Deb's SM Survey:

With the news reported earlier this week that Apple’s iTunes will be carrying millions of DRM-free songs by the end of the quarter, it’s safe to say that DRM has now been officially abandoned by the music industry.  This is great news: while it won’t smooth the rough waters the industry has been going through, it will allow them to make a clean break from the illusion that they can prevent file-sharing and instead focus their creativity on new ways to create value and to connect with fans.

I hope the death knells of music file DRM will  serve as a wake up call to the TV and movie industries as well.  It’s too late to putter about with a few shows streamed here, some downloadable here, a few there, and international licensing agreements that air the same shows months later in different countries (long after the most dedicated fans have found and dowloaded the torrents).   The TV and movie industries need to wake up to the reality that they, too, will need a different business model - and they need it now!

A couple of weeks ago I read some of Jonathan Trenn’s thoughts about “community” as it is used (or overused) in the social media world:

Social media is overhyped because we’ll often view and describe disparate members of a company’s customer base as being “communities” when they are too dispersed and too disjointed from one another to have a connection…

As much as I love social media, and think it has great potential for marketers (and everyone), I have to agree with Jonathan’s general premise.   Your typical company is not going to get an online “community” going.  And even for those companies who could, the nature of online communities is going to be frustrating to many traditional marketers.

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An incredible organizing team made Podcamp Boston 3 a huge success, and they deserve a lot of credit.  Thank you all!

Chris Penn and Chris Brogan are of course personal heroes of mine, and as the “faces” of Podcamp they have done so much to make this type of event friendly, accessible and productive.

The questions they asked at the end were:  What did you learn?  What will you do?  Now?

Their questions resonate extraordinarily well with Joseph Campbell’s advice to “follow your bliss.”  And I intend to.

I learned:

•     The importance of humor and a compelling story from Stever Robbins (who is a great storyteller himself).
•     That I could strike up conversations with people sitting next to me over and over again and enjoy the experience.
•     That social media has to “earn” the viewers’ attention, a challenge for marketers and messengers of all types.
•     David Meerman Scott is a very nice guy.
•     That community can’t be just online, but must extend to physical spaces.
•     Companies think they are losing control, but they are really losing the perception the had control.  In fact, collaborating and listening to customers can create better control than they ever had.
•     That the bigger the camera you have, the more likely you’ll be thought of as “press”
•     Educating your advocates on your message is important; they will make it their own.
•     We want a “world wide rave”
•     SWOT
•     Ask for what you want.
•     Be yourself, be human, be honest, work hard, give back.  Do what you love.
•     Youth have incredible expectations put on them, but the tools they use aren’t valued.
•     List blog posts are very popular.

What I will do?

• Participate more
• Listen more
• Explore and play with more multi-media
• Keep up the connections and friendships I’ve made
• Have fun doing it!
• Hone my skills.

Now:
Check out my version of a social media resume and let me know what you think.

Tuesday night was the 18th WebInnovators Group  and as always it was great to mingle with a huge number of smart, entrepreneurial people.  The local social media gang was also out in force, checking out the ideas and products of local start-ups.

When I’d looked at Zeer the night before, I wasn’t impressed with the user reviews of junk food on the front page.  But Michael Putnam gave a great demo and really showed off the impressive features of this online food community, including the nutritional information for 100,000 products and the usefulness of the site for those with food allergies.  The ability to port your Zeer shopping list to a cell phone is also very handy.  Zeer won the audience text-in award, so they obviously won over the crowd as well.  I do agree with a questioner who didn’t get the chance for an answer: a feature that would tell you where to find the products will be very helpful.  Hopefully it’s coming in the future.

I’m going to give Webnotes a whirl for some vacation planning.  There are other web site annotation and organizing tools out there, but I liked the fact that you could share your annotations with people who don’t have Webnotes installed.  There’s also the flexibility of a web-based interface if you don’t – or can’t – install the toolbar.

Third of the main dish presentations were my friends at Totspot, an online baby book where parents can create a profile for their baby, post content and track their child’s growth.  They’ve made a lot of progress on the site; it looks easy to use and friendly which is important for harried new parents.  I was glad to see Adam and Michael up there demonstrating their very nice site.

The “side dish” companies didn’t get a chance to present, and I didn’t get a chance to visit all their tables in the crowded room, but check out the list on the Web Innovators Group site for links to their sites.

The next WebInno will be September 15, 2008.  See you there.

I spent Saturday at the Grassroots Technology Conference put on by the Organizers’ Collaborative.  It was great fun, with an inspiring opening keynote by activist Nick Jehlen, useful workshops and a lunchtime talk by Professor Paul Niwa about his project charting connections in Chinatown, called BostonChinatown.org.

Useful is always good, of course. For me, the coolest part of the day was a workshop called “Keeping it Simple:  Technology Tools that Won’t Make you want to Rip your Hair Out.”  Harold Jordan started this session off with a discussion of applications that run off of USB drives.  This is the ultimate nomad tool:  you don’t even need a computer, just access a Windows machine and your desired applications plug right in. 

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