When does a joke stop being a joke and evolve into activism (or, depending upon your perspective, sabotage)? If you’re Dan Lyons or AT&T, I’d say we’ll find out tomorrow at noon Pacific time.

That marks the time when Dan Lyons, better known as Fake Steve Jobs, will see if his Operation Chokehold initiative comes to fruition. Operation Chokehold calls for all iPhone users to activate a data-intensive iPhone app in an attempt to clog AT&T’s network. You can read about it in The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs blog (just a fair warning, Fake Steve Jobs tends to use salty language now and then).

In case you haven’t heard of Lyons, he’s made his reputation by blogging as if he were Steve Jobs. It’s a satirical attempt to give us a glimpse behind the glasses and turtleneck of Apple’s co-founder and CEO. It’s all done for laughs, though the butt of Lyons’s jokes aren’t always laughing.

In this case, the target is AT&T. The exclusive carrier of the iPhone in the United States has been the focus of criticism ever since the Apple device hit the market. Users in many regions have complained about the service, claiming it’s unreliable and slow. To complicate matters, Ralph de la Vega, an AT&T executive in charge of consumer services, announced earlier this month that the company wishes to discourage the heaviest data consumers from using so much bandwidth.

This angered some iPhone owners. An iPhone contract with AT&T requires an additional data plan. The angry customers argue that the data plan indicates they should be able to access as much data as their plans allow. Think of it like an all-you-can-eat restaurant — the establishment shouldn’t cut you off just because you eat more than everyone else.

According to Victor Godinez of The Dallas Morning News, AT&T executives are not amused at Lyons’s jest. A company representative called the joke an irresponsible attempt to impact a massive communications network relied upon by millions of customers. Godinez reports that Lyons himself may think the joke has spiraled out of control. What started as a satirical call to action may become a genuine “digital flash mob” (a phrase Fake Steve Jobs uses in the original Chokehold post).

As for my opinion, I’m neither an iPhone owner nor an AT&T customer. Perhaps if I did own an iPhone and I had experienced trouble with AT&T’s service I might feel vindictive toward AT&T. But to be honest, I think if you disagree with a company’s policies or are dissatisfied with their service the best way to send the message is to stop being a customer. There’s no shortage of great smartphones on the market. If you’re really not happy with AT&T, consider moving to another carrier. That’s the best way to let the company know something needs to change if you’re to give them your business again.

Will iPhone users go through with Operation Chokehold? Will AT&T even notice? Will users who live in regions reported to have poor service be able to tell the difference (or even contribute to the operation)? Will the move cause AT&T to make any changes in policies? And would it make more sense to not use any AT&T services for a full day to demonstrate customer dissatisfaction? Don’t ask me — I’m waiting to see what happens tomorrow.

When I first began this blog, one of my first posts was about Flash Mobs because UNC students had just held a Flash Rave during Final Exams week at Davis Library.  From that I found out about Improv Everywhere and from THAT I found out about the No-Pants Subway Ride.

The UNC Flash Rave began three semesters ago. It was somewhat covert then and surprised some students and library staff.

But the rave is no longer a secret. It has a Facebook page, where at least 5,600 students had pledged their participation, and was the subject of a recent story in the Daily Tar Heel, which reported on it as it would any other campus event expected to draw thousands of participants.

This year’s video is in elapsed time, so it gives a good idea of how many people are involved, but last year’s video was so much better.  I’ll post it again because it makes me happy

The rise of the OOmpH factor

There are ads and there are better ads, the better ads sell and the ads don’t. it has become so much more important to connect with the consumer. And that is why it is important to set foot on the OOH segment as soon as possible. Out-of-home advertising (or outdoor advertising) is made up of more than 100 different formats.  Outdoor advertising is essentially any type of advertising that reaches the consumer while he or she is outside the home and this is best thing about OOH, you see them while you are on the move and hence more scope for the impulse to act. It gives more meaning to the two way process. It is no longer what you want to communicate. It is a conversation and the conversation is becoming more active than passive. OOH cost less than what your traditional mass media would cost you and can be regionalized and can be tweaked around to find the ideal communication layout.

