On Friday, October 19th, I took part in a panel discussion about legal and ethical issues in new media along with professional blogging coach Mike Sansone and digital experts from the Des Moines Register and Meredith Corp. The event was part of the continuing ed program for Drake University’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication. We talked a lot about blogs, wikis and how old media is adapting itself to remain relevant.

If you’re interested in listening to the whole thing, there’s a podcast available here. (iTunes required!)

Let’s face facts: E-mail just sucks as a business communications tool.

Way too many people get copied on way too many irrelevant messages. It’s a distraction. Context gets lost. Monstrous file attachments hog valuable server space and bandwidth. And some employees (typically the ones without backbone) use e-mail as a crutch to make their voices heard or send out commands to their fiefdoms, when face-to-face would be more effective.

Today in the Des Moines Register, we were mentioned in an article about the use of social networking within the workplace as an alternative to e-mail. (Except they left out our company name, Lava Row.) Lots of organizations are creating small networks within Twitter to improve communication and collaboration, and — even better — they’re getting it done quicker. BusinessWeek recently featured a Twitter vs. e-mail debate, which we encourage everyone to check out.

Google just acquired Jaiku (a web-based app similar to Twitter) and we highly suspect they’ll be mashing it into their office productivity suite soon. So, what creative things have you done in your office to improve communication?

This social media-friendly press release about the 2008 Ford Focus popped up in my Twitter friends stream this morning. I love it. Ford has neatly packaged together YouTube video, Flickr photos, RSS feeds, sharing options and even tagging suggestions. Applications like this allow information / content to get spread further (and quicker) than the standard “FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE” Word doc.

When reaching out to the social fabric of the Web, what’s your organization’s P.R. strategy?

Lava Row was featured in the “You Should Get To Know…” section of today’s Des Moines Register. (Yay!) However, the Reggie locks down articles after seven days and wants you to pay to read them (Boo!) so check it out while you can.

Jump here to the Des Moines Register article.