Technology
Cuba’s Concert for Peace Reaches the World Via the Web
Monday, September 21st, 2009
Freedom is the greatest gift. And the Internet and relevant content – in this case, a powerful concert for peace – have the ability to spread that gift to places closed off from the rest of the world.
Despite weeks of bickering and protests from Cuban-American groups with plenty of reasons to despise the Castro regime, Colombian singer Juanes and a few famous friends held a concert in my native Cuba today. They called the show: “Paz Sin Fronteras” (Peace Without Borders).
Thanks to the Internet the concert lived up to its name.
People from the U.S., Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Chile, Uruguay and more were watching the concert live on the Web alongside more than 1 million Cubans packed into Havana’s “Plaza de la Revolución” (Revolution Plaza).
Univision.com, which webcast the concert along with a live chat, created its own community online where people lauded peace, unity, music and freedom.
“All the young people in the region, from Miami in the United States and in all the cities … should understand the importance of turning hate into love,” Juanes yelled in Spanish to the throng of people watching in person and on the Web.
“We’re all brothers. And we all have to be connected. …The future is in your hands, guys. Let’s bring change for good!”
Then Juanes sang “Sueño Libertad” (Dream of Freedom).
He finished his portion of the concert alongside Spanish singer Miguel Bosé with this song: “Es Tiempo de Cambiar” (It’s Time to Change).
Following that performce, Juanes and Bosé sang “Nada Particular” (Nothing in Particular) about an “island in the middle of the sea whose name is liberty.”
“Don’t stop singing about everything you believe in, brothers,” Bosé urged the crowd in Spanish.
“¡Cuba libre!” Juanes yelled out at the end of the concert. Free Cuba.
And with that, freedom scored another small win.
Top 10 Aha! Moments in ‘The Chaos Scenario’
Wednesday, August 19th, 2009
Chaos sometimes can be inspiring. And I definitely feel inspired after reading Bob Garfield’s new book The Chaos Scenario.
Garfield, an Advertising Age columnist and co-host of NPR’s On the Media, lays out the hastening death march of old media and the Brave New World of possibilities unleashed by bloggers, tweeps and the wisdom of crowds.
I’ve been on the front lines of this revolution since 1996. While covering San Francisco’s emerging “Multimedia Gulch” for the San Jose Mercury News, I got an early glimpse of technology’s potential to disrupt traditional media and marketing. I asked – okay, I begged — then Managing Editor David Yarnold to let me go work in the digital arm of Knight Ridder. I’m grateful he let me do it.
It’s been painful to watch the layoffs, the plunging profits, the acquisitions and general tumult as my former media employers grapple with a new way of doing business because advertising can’t foot the bill for the vast amounts of free content available online.
Garfield’s book lays out the reasons why anyone who’s in the business of marketing, media, government or religion must listen to the digital conversations or perish.
Here are my top 10 “aha!” moments while reading The Chaos Scenario:
10 – Why people share: “It goes back to something primal,” says Henry Jenkins, director of the Comparative Media Studies program at MIT. “There’s still a desire to have a shared cultural context. We hunger for things we can discuss.”
9 – “The opposite of love is not hate. It is indifference. Apathy,” says Yakir Krichman, BuzzMetrics’ “Sentiment Master.”
8 – “Better yet, host the conversation.” Having dealt with the fallout from “Dell Hell” and other social media debacles, Dell now “embraces the crowd with the zeal of the converted.” Among other things, they host IdeaStorm, a place for customers to post complaints and product suggestions.
7 – “Practice Jujitsu,” turning “the energy of the aggressor into your own best weapon.” That’s the model used by National Express, the U.K.’s largest long-haul bus company. They ask customers to text or call a toll free number to file complaints. Those are immediately routed to employees on the ground, who do their best to take care of the messes, impressing their costumers and improving their business.
6 – “What’s in it for Us? Not You. Us.” “Do something nice for people and they will come to you,” says Jess Greenwood of London’s Contagious magazine.
5 – “Remember Siegfriend and Roy. Especially Roy. Just when you think you do have the tiger by the tail, do not ever forget, the tiger can turn against you. Word of mouth is a wild and dangerous beast.” Here’s some research to back that up: “A 2007 study by University of Michigan social psychologist Norbert Schwartz demonstrated that attempts to correct misinformation not only tend to reinforce people’s false beliefs, but to attribute the baloney to the very authoritative source trying to clear things up.” So the old saying, “‘I don’t care what you say about me as long as you spell my name right?’ It isn’t true.”
4 – “Listenomics” is “the art and science of cultivating relationships with individuals in a connected, increasing open-source environment.”
3 – “In the Listenomics Age, never get in a dispute with someone with access to a computer.” Case in point, Garfield’s creation, ComcastMustDie.com, a site bent of having the cable goliath deal with the wrath of dissatisfied customers.
2 – “We now have [total-population] data, and that changes everything,” says Dave Morgan, founder of Tacoda, a behavioral-marketing firm that’s now part of AOL. “With [that] data, you can know essentially everything. You can find out all the things that are non-intuitive, or counter intuitive that as excellent predictors…. There’s a lot of power in that.”
1 – “Chaos. Someday it will end. …Nah. The very nature of Listenomics is such that there will always be some level of chaos in the scenario.”
Are Bob Garfield’s views of the media industry’s future too extreme or is he right on the money? Share your comments.
ABOUT
Jeordan Legon
Content Strategist
For over 10 years, I’ve been helping companies tell a story that is relevant. The views expressed on this site are mine alone and don’t necessarily reflect those of my employer, Chevron.
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