Random Culture

Daily Quick Links: June 26, 2008

Culture Jamming
Rosecrans Baldwin from the New York Times Digital Ramble blog on an interesting online phenomenon.

"Life with Playstation"
Tokyo news conference announcing non-gaming service for PS3 launching in the future with news and information.

3 Minute Movie or Horrible Waste of Money
I'm voting for the latter... I can't remember the last time a movie had to have disclaimers shown at the bottom, and the music is all like elevator music.

Live Blogging: DPAC Conference

I'm in New York today at the Digital Publishing & Advertising conference. The conference has had a few highlights, one of which was a great presentation by Dr. Jim Taylor of The Harrison Group. His talk focused on how the customer is changing, including some striking facts about the wealth divide which will be the subject of a new book he's writing. I'll let you know when that comes out. He's one of the more dynamic speakers I've seen lately.

I was on a panel, "Best Agency Strategies on How to Set Up and Manage Fully Integrated Campaigns", with some smart folks: Jason Burnham, Cari Weisberger and Drew Corry.

Some of the key themes for the conference were integration, the importance of mobile, need for increased/better measurement and lots of talk about the iPhone. It feels to me like the industry seems to be getting digital better than it did a year ago, but there are still lots of questions.

The DPAC website will have videos of the presentation up, and I will post the better ones as a follow-up!

Millennials and Mobility from Motorola

Motorola's home and network mobility group comissioned a study of millennials that looks at their technology use, desire for on-demand and mobility as well as their influence over technology in the home. One of the great aspects of this study is that Motorola has created a number of videos to report the findings. You can view most of the videos here. Below, I've included a couple of my favorites:

Implement User Generated Content In Libraries

My previous Facebook vs. Alumni Organizations post has sparked some interesting conversations. So as a follow-up, why not some more ideas about how colleges can embrace the changing digital world?

The folks at CollegeDegrees.com have a great list of "50 Tips and Resources to Implement User-Generated Content in Your Library."

Link via SmartMobs.

Facebook vs. Alumni Organizations

Yes, we're witnessing a watershed moment for college alumni associations. Facebook has rendered them almost useless for what alumni care the most about... finding updates on classmates. The New York Times has a great article on this phenomenon, focused primarily on how social networking is competing with alumni magazines. According to the article:

"The advent of social networking on the Internet has created a quandary for these magazines, which want to maintain a conversation with alumni but have been slow to embrace the Web. Most schools have set up password-protected sites where graduates can change their contact information, drop a class note or donate money.

But younger alumni, accustomed to second-by-second updates from friends and classmates, are exchanging information in real time on Facebook and MySpace. Why wait for your alma mater to churn out a quarterly journal when you can Twitter all day?"

I'd argue that limiting the conversation to alumni magazines is short-sighted. In fact, Facebook and MySpace have threatened the whole idea of alumni associations, and could render them obsolete. So why haven't more universities embraced this new medium? Here are a few ideas of how universities could use social networking sites to embolden alumni organizations and make them more relevant:

1. Create an official Facebook Page for Alumni
   This provides a single point of contact for alumni to connect in Facebook. Also, pages have advantages over groups, such as more flexibility with content and better "badging" of fans on their own profile pages.
   
2. Create a Facebook application for donations
   Applications such as Facebook Causes are doing it, why not alumni organizations? Soliciting smaller donations can allow rabid fans with less financial means the ability to contribute. What's more, an application like this can enlist alumni to spread the word to other alums.
   
3. Provide assets to help them show their pride
   They're already creating assets themselves, but empower them with better assets. For example, a widget that counts down to football games. Assets will turn alumni into advocates.

These are a few simple ideas, but quite simply, the universities that don't get engaged will see their alumni organizations becoming increasingly irrelevant.

Read the complete NY Times article here.