Posts Tagged: Events

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23
Mar 10

Health and social media at SXSW: New channels take on old problems

Today’s guest post is from Doug Naegele, an avid SmartBrief on Social Media reader and inveterate entrepreneur. His firm,  Infield Communications , lives at the intersection of Health 2.0 and mobile solutions. At least 10 sessions centered around health care and technology last week at the South by Southwest Interactive conference.  I attended eight and came away with a few observations that may be valuable to the health community and those that serve it: Infectious Disease & Twitter At the session entitled When Swine Flew: Embracing Innovation in H1N1 Response we learned that in 2009, The National Institutes of Health collected all the swine flu related tweets from one hour of one day – a total of 1300 tweets.  They fed the tweets into a semantic language engine and analyzed the frequency of certain concepts.  NIH saw patterns in the discussion, identified specific misinformation about the outbreak and had a head start on what topics to emphasize to the public.  Follow discussion on this topic at #whenswineflu . Suicide Prevention and YouTube & Facebook The RT: I’m Going to Kill Myself. Preventing Suicide Online panel YouTube’s Safety Center , linked at the bottom of every YouTube page, offers videos from the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline to connect troubled youth to prevention resources.  On Facebook, status updates containing suicidal content trigger a chain of events starts on the Facebook back-end which may lead to a referral to the Lifeline and/or reaching out to the poster directly.  Follow discussion on this topic at #preventingsuicideonline. Inactivity & Apps The Social Health Summit 2010: What We Learned wrap up highlighted a few gems, such as the social application Getupandmove.me which enables users to issue fitness challenges to their friends. (Think: I’ll do 15 pushups if you’ll climb two flights of stairs). Research shows that an asynchronous challenge, when two parties do things separately and not at the same time, is three times as effective as a synchronous challenge. (Think: You and I meet at the stairwell, and I do my pushups while you climb the stairs). Fascinating! How providers communicate with patients Many discussions at SXSW surrounded how doctors and hospitals can and should use social media to connect with patients, but two major roadblocks emerged. Many hospitals are hamstrung when it comes to social media because they’re concerned about opening themselves up to negative feedback. Even more complicated is the fact that patient satisfaction can increase or decrease reimbursement rates. Regulators  are concerned that if the social media genie is let out of the bottle, HIPPA — the federal law that imposes strict penalties for compromising patient data — may be compromised. Many doctors and hospitals are so concerned about HIPPA that its mere mention stops every social media discussion before it starts.  Follow the discussion on this topic at #er20 . Image credit: Cimmerian , via iStock

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19
Mar 10

The interactive community’s next challenge: sustainability

SmartBrief editor Rebecca Pollack was in Austin, Texas, for the South by Southwest Interactive Festival . Here’s her take on Sunday’s keynote address. “What if social media was actually about social impact?” That’s one of the questions that Valerie Casey , founder of The Designers Accord , posed to the audience as a keynote speaker at the 17th annual South by Southwest Interactive Festival. Casey called on designers, creators, developers and strategists in the interactive community to take on a leadership role, after having been “virtually absent” in the conversation around sustainability. Why now? Casey showed a image of the open-air burn pits in Iraq. Last month, an Institute of Medicine panel started to investigate the sites, used to destroy waste, as they have been linked to illnesses, such as respiratory diseases and cancers, in war veterans and contractors. Casey showed another slide: A child sitting in the middle of an e-waste dump where 133,000 computers and 100 million cell phones are added every day. And then she asked: Why does a salad cost more than a Big Mac? Why us? Rarely are industries, silos or other groups able to take on such challenges. The Interactive community has “systems thinking” in its blood, she said. So often, groups make excuses because a task falls outside of their expertise. Yet these systems thinking skills are necessary to help us look at environmental, sustainability, cultural and social issues with a fresh perspective. We bring creativity and optimism. We can be the bridge to the other communities. Depending on our collective wisdom, Casey believes that “the Interactive community is the connective tissue [among] all universes.” SXSW shows its green side. Meanwhile, Austin is welcoming more than 20,000 SXSW attendees this year, and the festival is continuing its environmental leadership . In the past two years, the Interactive and Film departments have transitioned to online registration, while Music portion went paperless in 2003. SXSW became a carbon-neutral company in 2006. It also added solar panels  to its building in Austin about a year ago that have  produced more than 7,000 kilowatt hours of clean energy. Most of the SXSW “official hotels” also are invested in green initiatives, including using CFL bulbs and water-conservation fixtures and installing gray-water recycling for irrigation. To stay dialed-into this conversation, sign up for SmartBrief on Sustainability . Image credit, Vladimir Ivanovski , via Shutterstock

