holtz’s post on that very topic today. Chris noted that his original post has frequently been misconstrued to be making a case against audio in favor of video.  In fact, he notes that he loves audio-based media and that a lot of video actually works better as audio because the video doesn’t add value.  In particular, we talked about the Scoble Show which we both often listen to rather than watch, although we agreed that Robert does some of his shows where the visible content adds significantly to the understanding and impact.

“I don’t think people who are investing money are right now very interested in audio overall,” Chris warns. He senses more innovation in the video space which excites investors, and he recalled a recent conversation where he noted how hard it is for consumers to record and post audio online as opposed to video which has a lot of consumer-friendly solutions available.

Chris notes that the Student Loan Network not only has the Financial Aid Podcast, but they also have begun to dip into video in order to do things like show how to make a perfect cup of coffee (to save money by not going to Starbucks).  It underscores his point that the future will be made up of “media makers,” not single silo audio, video, or text creators.  Blended, or multimedia, offerings will be the ones that succeed.

(Click here to listen to the 15 minute interview.)

The latest episode of the Disruptive Dialogue podcast is now available.  This one was recorded in Bow, NH and is 20:24.  You can download this podcast as an MP3 or subscribe to the RSS feed to make sure you never miss an episode.

Topics:

• The New Media Cocktail
• StartRocket

To Comment:

• Leave your comments here
• Call the Disruptive Dialogue comment line: (617) 273-CHIP / (2447)
• Email me your comments in MP3 format (no more than 2 minutes and 5 MB, please)

The latest episode of the Disruptive Dialogue podcast is now available.  This one was recorded in Bow, NH and is 21:14.  You can download this podcast as an MP3 or subscribe to the RSS feed to make sure you never miss an episode.

Topics:

• 10 Ways the Rules of the Media Business are Being Rewritten
• Comment from Bryan Person of NewCommRoad on page views and advertising and ensuing discussion of that topic

Notes:

• Mainstream News vs Blogstream Views

To Comment:

• Leave your comments here
• Call the Disruptive Dialogue comment line: (617) 273-CHIP / (2447)
• Email me your comments in MP3 format (no more than 2 minutes and 5 MB, please)

The latest episode of the Disruptive Dialogue podcast is now available.  This one was recorded in Bow, NH and is 23:37.  You can download this podcast as an MP3 or subscribe to the RSS feed to make sure you never miss an episode.

Topics:

• The O’Murdoch Factor
• Doc Searls on newspapers
• Private Equity is the biggest threat to journalism
• Media consumption rates
• Online ad spending hits $17B
• Breakdown of online ad spending by format
• TripAdvisor grows by user generated content
• Why Ustream will change mainstream
• Online video stats
• Risk of user generated ads
• Deal for small webcaster copyright royalties?
• State of Technorati
• Vertical search
• Don Dodge on search market share
• Blog Search is dead and Google killed it?

Show Notes:

• The state of Technorati according to Dave Sifry
• Why Ustream will change mainstream
• The Interweb as Mass Media
• Retrevo – Gadget Search Vertical Nirvana
• Why 1% of search market share is worth over $1 Billion
• The O’Murdoch factor
• Because paper is scarce. And so is time.
• U.S. Online Ad Spending, by Format
• The High Price of Creating Free Ads
• 2006 Online Ad Spending Hits Nearly $17 Billion
• TripAdvisor Growing With Help of User Generated Content
• Blog Search is Dead and Google Killed It
• Live Innovation Journalism Conference Notes: Private equity is biggest threat to journalism in Silicon Valley…
• Industry Royalties Org Offers “Subsidy” To Small Internet Webcasters; SaveNetRadio Says No Thanks

To Comment:

• Leave your comments here
• Call the Disruptive Dialogue comment line: (617) 273-CHIP / (2447)
• Email me your comments in MP3 format (no more than 2 minutes and 5 MB, please)

The latest episode of the Disruptive Dialogue podcast is now available.  This one was recorded in Bow, NH and is 29:51.  You can download this podcast as an MP3 or subscribe to the RSS feed to make sure you never miss an episode.

Topics:

• SF Chronicle Lays off 25%
• Don Dodge says newspapers need to go hyper-local
• Mark Cuban says TV and newspapers should follow a convergence model to thrive
• The Mini Media Maven model
• Cynthia Brumfield says media needs to follow the model of Om Malik, Rafat Ali, and Mike Arrington
• Monster.com does a deal with Community Newspaper Holdings
• Joe Wikert of Publishing 2020 talks about a new model for book reviews
• Free NYC newspapers now battling online
• Hawaii court to settle blogger vs. journalist question
• Google denies paying UK papers to index them in Google News
• The Apple/iPhone/Engadget kerfuffle
• Wall Street Journal reports on TV industry “blogola”
• Stephen Baker of BusinessWeek muses about new media influence in wake of Mike Arrington’s lament about Silicon Valley
• YouTube focused more on user content than big media
• Internet TV downloads to hit $1.5 billion by 2012
• Next New Networks launching “micro TV networks”
• More on pre-roll ads and tragic news video
• Can book projects be “crowdsourced”
• Technology changes the meaning of “out of print”
• PRSA Yankee Chapter Social Media Skills Workshop
• New comment line set up

Show Notes:

• Relative clout: BW vs. TechCrunch
• Monster, Community Newspaper Holdings forge alliance on recruitment
• No more fun in the Valley
• Hawaii Court to Decide if a Blogger is a Journalist
• Google Denies Content Re-Use Deal With UK News Publishers
• Book Reviews: Newspapers vs. Blogs
• Newspapers need to go hyper-local to survive
• Google News: The End of News Indexing As We Know It?
• Publisher to Let the Public Have a Vote on Book Projects
• Man Bites Dog – Chronicle to Lay Off 25%
• 2 Free New York Newspapers Are Doing Battle on Web Sites as Well as in Subways
• San Francisco Paper Whacks Jobs
• YouTube founders bet on user-generated content over big media
• Why Can’t Newspapers Get With the Program?
• SF Chronicle Trims 25% of Newsroom Staff
• Newspapers, TV and the Net – Its Convergence Time
• Next New Networks Building Micro Television Networks
• Publisher and Authors Parse a Term: Out of Print
• Internet Television Downloads To Reach $1.5 Billion in Five Years
• Blogola
• Pre-roll ads and tragedy

To Comment:

• Leave your comments here
• Call the Disruptive Dialogue comment line: (617) 273-CHIP / (2447)
• Email me your comments in MP3 format (no more than 2 minutes and 5 MB, please)