OK, I need your opinions on this. I’m a huge fan of Final Cut and after hearing that Final Cut Pro X is cheaper than Final Cut Pro ($299.99) AND you the rendering is done in real time (i.e. no more “I think I’ll go take an hour bath while this thing renders), I saw this via Matthieu
I’m crying inside and hope it’s just LIES, silly LIES
have you tested it yet??
“At 10 years old, you died of shame for not being able to swim
At 20, for not being able to drive
At 30, for not being able to tweet”
Went the newsletter sent out to the readers of My Little Paris, a daily newsletter, that hosted a “Tweet School” on Monday hosted by yours truly and Gregory Pouy.
When announced, it was criticized by some because, well — tweeting should be as natural as breathing, right?.. And yet–97% of the world population is NOT on Twitter (world stats from Wikipedia and Twitter stat from RWW).
And using Twitter… really does mean immerging yourself in a different culture to get the hang of it. When I first started, I pored over articles about who to follow, how to tweet, Twitter etiquette, etc. Being an anthro/soc-lover at heart, I discovered another culture. But..
Twitter, among with any other number of social media tools can seem like outer space to people that have never used them before.
You just have to take a look at 5-year-olds (or younger) posting videos on YouTube of themselves giving make-up lessons or sharing why it’s important for a girl to have a job before she gets married (or else she’ll find someone else, DAMMIT) to see that kids are already using the web to interact with others, collaborate, and comment, without even realizing the cultural implications. As the authors of Wikinomics point out, “while their parents were passive consumers of media, youth today are active creators of media content and hungry for interaction.”
Or at least the world as we know it. OK, I’ll admit it — I believe in the Mayan prophecies and that the world is going to end in 2012. Not the physical world, though ; just the world as we know it. Every day there is a revolution of some sort, it seems — political, cultural, ethical, you name it. Ray Kurzweil predicted the exponential acceleration of technological and innovational change, and the daily newspaper proves him right every day.
It seems like now you can even predict certain situations or say you could have seen it coming. The photo of Kate Middleton as she crouched down on the royal balcony was bound to be photoshopped so it looked she she was giving him… a first wedding gift..
It’s up to those of us that are continually using the web to show others why it’s important that they be there, young and old. The Web provides unlimited opportunities. Two years ago, I first began working online as a community manager. And I’ve never looked back. If I hadn’t started working online, I never would have moved to Paris, or met some amazing friends, be living where I am, staying in a Shangri-La Hotel, — the list goes on.
For those that haven’t made the digital jump, though, people that have blogs, and post videos, and use Twitter can still seem like straight-out geeks. Which is a hindrance not just between generations, but has serious implications for business.
Which leaves me with two thoughts…
1. Are we headed towards a gift economy?
Gary Vaynerchuck calls it the “Thank you Economy,” but will those that are digitally savvy give their time to help others learn how to use various tools as they emerge (many of you do already, just by having a blog. It’s just up to “offline people” to find them and read them). In gift economies, money isn’t king — it’s intangible things that are valuable. i.e. every time you give someone a hand by recommending their product, introducing them to someone, teaching them something, you earn status. It’s not about how much money you have, it’s about how much you offer to others that makes you “rich” and influential.
2. Or are geeks and digital natives about to take over the world?
Or will those that are digitally savvy become insanely rich as they exploit “offline people” for their lack of knowledge about the subject forever becoming the future rulers of the New Order? After all, if news breaks first on Twitter (and now it’s starting to), those of us that are connected are “in the know” well in advance of anyone waiting to watch it on TV or listen to it on the radio.
(Digital) knowledge is power, isn’t it?
Last week an article from Slate caught my eye about cultural differences between Americans and the French that just might explain a few things..
In the U.S. it’s true (admit it!) that we’re raised with a certain American dreamish “you can do it” attitude. Not everyone is raised the same way and there are certainly circumstances in which children are discouraged, but growing up in the U.S. has definitely made me appreciate our spirit that is willing to try. Why else would someone have thought it was a good idea to try and reach the Pacific Coast? Or build a giant highway system just in case of a Cold War. But I digress.. Continue reading
Posted in Question posin
Tagged americaine à paris, american in paris, axelle tessandier, cultural differences france us, expat, expat paris, France, Jeremiah Owyang, michelle chmielewski, michmski, my little paris, observing participant, observingparticipant, paris, reseaux sociaux france, Silicon Valley, Slate, social media france, the next web, Twitter, United States
Promise, promise, the video blogs will be back in February, but in the meantime…
Never have I ever imagined a salon where no one knew the wifi password. Such was the case this past Tuesday and Wednesday at the E-Marketing Salon in Paris where — after an hour — I finally discovered the wifi was reserved for bloggers. Good thing I blog. (FYI don’t despair this isn’t a whiny “miaaaaa I didnt get what I wanted” post — though there was a moment i started to get twitchy, geek style) but just a reflection on the adoption of social networks in France and their usages.
Yesterday evening was a little surreal, I have to admit. And though I’ve told myself I shouldn’t write things that are too personal on my blog, I do believe you have to share who you are, and tonight made me think a little bit more about that.