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18
Mar 10

Moon 2.0: Opening up space exploration

Social media really is changing the world – and beyond — as an enthusiastic South by Southwest Interactive Festival audience learned during one of the most “holy cow!” sessions at this week’s conference in Austin, Texas. Moon 2.0: The Outer Limits of Lunar Exploration , moderated by NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Veronica McGregor , who began tweeting in 2008 as @MarsPhoenix , addressed the topic of space exploration as a social experience. The first panelist, Nick Skytland , is the co-founder of openNASA.com , a collaborative experiment in open, transparent and direct communication about the U.S. space program. Skytland is the perfect champion for public access to the experience of planning for, executing and learning from space missions, given his experience simulating human responses to space flight. In his introductory remarks, he talked about Twitter as a way for astronauts to tell their stories in more human ways that can give NASA some personality. A number of astronauts are live tweeting from space, including: @Astro_mike , the first to give behind the scenes perspectives via Twitter, has the biggest audience at 1.3 million followers. @Astro_soichi , is particularly adept at using Twitpic to capture and share photos from space. @Astro_Jeff ordered his wife flowers from space as his first Twitter activity. Just think for a moment how cool that is. Skytland and his team have recognized the benefits of bringing discussions about space exploration into forums where public conversations are happening. His current push is using all the NASA channels – Facebook.com/nasa , @nasa , their OpenNASA.org blog — to encourage participation in President Barack Obama’s open government initiative , in which citizens are urged to communicate directly with lawmakers about  issues and programs they would like to be addressed. “How do you want to participate with NASA?” Skytland asked the room. “$5 million has been set aside by NASA to act on your ideas, so let us know .” (As of this writing, tomorrow is the last day to submit ideas , so hop to it!) Two other panelists, Amanda Stiles and Dave Masten , brought the non-agency perspective to the fore. As online community manager and Google Liaison for the Google Lunar X PRIZE , Amanda is a firm believer in “space for the rest of us.” Dave Masten is the private entrepreneur who rose to the X Prize challenge and won $1 million towards continued space flight experiments. He’s motivated by the fact that only half of today’s population was alive when the “U.S. abandoned the moon” on Dec. 14, 1972. He wants to go back in a sustainable way so that more people can be involved with it. “We need more engineers,” Masten said, and he hopes his Web site , which features YouTube videos not only of successes, but of mission failures, will inspire the next generation of explorers. The fact that space exploration is no longer the exclusive domain of the government was underscored by the final panelist, Cariann Higginbotham, co-owner and co-host of Spacevidcast.com , a private high-definition video company on a mission to dispel the idea that space is boring and frought with missteps. “The media mainly covers things at NASA that go wrong.  But there’s always something interesting happening in space, and people need to know about it.” Hers is one of three Web video podcasts covering space, educating people and getting them interested in exploration. Teachers and enthusiasts around the world tune into their videos via Skype. “If you want to watch a launch and treat it like a tailgate party, you can!” Cariann exclaimed. “Space geeks are very, very cool.” This whole topic is so cool, it’s somewhat difficult to return back to Earth — and onto the next session. You can expect more SXSW coverage throughout the week. Image credit, Merritt Colaizzi

