Subscribe + follow
Stay on top of Lava Row news, insights, events and shenanigans:
Subscribe to our RSS feed
Sign up for our newsletter
Enter your email address to get blog updates in your inbox:
Category Archives: Conferences
Five reasons to attend the Des Moines 140 Conference
Deb Brown and I are organizing the Des Moines 140 Character Conference (#140conf), which takes place Monday, May 9th at the Civic Center’s Stoner Theater. I may be a little biased, but here are five reasons why you should attend.
1.) A first for Iowa. Originally created by Jeff Pulver, 140 is a national conference with localized events in different cities, focused on real-time technology’s transformative power over business, government, culture and our personal lives. Each speaker has 10 minutes to present, and it’s a full day of speakers. This is the first #140conf in the state.
2.) The cast of characters. Deb has done a great job assembling a diverse speaker line-up, featuring familiar local faces and many new ones.
3.) The agriculture voices. We’re in Iowa – so this makes sense, right? I’m personally excited to hear from Jeff Caldwell (Successful Farming), Shannon Latham (Latham Hi-Tech Seeds) and Tara Litzenberger (the infamous @JohnDeereTara on Twitter) about how new media is changing their industry.
4.) A day of networking. You’ll get to meet and mingle with attendees representing all sorts of industries and backgrounds, from businesses small to large.
5.) A Monday off. Sort of. This type of event fits perfectly under “professional development.” Tell your boss that. Hell, bring your boss!
Tickets ($65 per person, $15 student rate) are available here. We hope to see you there!
Youth privacy in the age of social media
Above is a presentation I gave last week at the American Library Association‘s youth privacy summit in Chicago. I addressed how teenagers are currently using social and mobile technology and their varying views of what privacy actually means to them.
You can’t dig deep into this topic without coming across the mountains of research done by none other than danah boyd – and I referenced her work often. This presentation was only meant to be a conversation starter, and I highly recommend danah’s publications and research to anyone wanting to explore the complex issues behind youth privacy and emerging media.
Some of the questions put forth in the session were:
- What digital footprints are we leaving behind online through our participation in social networks?
- How will this data be used in the future? (Potentially integrated with non-tech brands such as Kraft, OnStar and Safeway.)
- Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) and Christopher Poole’s (4chan) opposite views on authenticity.
- How do teenagers define privacy? How does this differ from other generations?
- How do teenagers navigate social networks to protect their privacy?
- Where are they learning these skills? (Typically peers, not adults or the social networks themselves.)
- What new, more private forms of online media are they migrating to next, while still maintaining a Facebook presence?
- Do teens actually use email?
Below are few additional remarks I made after the session in an interview with Loida Garcia Febo from Queens Library New York, referencing how individual teenagers are tweaking their Facebook usage in interesting ways to maintain their own personal sense of privacy.
I would love to hear your opinions in the comments below (especially from parents). Are teenagers failing to understand long-term privacy implications of using social technology? Or are they smarter about privacy that any other generation before them?
Five apps to watch at SXSW 2011
The South by Southwest Interactive festival has consistently been a proving ground for launching new social networks (most famously, Twitter in 2007 and foursquare in 2009). Each year, pundits and conference-goers try to predict what the next breakout hit will be.
I’m not smart enough to figure that out, but I have noticed a common theme: These networks helped you figure out what parties and panels your friends were at. This is how Twitter was first used in March 2007 via the #SXSW hashtag, and foursquare gave us “trending locations” all around Austin in 2009.
So this year I’m keeping my eye on a couple of apps that center around group chat, proximity-based chat, and location-based heat mapping. Here they are!
Ask Around
This comes from (surprisingly) Ask.com and I’ve been playing with it here in Des Moines for a few days now. Essentially, it’s a proximity-based chat room that lets you adjust the mile radius around you – allowing you to 
chat with people within ten miles or less than a mile. Facebook integration is fast and seamless. Should be fun in packed venues down in Austin.
Yobongo
This app is similar to Ask Around (and officially launched on the exact same day), except that it’s taking a foursquare-esque approach to city rollout. Yobongo is starting with San Francisco, Austin, New York and Long Beach (for TED).
Beluga
Beluga is a group messaging app that lets you share messages and media (photos, video, etc.) with groups of friends. Think of it as really powerful, fast and robust text messaging platform that completely bypasses SMS and mobile carriers. And, oh yeah, Beluga was just acquired by Facebook – which fits with the social networking giant’s plans for simplifying messaging across email, text and Facebook messages.
