EchoDitto

There's been a lot of talk lately about the demise of the traditional print newspaper, sparked by Eric Alterman's article in the New Yorker called "Out of Print". It's an interesting discussion that made me examine my own news-procuring habits.

Sorry, print newspapers, but for me you're already dead. I most recently touched newsprint this weekend while I was balling up pages of the Washington Post to help get my campfire started. Before that, I can't even remember. I know that there are many of you out there who can't live without your morning paper (or papers), but that ain't me.

South by Southwest was an absolute blast. I could go on and on about the panels I attended or the people I met, but I'll just say they were all awesome. Instead this will be about what I saw as the overarching themes of the conference: accessibility and data ownership/transferability.

Big Point #1: Everyone is online. We're all aware of this, but too few of us produce work that is accessible to anyone besides english readers in standard web browsers. What about assistive technologies? What about non-english readers? How will we deal with localizing our work? There are some great projects to help with the creation and maintenance of content in multiple languages. More and more, we're going to have to make use of these things.

I have a confession to make.

For the past year or so, I have been merely "going through the motions" of using the newest social networking technologies.

True, I have been dutifully maintaining (ok, "maintaining" may be too generous) my MySpace and Facebook profiles. I signed up with Twitter and I've even twittered more than 20 times (granted, that's over the course of two months; I've already been chided for my lame tweets). I use the EchoDitto del.icio.us feed, and even started a personal one. One thing I'm on top of: I'm a dedicated updater of my Gmail status messages.

But the usefulness of all of this just hadn't clicked for me. Until today.

Quick! Got a TV near you? Our latest project, MyCommitment.org, is going to be on TV today! Oh, and President Bill Clinton will be introducing it. Along with Martha Stewart. On her TV show. For almost a full hour. I'm not kidding, and, as you can imagine, it's making all of us a bit giddy.

MyCommitment.org launched this morning in conjunction with the Clinton Global Initiative annual meeting in New York City. The idea is simple: Global leaders, CEOs, organizations, and heads of state all come together each year to make massive commitments to help solve the world's greatest problems. But rather than letting the big whigs have all the fun, MyCommitment.org invites everyday citizens to participate in the pledging process with their own ways to make the world a better place. And just like at the CGI summit, every commitment that an individual makes must be specific, relevant, and trackable.

Many of us were up late last night watching the CNN YouTube debates, excited at the prospect of a different debate format. Finally, the voters, people like you and me, had the chance to ask a question directly to a potential presidential candidate.

While most of us were watching the debates, quietly judging the merit of each question and wondering what would come next, AP was calling our colleague Michael Silberman to ask his opinion on the effectiveness of the debates:

"The greatest innovation of this debate is that we're seeing candidates respond to real voters instead of polished TV personalities," said Michael … "It's a win for the candidates who are at their best when addressing voters. It's a win for democracy, since average Americans outside of the early primary states now have the opportunity to ask direct questions of candidates."

Imagine this. You're standing, waiting for a bus when you hear a commotion; screaming, yelling, gunshots, etc. You turn around and witness someone being dragged in to a van-- kicking and screaming -- by several armed, hooded individuals.

Instead of diving for cover, you whip out your mobile phone and start capturing video at the precise moment one kidnapper shoots a security guard and foolishly rips off his mask before jumping into the van as it speeds away. You have his picture. You have video evidence of his crime. Being a good citizen, you take your video of the crime to the police, and they arrest you. Because what you did is a crime. Or it could be, in France.

A few months back I heard about The Venice Project, one more video player in the ever-growing field of video players. I’m always curious to hear why this player is different than every other player, so I signed up to become a beta tester. I was eager to download the application, until I learned there is no mac version. Who are these people who put out non-mac products? Mac users are first movers and the influentials, but I digress.

A few weeks later, I got an email, under the subject line, “We’re so Joost!” The Venice Project announced that they have changed the name of their project to Joost.

Was just catching up on last night's Daily Show and heard Tom Vilsack sneak in a plug for his website at the very end of his appearance. Truly impressive -- congrats to you, Tom, as well as the staff who did whatever they did to convince you of the importance of this.

This must seem obvious to some of you, but for some reason it's near impossible to get most traditional PR and comms people to make this a priority when prepping their candidate or spokesperson for TV. The exceptions are those who understand that mentioning the URL on air makes the gift of the TV appearance keep on giving by sending viewers to a medium where they can do a lot more than watch...