There is this recent phenomenon of flash mobs being used. It is a normal method in the west but the Indian public is just getting used to it. It involves a group of people who all of a sudden enact or showcase something in between crowded areas. A very cost effective method. Allen Solly had used this method of hummanequins of live models suddenly freezing in between a mall and having the latest Allen Solly merchandise on them. Novel way indeed. Although the concept is restricted to metro cities as of now it wont be long till we see this concept spread further to other tier cities.

 What OOH solves is your problem of getting to the target audience. You know where to reach them out but if you don’t know if your marketing effort is going to impact them or catch their attention then OOH is the way. It has all of a sudden led to another branch of marketing professionals who concentrate in that niche alone and do a pretty good job for the buck passed to them.

Axe is becoming my favorite brand when it is coming to OOHs and catching their target group off guard. Axe Inxtinct carries the trend forward for them.

What OOH let you do is carry a conversation. The brand tries to communicate something to you. You notice it and react to it instantly and follow it up.

Advertising agencies are trying to separate OOH from its included activities and hive it into another unit simply to focus on it better. So that the clients get a better deal and execution. Like Group M for WPP.

OOH has certainly come a long way from just hoardings and banners.

I’ve had a fascination with Flash Mobs since I first heard about them back around 2003 or so.  I imagine for every successful flash mob there are about a hundred that are unsuccessful.  The only ones I have seen get any type of exposure lately have been corporate sponsored flash mobs.

The thing that really draws me to flash mobs is their orginizational structure.  They are a feat of social engineering.  Don’t believe me?  Try and get a bunch of people together to do something that doesn’t involve drinking and partying and do it discreetly.  These people manage to organize large groups of people, usually get them to learn and also teach a choreographed routine, then show up on a specific date and time without anyone else knowing whats going on.  I think pulling off a successful flash mob must be a great feeling.

I don’t really feel a need to elaborate on my love of flash mobs further.  I do feel the need to share some of my favorites with you.  I’m sure you’ve seen some of these, most though I bet you haven’t.  So check em out!  Get Inspired, and who knows maybe one day I’ll add my own to this list.

First off T-Mobile in London.

Now on too The Sound of Music in Antwerp.

and finally, the infamous University of Florida Mexican Standoff!

E.

One of the stupdest things I’ve heard in recent years in regards to Christmas was that Australia banned their department store Santas from saying, “Ho ho ho,” because it was derogatory. Who made this decision, a twelve-year-old? That’s a fine example of political correctness taken to a stage of extreme idiocy. It’s like saying you can’t say Merry Christmas but can still celebrate it.

Granted there are other religious celebrations at this time but if someone wishes me Happy Hanukkah and another wishes me Merry Christmas and a third wishes me a Cool Yule, I get the sentiment. I don’t have to push my religious beliefs or superiority down anyone’s throat. I take it in the spirit of the sentiment.

But Santa, he’s as Christmas as a shopping frenzy. When I was a kid, we of course had the obligatory trip to the mall to sit on Santa’s lap. I can’t remember any of those visits really, nor what I asked for. My childhood greed and wants changed every year I’m sure. The only Santa visit I truly remember was the last one.

(Spoiler alert on Santa’s existence.) I had already figured out that Santa wasn’t real and really was my mother storing gifts in her closet. Not yet at the stage of wanting to preserve the magic and the harmless lie, I said I didn’t want to go because Santa wasn’t real. My mother made me go because my little brother, two years younger, still was starry-eyed over the white-bearded gnome. Of course, somewhere along the line I blurted out to my brother that Santa didn’t exist and my mother was not pleased with me.

But she shouldn’t have made me go to see the fake. I think if a picture still exists of me on Santa’s lap it shows a sullen child. My little brother probably went first and then me. As I’m sitting on Santa’s lap and he asks me what I want for Christmas I notice the fake beard, and sticking out of it near his lip is a tag that says “Made in Hong kong.” That cemented the truth for me, that Santa was an impostor. 