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17
Mar 10

Live from SXSW: Igniting U.S. fans for the 2010 World Cup

Online marketers of all stripes could relate when Chris Hall of the U.S. Soccer Federation quoted basketball great John Wooden at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas: “Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.” The Federation is ramping up their online game in anticipation of the June 11 start of the 2010 World Cup , the most widely viewed sporting event in the world. Tuesday’s SXSW Interactive session World Cup 2010: Engaging U.S. Soccer Fans Online laid out its numerous branding and execution challenges: The U.S. Soccer Federation has no broadcast rights to the World Cup. The World Cup 2010 brand, all game footage and multimedia belong to FIFA . Soccer as a spectator sport is barely on the U.S. sports radar. There’s an ardent underground community of fans, but the sport is just beginning to gain a foothold in this country’s sports consciousness. American soccer fans’ allegiance is largely local, yet the U.S. Soccer Federation has no local presence. Many soccer fans in the U.S. are in the Hispanic community. Marketing to a bilingual fan base adds layers of complexity. Organizationally, the U.S. Soccer Federation is still in the process of shifting from a command-and-control culture to a culture of empowering nonstaff to have brand control. The danger zones for social media tend to be politics, religion and sports. The organization expects they will have uninterrupted wireless access in South Africa. But it can’t bank on it. To rise to these significant challenges, the digital team at the U.S. Soccer Federation has: Done its homework . As the joke goes, English football fans are likelier to change their spouse than change their team allegiance. So the U.S. Soccer Federation talked with European football club peers to tap into their online strategy: Treat supporters as part of the family, give them what they want and keep them engaged. Decluttered its Web site . So far, the team’s Web work has focused on making ussoccer.com easy to find (via search engine optimization) and engaging in a way that drives passion, providing unique, behind-the-scenes perspectives, player interviews, off-the field footage that captures the excitement of the sport and videos of what the team is doing to prepare, travel to and experience the competition in South Africa. The team has also unified the site’s look and feel. Previously, the blog wasn’t connected to or telling the story of the U.S. Soccer Federation brand, so it was  recently moved over from Blogspot to give a sense of brand consistency. According to Hall, the Federation considers the site a work in progress, not a one-time redesign. Activated brand evangelists . They’ve made it easy for fans to embed U.S. Soccer Federation video onto their blogs, sites and social networks. To enhance this sharing experience, ooyala.com has implemented an anchor-tag system which enables users to point directly to specific moments in the video that are relevant to them. Created foundations for real-world community . Pluck Media , recently acquired by Demand Media , has assisted with the Federation’s social-media strategy and elevated the level of user-generated content via blog and forum commenting. The Federation has also implemented a bar program that allows local bars to self-identify as places where the games are screened so local fans can watch matches together. Since bars are not always appropriate venues, the organization is also exploring other ways to bring families of fans together offline, such as house parties and community screenings. This kind of grass-roots organizing will be a focus of the Federation’s strategy moving forward. Closely monitored what fans are saying and where users are embedding their videos. The room was packed during the panel, replete with soccer fans and geeks who devoured the presentation but were not satisfied with the pace of the U.S. Soccer Federation’s progress. In the Q-and-A that followed, audience members said they want more passion in the coverage, more power for the fans to contribute to the site, better mobile accessibility and more sophisticated geo-based services such as Gowalla and Foursquare. They also homed in on how behind-the-curve the Federation is on Spanish-language adoption. The reasonable but unsatisfying answer — that Hispanic audiences are an important of the equation long term, but short term, they’re a small portion of their traffic — did not seem to satisfy these, the harshest critics. Still, the changes are a step in the right direction and can serve as guideposts for the rest of us who are reinventing and fine-tuning our own online strategies. Image credit, JM-Design , via Shutterstock

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16
Mar 10

Live from SXSW: FCC addresses national broadband plan and digital divide competition

Today’s guest post is from SmartBrief reader, telecom guru and 24-year South By Southwest veteran Stephen J. Easley. Steve is vice president for government affairs and general counsel of F2 Technologies , a wireless data technology company, and was formerly vice president and general counsel of American Cellular Corp., a representative to the CTIA Board, and senior technology counsel to MCI Telecommunications before its acquisition by WorldCom. The FCC finally got its turn to address its national broadband plan to Congress this week at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival . Unfortunately, it came a mere 36 hours before the detailed plan will be released, and the FCC representatives at SXSW were unable to address a number of detailed questions from the enthusiastic and knowledgeable audience. Nevertheless, Elana Berkowitz, director of economic opportunity for the National Broadband Task Force, and Dr. Mohit Kaushal, the task force’s health care director, reached out to the Web and development communities gathered in Austin. Berkowitz noted that the FCC Twitter feed is the third most followed in government, after the White House and the CDC , but admitted that their 300K followers paled in comparison to Lady Gaga (we are at SXSW, after all, and the music festival is right around the corner.) Berkowitz urged attendees to test their own downlink and uplink speeds via the FCC’s new broadband speed app . This will assist the FCC in meeting a goal set out in the new plan: to provide consumers with actual download speed data to compare with providers’ advertised claims, allowing them to make more informed purchases. Three other plan initiatives aim to make government more transparent and accessible: Video.gov, a planned site that aims to offer a central location for the government’s vast video archives that will be accessible to the public. Mypersonaldata.gov, a site that the FCC hopes will offer citizens a secure, central repository for all government data gathered on each us. A site where all Freedom of Information Act disclosures will be posted to allow everyone to review previously released information. Dr. Kaushal said the plan promotes efforts by private-sector entrepreneurs and developers to come up with solutions such as apps that monitor health and wellness 24/7 and communicate through broadband networks. To that end, he announced a competition to foster digital inclusiveness sponsored by the FCC and the Knight Foundation that will award $100,000 in prizes to creators of the best apps that promote broadband adoption by those on the other side of the digital divide. With expert judges and “people’s choice awards,” this challenge threw down the gauntlet for SXSW attendees. On the critical issues of increasing competition and promoting affordability, the FCC panelists avoided specifics and tried to assure a skeptical audience that the plan would propose practical steps toward solutions. Dr. Kaushal believes the plan’s goal of securing a further 500 MHz of wireless spectrum, including more unlicensed spectrum such as the 2.4 GHz band, and Universal Service Fund reform will go a long way toward promoting competition and affordability. Image credit, Tudor Voinea , via Shutterstock

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