Localmind
Here’s another proximity-based chat application, except that Localmind is positioned more around knowledge share and local expertise. It lets you ask questions of people checked-in to specific locations, ie. “What’s the wait like for tables?”
Domo
Domo wants you to be able to connect with strangers on Facebook at parties, events and on campus, focused around likes, interests, and hobbies. (All pulled and aggregated from your Facebook profile once you sync it up.)
I’ll definitely be experimenting with all of these at SXSW, and it will be interesting to watch which ones (if any) break away from the pack. Are there any new apps or social networks that you’re excited to try out at the festival?
And let’s not forget, the old school handshakes, hugs and hellos still work, too!
Photo credit: johanl on flickr.
SXSW panel: How Farmers Get Serious Business Done With Mobile
On Friday, March 11th, I’m moderating the panel How Farmers Get Serious Business Done With Mobile at South by Southwest Interactive. This post is a quick summary of what we’ll be discussing at the session down in Austin, Texas. (Hope to see you!)
Joining me on the panel are Audrey Bartlett (Product Marketing Manager with John Deere’s Intelligent Solutions Group), Jeff Caldwell (Multimedia Editor for Successful Farming magazine and Agriculture.com at Meredith Corporation), Neil Mylet (a Camden, Indiana, farmer and founder of LoadOut Technologies) and Justin Davey (Multimedia Producer with Meredith Corporation).
So, what are we going to talk about? Here’s a round-up:
- How are today’s farmers connecting to each other, and doing business, with their mobile devices and smartphones?
- How do these behaviors and activity differ between producers in North America and emerging countries such as China, Russia, Brazil and India?
- What business applications, networks and media are they consuming via mobile devices?
- In the future, how will intelligent vehicles (tractors, combines, etc.) connect and coordinate with smartphones?
SXSW has shifted programming into a “campus” format this year, so we’ll be grouped with some other sessions over at the Hyatt in Hill Country AB instead of the Austin Convention Center. (I’m intrigued to see how the campus concept goes over with the attendees.) The panel begins at 5:00pm on Friday, March 11th, and we really hope you can drop by if you’re at the festival!
Here are a few additional resources:
Official panel media release (PDF)
SXSW.com panel description
Des Moines Register article
Truffle Media podcast (audio)
Panel preview on SXTXstate.com
Add this panel to Plancast
What other panels/sessions are you looking forward to attending this year?
Photo credit: spaunsglo via flickr.
Journalism 2.0: Social Media Ethics
This month I gave a talk called Journalism 2.0: Social Media Ethics at both the Iowa Newspaper Association and Wisconsin Newspaper Association conventions. (BTW, it was great to fly in to Green Bay Packer country only days after their Super Bowl win.)
The purpose of this talk was to help journalists better understand the following:
- How to craft social media policy for their employees and teams.
- How to balance their personal and professional social network identities.
- How to use social media as a research tool.
- How to maintain ethics and integrity while playing in the new media sandbox.
The latter point really sparked some debate up in Wisconsin, as real-time journalism was called into question – specifically NPR Senior Strategist Andy Carvin‘s curation and re-tweeting of #Egypt and #Jan25 Twitter posts. One audience member suggested that this was, in fact, not journalism. A paraphrased quote: “Journalists don’t ask the public is this happening? It’s up to us to report that.” Others in the room were vocal about the fact that Andy was simply doing his duty and providing a filter to all the noise.
Related to all of this is the “Line of Verification” concept created by Matthew Eltringham of the BBC, which I referenced in the presentation. Essentially, Matthew states that in the past, there was The Light Side (stuff that can be verified) and The Dark Side (stuff that can’t be verified and thus can’t be published). He argues that digital and social media networks have muddied up The Dark Side, and that some journalists need to start providing a filter for that uncharted area – which is what Andy Carvin is attempting to do on Twitter.
So what do you think? Can journalists play around on The Dark Side and still maintain their ethics, integrity and duty to the public? Is this a case of applying the rules of a traditional medium to a new one? Please leave your thoughts in the comments.
Embedded below via Slideshare is my original presentation deck. I also wanted to quickly thank Twitter pal Bonnie Boglioli Randall for originally pointing me to Matthew Eltringham’s post.
Image credit: pagedooley via flickr.