Coca-Cola's first Santa

Many years later, Santa has morphed. He was of course a very Victorian image (though versions of Kris Kringle, Sinter Klaus, Pere Noel, etc. existed before that) and was hugely popularized in North America by that American institution Coca-Cola. He was first popularized (and fattened up) in 1931, and he’s never looked back since.  Santa keeps changing and just as there is the summer flash mob that forms around a zombie walk, there are the winter flash mobs of Santas that swarm the streets, sometimes passing out candy and kisses and stopping in every alcoholic watering hole they can find.

I once ran into the Santas, from skinny to fat, tall to short, male and female. A few elves were along as well. It was fun and just brought a smile to my face. Unfortunately this year I had a previous engagement; otherwise I would have been romping with the Santas. And these days, do I believe in Santa? Well I think I believe in the spirit of giving, for joy and fun but not because you must or it’s expected. If I could I would give more including donations to charity as I fun it gave me a profound sense of goodwill when I did.

Back in the cold October breeze, 52 brave citizens of Copenhagen made a FlashMob for signing the Hopenhagen petition. Today when I was searching around the web I came by photos with Hopenhagen and the greenwashing of Coca Cola. These banners are hanging around the town and bringing attention to the big Hopenhagen live event that are ongoing at the same square where the Sunbathers was doing their stunt. When I went on youtube to see the sunbathing video I discovered a new flashmob from Syracuse in New York. It is a true copy and it´s great! bringing awareness to the main issue! – COP15 the meeting in Copenhagen and the importance of having a global agreement.

Here are the two videos!

Flashmob sunbathing at Syracuse in New York

Flashmob sunbathing in Copenhagen

And some photos from around town, taken by Christian Johannesen

by Christian Johannesen

by Christian Johannesen

Created by Charlie Todd, Improv Everywhere’s missions are to create “chaos and joy” in public places. Based out of NYC, the improv troupe has created over 100 missions since 2001, involving over ten-thousand agents.

Below are a few samples of their “missions”. Hope you enjoy these as much as I have.

The new media and new digital age that we are entering will require media professionals and citizens alike to rethink the way that news gets created and disseminated. I submit that the new technologies that have been created have made individuals creating news in a closed, static format obsolete. Instead news and therefore, information will be dynamic, open, cheap and widespread.

Clay Shirky’s book touches on some of the most important aspects of the new revolution. The book focuses on the social and cultural effects of the new media. It looks at how collective groups of people can influence and change the world. From his writing and ideas on groups, we can infer some things about how news is changing.

The dynamic nature of news is already here. In the past the paper was printed once or twice a day and that was the extent of the content. The live web is here and live news and information are with it. News is updated not only continually, but from mobile locations. Any person with a smart phone can produce information from wherever they are.

The dynamic nature of information is talked about in Shirky’s chapter on Wikipedia. He said that originally Jimmy Wales considered an expert only moderated article creation system, but that took too long and was cumbersome. Then, he let in the masses and the news and information was created with speed and increased quality. The collective action of many trumps the action of the few.

This dynamic and constantly updated change is also addressed in Shirky’s chapter detailing the publish then filter phenomena. This aspect could be a double edged sword for journalism. Content will be created, but quality and accuracy could be sacrificed. The free market of information would hopefully correct errors content, but that is yet to be seen on a mass scale. In looking at Wikipedia, the majority of content is accurate, but vandalism and questionable content still are published. That kind of vandalism and questionable content would be far less likely in the professional world of journalism.

Openness and new methods of sharing were talked about in Shirky’s chapter on collective action. The sharing of massive amounts of information is as easy as clicking the forward button on your e-mail. The ramifications for news will hopefully be higher quality content and verification. Having more eyes on a story would ideally lead to more corrections of inaccuracies by those who have information.

In the past, being a journalist was like a being given a special gift. A journalist was set apart from the average citizen and supposedly endowed with a special gift to inform the masses. Now, there is no distinction between news creators and consumers. Information and news creation is universal and cheap. In the future, being open with processes and news will not simply be an option, it will be the only way for trust to exist.