Recently someone even asked me, “and you..what do you do..besides what you do?..”
And to be 100% honest I’ve just graduated, I’ve moved to Paris, and I’m still interested in a million things and want to learn everything : photography, Polish, base-jumping, shark-diving, video-editing, snowboarding, etc and travel everywhere, but it’s hard to put my finger on just. one thing.
So when sudddenly this evening I was approached to do anything EXTREME that I could possibly want..
I immediately imagined myself diving off of bridges with the Red Bull guys and jumping with skis from a helicopter, but then I thought
WAIT.
ANYTHING I want?
You mean like a magic wish with a genie?
Well then.. in that case my mind took a 180° turn towards doing something for someone else. I’m not a Mother Theresa – that’s for damned sure – but if you could do ANYTHING. in. the. world.
What would you do?
I’m torn.
I thought of this :
(of course 😉 )
But also this :
A silly little video that I made when I was invited to visit a guide-dog school for the seeing-impaired here in Paris. It’s a small school that does such wonderful things – for free.
My favorite story, in fact, of all time is of the man going along a sandy coast of washed-up starfish the day after an enormous sea storm. He went along slowly, picking them up, one by one with a certain tenderness, and throwing them back into the ocean so that they wouldn’t die there, dried up on the coast. As he went along, a stranger came up to him and stopped him. He said, “what are you doing? There are millions of starfish that have washed up on the coast. You can’t possibly make a difference.” But the man just kept bending down and picking up the starfish, one by one. He picked one up and threw it back into the water and looked at the stranger and said, “..just made a difference for that one.”
If you could have the chance to do something – anything – extreme..what would it be?
..
Posted in Question posin
Tagged basejumping, born, extreme, hangliding, humanitarianism, red bull, snowboarding, volunteer
Ever since I’ve been working and living somewhat in the blogosphere I’ve found you’ll always run into bloggers that think they’re “influential”, meaning they may have some pull over a given number of people that follow them on Twitter, that read their blog, are “friends” with them on Facebook, etc.
Granted, they have some pull. But I have to admit I’ve always found it a bit funny to call certain people “influencers” or say they are “influential”.
Just because you read someone’s blog, are they truly going to influence how you think or act?
Last Saturday night, then, at U2’s concert at the Stade de France – back back up: we were invited to go and I actually discovered that while I like some of their ideas I’m actually not a huge fan of U2. The fist-pumping 40-year-old ladies in front of me were excellent though.
ANYWAYS, as we were leaving the concert before the big rush of the entire crowd, we stopped to look back at almost 100,000 40- and 50-somethings jumping with sheer joy, and almost an idolized look in the eyes of some as they fixed their eyes on the giant screen glowing over the stage. And all I could think was.. that’s influence.
When you can make 100,000 people pulsate to your rhythm, literally or figurally, chanting your ideas..
then you can say you’re influential
what do you think?
who is influential (truly) for you?
why?
Overheard on the street :
Bloggers don’t even get up til 10, they’re too busy..blogging or something..
Wait – WHAT ???
Personally I get up at 7:30 7:45 every weekday morning to get to work on time. And the majority of bloggers I know have steady jobs that also require them to get up and about well before 10am.
I’m not sure why, but this comment struck me.
Do people really not “get” bloggers? Can you, if you don’t blog yourself?
But then, who am I to “defend” bloggers? Maybe some of you do roll out at 10 am..
Darth likes champ
So I decided to compile a list of all of the reasons I’ve seen or heard about for why people blog.
Just to clear things up.
Some of them apply to me ; many do not. Please add your own (whether they apply to you or not 😉 ):
That’s all I’ve got so far
What are your reasons ?
And if you don’t blog, why ?
**sincere tone here, not the “why?! dammit — why don’t you blog?!?!” ;D **
The social web is, well, all about relationships. The people “inside” the web know it, and the people trying to GET inside the web are discovering that truly online is no different from offline.
Except that it may not be so easy. There are those that “get it”, and some that just don’t. The latter may pay lipservice to the fact that communities online revolve around relationships but for some reason have a difficult time truly understanding what this means.
So how can both groups understand who is influential? And how do they interact with them?
Just like “in real life” we have our own groups of friends and colleagues, people we trust, and places we go for information. There are certain codes like transparency, openness, and accessibility that is in our DNA.
People that have truly taken to the web have become its ethnographers. But they have their own name : community managers.
Community Managers are those funny little characters that are continually in contact with brands and agencies, as well as the communities that are important to the brand.When people ask me what I do I say,
“I’m online. An obscene amount of the time. And I love it.”
We like to talk about the company we work for – of course! – but that’s certainly not all we’re interested in.
We’re not salesmen. We’re not going to try and tell you that the sky is purple or what “our” company has to offer is the absolute bestest most wonderful thing in the entire wide world – because we care about our own online reputations, and we know that word of mouth is everything. I personally never approach anyone with the purpose of “selling” anything, but rather because they are looking for answers or with the intention of starting out on projects we can work on together.
We naturally look for who is influential in certain circles (depending on which circles we prefer) and who they are connected to.