The cheap methods of content creation have made journalists no longer a set apart elite. This fact has and will continue to revolutionize media.  In chapter three, Shirky talked about how everyone is a media outlet. Today, people update their twitter statuses, facebook profile, flickr accounts, youtube accounts and more daily. This creates a lot of content. Of course, the vast majority of this content is low quality and meant for a tiny audience. Still, the mass individualized media outlets will require journalists to sift through them to find meaning and quality content, relevant to the masses.

Looking to developing parts of the world, this new media revolution is all the more important. In Shirk’s chapter on Flash Mobs, he talked about how instant protests have been seen in oppressive regimes. The same technology and ideas that form these instant protests can form to disseminate information and news about regimes, where technology or journalistic infrastructure is limited.

The access to news by the masses around the world and the amount of information available is revolutionary. There are trillions of websites on the internet. Wikipedia has more than 15 times the information than the Library of Congress. Broadband penetration and online access is spreading. This hyper information age that we are in has changed things. As Clay Shirky said, there has always been an information overload, but we just need better filtering methods. News needs to be synthesized and connections made by humans. Journalists can do that.

If I was to start up a new news organization, I would look to synthesize the points I have made into a practical standard operating procedure. This organization would share some resemblances to the past newsrooms. Of course, revenue would be needed and codes of ethics would be established,

The new model would be digital and lightweight, because as Jeff Jarvis so eloquently put, “atoms are a drag.” Investing millions in printing presses and the surrounding infrastructure would be unwise since innovation is to be expected and you cannot capitalize on innovation if you are tied to atoms and office buildings.

The organization would be humble. It would look to all sources for news and not put premiums on things like degrees or titles. News could come from sources that might not be expected. Looking at the people who are affected by news leads to truer content. Respecting what the masses of people say is a necessity.

The organization would iterate and flexible. Since I would not invest millions in hard infrastructure, new methods of content creation would be possible. Like David Cohn said, being able to fail is important to truly have innovative success.

The revenue that the organization would generate would be from several sources. It is no longer logical to expect people to pay more than a nominal fee for news. The generation that came to maturity with the internet is not going to pay a premium for information, just because it says the New York Times on the front.

Revenue could be generated by targeted ad sales. Using Google’s ad sense, ads could appear that are relevant to the individual consumer. It would be important that these ads are non-obtrusive. Having users pay a small monthly or yearly access fee would eliminate the ads.

If the site reaches a level that larger companies would want to advertise, it might be possible to do advertorials if the topic is deemed interesting enough and it is clear that it is sponsored. Digg, College Humor and other websites frequently have this type of content and it generates significant amounts of revenue.

The most important facet of any new news organization would be trust. Shirky talked about how trusting that our news and links are valid will make people willing to come back and willing to take a vested interest in the site. The trust and community have been and will continue to be the base for any type of news or journalistic adventure.

If a startup news companies followed those ideas, it would be profitable and high quality. New sites are emerging every day, so I am confident that new models of news will pop up. These new models will be unexpected but quality journalism will survive. There is no doubt that they will all be dynamic, open, cheap and widespread.

I’m thinking quite a lot of people have heard of or seen parkour but what about it’s laid-back cousin, street training? Yes, that’s right, if you are not daring enough to attempt l’art du déplacement then there’s another way you can interact with your surroundings and it’s called street training (what is it called if you become an expert?).

It seems to have started in London and picked up across the pond in none other than Brazil. After seeing a few videos on Youtube, I’m no longer sure it should be called the lazy off-shoot of parkour but rather the chilled-out version of flash mobs…or is it the walking man’s idea of the laying down game? Oh I’m not sure anymore…you crazy kids, you!

Last Crimbo you couldn’t go an hour without seeing the lo-fi elf’s of Elf Yourself fame dancing on someone’s computer screen. Well now the Elf’s have taken to the streets and flash mobbed NY. Elf yourself Live is coming to a city near you.

I don’t like musicals. The dancing is pretty silly and never moves me. The stories are ok, but not worth it becasue the lyrics drive me nuts! For similar reasons, I don’t enjoy the all-singing all-dancing flash mobs of the world.

This, however, is totally awesome! (Sure, it’s a movie and music video, but this is what those flash mobs think they look like, isn’t it?)

Best Coast | When I’m With You

via I Prefer Your Earlier Work

In Here Comes Everybody and the lecture “How Social Media Can Make History,” Clay Shirky elaborates on the impact of social technologies and the shift that occurred in the media environment.  Ever since the popularization of the Internet, media has become more social.  Shirky declares on the cover of his book, “revolution doesn’t happen when society adopts new technologies—it happens when society adopts new behaviors” (160).  In his book and lecture, Shirky reveals how new technologies—such as the Internet and its features like e-mail and websites—allow for society to adopt new behaviors.  These technologies did not cause the changes in society’s behaviors; these technologies empowered society to adopt the changes.

Today, our media landscape has technologies that are global, social, ubiquitous and cheap.  Along with these four traits develops another phenomenon: mass amateurization.  This concept removes privileges that used to be reserved for the media profession.  This change threatens those who consider themselves as professionals.  For the past few decades before the advent of the Internet, they prided themselves in being gatekeepers.  They do not want to lose the prestige of being professionals and are very “concerned with threats to the profession” (69).  While with some professions, as Shirky suggests, should always have high standards (like that for surgeons and pilots), there are times where a change “threatens the profession [but] benefits society,” like that of the changing information ecosystem (69).

Not only did it change the media landscape, but the advent of mass amateurization and new communication tools change many previously established social norms and definitions.  This changes the idea of what constitutes as a real journalist.  Before Internet, the definition was based upon “ownership of communications machinery” (72).  It was about who was rich enough to own publishing machines and media outlets and the journalists that were associated with them.  With Internet, are bloggers considered journalists?  Does posting a 140 characters Tweet make someone a journalist?  The blurring of what constitutes as a professional journalist also makes unclear if just anyone deserve the privilege of being protected by the law.  Furthermore, the shift is also “changing social definitions that are not tied to professions” (75-6).  In the book, Shirky uses the example of Sherron Watkins, who was an accountant for Enron before its tragic end.  For Watkins, sending one e-mail to her co-workers containing her worries for an accounting scandal can deem her as a whistle blower.  Due to the nature of e-mail, it is virtually impossible to destroy all traces of information that they contain; therefore, even though Watkins only sent this e-mail to a few, her alarm can potentially be leaked to many others.

The shift from traditional media, like print and television, to Internet and its social tools makes a change in communication.  Unlike previous media, the Internet allows conversation to generate: the audience can now respond to news and information.  Not only that, audience is now the producers, writing blogs or tweets.  Media outlets, from print to television, no longer have the monopoly on information.  These new technologies are “many-to-many tools,” allowing amateurs to ignite conversations in online communities (158).  To illustrate the power of the amateurs and their reach, Shirky, in his lecture, draws from the events that occurred after the 7.9 magnitude earthquake hit the Sichuan province of China in May 2009.  The Chinese government first found out about the earthquake not from news agencies or officials, but rather, from its own citizens and through Twitter.  Even more surprising is that the Tweets about the earthquake came several minutes before the geological survey announced the natural disaster.  The advent of cell phones made it possible to capture photos and videos of the earthquake, allowing multi-media of the catastrophe to circulate the web before established networks even got to Sichuan to film footage.  For a while after the earthquake occurred, the top 9 of Twitter’s “top 10” Tweets were about the event.  As Shriky reveals in his lecture, the amount of amateur generated media surged the Internet and “rippled like wildfire.”

Amateurs on the web are not bounded by the structure and guidelines of traditional media and what is deemed as newsworthy.  They broke free from the idea of self-suppression, where “old stories are never revisited without a new angle,” and news cycles, the concept of “old news” (62).  Furthermore, as cost of publishing is driven down (to nearly nothing) and space is no longer an issue, the mentality of what to publish switched from “why publish this?” to “why not?” (60).  No longer does the public have to deal with the professional bias in traditional media.  This changes the definition of news, “from news as an institutional prerogative to news as part of a communications ecosystem” (66).