We don’t sell, though. We facilitate. We answer questions. We provide roadmaps. And actually by doing just that we end up selling. Because “selling” in social media means showing you know how to actually talk with people and solve their problems rather than blindly trying to sell your bar of soap or whatever else it is you’re supposed to earn a commission on.
If you’re looking for a web agency to be in charge of your next social media campaign, for example, we may not know all of them but we’ll probably be able to point you in the right direction. Or at least put you in touch with someone that knows better than us. And we’ll do it without expecting anything in return.
OK, if you reaaaally want to write about our company, we won’t say no 😉
The information we collect – be it for internal or external purposes – are the traces of our comings and goings in different circles. They are the “field notes” that can be coded and earmarked afterwards via tags, bookmarks, and any number of social sharing tools.
Now don’t get me wrong, you don’t have to have “Community Manager” as your job title to be this kind of person – and there are certainly community managers out there that won’t agree with what I’m saying – but I’d say a “community manager” is the one you want to send people to when they’re just starting out on the web.
Which community manager is a different question, of course.
Here are just a couple of suggestions for finding one of these not-so-rare-anymore creatures (let me know what yours are, too):
Image credit : Flickr – Kelsau
What do you think ? Do community managers point you in the right direction ? Are you a community manager that tries to ?
Posted in Question posin
This morning TechCrunch exploded with comments about Skype’s Chief Development Officer that has left over some “fiasco“. And the comments? Filled.
I personally don’t know him and want to point out straight away that I don’t know the story personally, I don’t know the guy, and I’m not using the word “shmuck” in my title to refer to him – I just really like the word.
But it got me thinking because I just had a conversation this afternoon with someone that I initially “met” online and have been talking with for months now before finally meeting in person. Granted we were already telling each other we were twins split at birth and put on different continents, but he told me that I am in real life like I am online. OK so now you have to meet me in real life if you want to find out, but it just shows the power of information on the web.
If you’re a shmuck – and maybe even if you’re not – your reputation is going to catch up with you thanks to the Internet.
classy parking job
Facts aren’t always checked. Backgrounds aren’t always checked. Facts aren’t always verified. But the speed at which a rumor can spread is why there is a debate – I think – over journalists vs. bloggers.
They both want to do it fast. They both want to do it well. But sometimes one or the other doesn’t always hit it right on the head.
Prime example : the whiteboard girl hopa hoax . She lit up the Internet until a journalist from a “brief investigation by Los Angeles Times” cleared things up.
And now I’m getting totally off on a tandem because I ACTUALLY wanted to say that with all this talk over net neutrality and wikileaks, I’ve been wondering how the Internet (and the web – thanks to Chris Anderson and Michael Wolff – I wasn’t aware they’re different :° ) is going to be changing – for the better or for worse – and affecting people online and offline.
The web is a place where some of us spend most of our days, while others hardly dabble, yet who you are is going to be affected.
I can understand if you’re a crazy person that only cares about your career and climbing the ladder. The web might not be the best for you. Sorry.
If you pretend to be someone else, be it online or in front of other people, it’s going to be found out. The web is a place designed for openness and sharing, although there will always be trolls and spammers that make life more frustrating and interesting.
Nevertheless, social media is like the tide that went out. Anyone left without a swimsuit beware.
Post-script : I just found out what the word shmuck originally used to refer to. Cute.
feel free to post your other versions below 🙂
Posted in Question posin
This past weekend I was surfing through YouTube videos, and I happened upon the Red Bull Boys.
Since I love Red Bull videos (I was actually surfing for them :p .. ) I kind of got a little too flipped the popcorn excited
Except that all of the sudden it seemed reeeaallly obvious that they were just trying to make a video highlighting Red Bull, which I had never seen before (people doing this) !
I began to think of the girl that tweeted her “distress” over not having any more Wheat Thins at home. Wheat Thins pulled in within hours with a truck-load full of them.
So is social media teaching people that if they complain, they’ll be given priority from brands, and always above and beyond?
Are they genuinely loving sharing information that much that they just want to share it with others.
I think we can all agree there’s some degree of self-vanity, but let me know.
Or are people falsely trying to get brands’ attention, which will only to revert us back to the push marketing era, since everyone will be paying attention again?
That’s your call.
But, without further ado, I give you
I think around minute 3 my brain couldn’t figure out why my hands hand’t turned it off yet, but she JUST KEPT GOING.
nice camera shots of the mascara, though
I would buy that
I’m a huge fan of Red Bull and as such, I sometimes just YouTube “red bull” and look for the latest videos that have been put up. That has led me to these guys; You decide. True lovers or just trying to get sponsorship…for putting a video on YouTube?
It’s candy
It’s makeup
It’s candymakeup that wants someone to send her a lifetime supply of Skittles?
I couldn’t stop thinking of some parade that goes on once a year.
(Great times in Brazil 😉 )
“And, uh..as you can see, I have curly hair
it’s kind of exciting
in a.. very..surprising way”
Really just a girl telling what she thought of the hair dye.
But she seems kind of cool
You decide
That’s all for tonight
I’m off
m
Posted in Question posin
select
select
The Observing Participant 