This is apparent in the ever-changing field of social communication that allows for the formation of groups and collective action, empowering society to challenge existing institutions.  In his lecture, Shirky declares that one of the big changes in this media revolution is that old media get digitized, creating an environment where every medium is right next door to all other media.  This makes “reader redistribution,” whether an online new story or an online video clip, quite easy to send through e-mail, disseminating information to an individual or a group at the speed of light (149).  Again, drawing from Shirky’s example of the Sichuan earthquake, within half a day of the disaster, donation sites were up and donations were pouring in globally.  Social communications allow for the respond to occur so quickly “by removing two obstacles—locality of information, and barriers to group reaction” (153).  There are many Chinese around the world and many people with businesses or families in China.  Social tools, such as Twitter, allowed for those around the world with vested interest in the disaster to feel the shared emotions of shock and sadness to the news.

The Chinese government, perhaps unwisely, decided to let the citizens’ reporting go.  After some investigation, the citizens found out the reason why many school buildings collapsed, killing many school children, was because corrupt officials had taken bribes to allow the structures to be built less than code.  Some citizens, radicalized by the lost of their next generation (due to China’s one child law), protested against the Chinese government.  As Shirky asserts: “don’t let even small protests get started, as they can grow, and don’t let any documentation get out” (164).  The Chinese government, which has always excelled in the censorship of the Internet, has failed to control this controversy and the spreading of documentation.  There was no way to filter through unwanted information other than to shut down entire services.  This was because information was disseminated locally, quickly, by amateurs and at such abundance: everything that China, at that point, was not used to dealing with.  Social tools, as exemplified, can spread the knowledge of corruptions, but it can also be used to expose corruption.  Flash mobs are centered around collective actions where a group of people meet spontaneously for a synchronized act. The example that Shirky gives is the protest against Belarus’ oppressive government where LiveJournal was used to declare the meeting times and the choice of actions.  These mobs needed social tools where the “organization of group effort can be invisible, but the results can be immediately visible” and “allow events to be arranged without much advance planning” (169).  Social tools, here, empower the protesters to challenge the undemocratic government.

In the short time since the prominent use of the Internet and its social tools, the media landscape has changed drastically.  However, as Shirky asserts at the end of his lecture, the current situation is not whether this media environment is the one that we want to use, but rather, what is the most effective way to use this environment.

Idag var det zombie walk i Malmö. Ca 50 stycken vältrade sig genom stan till allmän beskådan och förfäran/förundran/beundran. Bäst var när zombies spred sig över hela Triangeln. Att åka rulltrappa med odöda är nåt speciellt.

Mina bilder blev väldigt suddiga eftersom min kamera inte är så bra och jag gick samtidigt som jag fotade, men fina bilder finns på Sydsvenskan!

A flash mob is an event in which large number of people suddenly assembles at a pre decided location at a pre decided time. Perform some predefined action for a brief time and then quickly disperse. Such events are generally organized via internet. Flash mobs are effective only when something unique or better say bizarre is done; the event is not organized to promote a product or a brand and it is free to participate. Some successful flash mobs:

Flash Mob Victoria Station

Tate Modern Museum flash mob

and others like: Pillow Fight Flash mob, The Brides of March, Zombie Mob, Smile Mob, Frozen Grand Central, Santarchy, Belarusian Ice Cream Mob, ATM Applause Mob, Critical Mass

However flash mobs are not always admired by all. Here is one example:

$20,000 Pillow Fight May Lead to Flash Mob Ban in San Francisco

Anyways getting an idea for flash mob activity is not easy. It should be interesting, safe, fun and at the same time bizarre. Timing is very important part of this event. All the participants should turn up at the same time. Therefore give all your participants enough time to prepare. Flash mobs are most effective when organized in crowded areas during weekends. To get people to participate in your event, you can take the help of social media like Craigslist.org, xflashmobs.com, yelp.com etc.