Trust in Disaster

Posted on September 1, 2008 Written by 5 Comments

Social media tools are amazing, and empower so many people.  I have no doubt that at this moment there are dozens of efforts underway to help people suffering from Hurricane Gustav.  Blogs, Ning communities, Twitter accounts, you name it.

So here’s the disclaimer.  Before you give ANY personal information to ANYONE on the internet, do your due diligence:

  1. Who owns the account or site with which you are interacting?
  2. How long have they been involved in disaster relief or recovery?
  3. What kind of reputation do they have?
  4. What kind of information are they asking for?
  5. Do they know anything about data security?

There are many, many well-intentioned efforts.  But all it takes is one or two enterprising scammers to create a free and untraceable account on a Social Network to wreak havoc and take advantage of internet trust.

Don’t allow desperation to make you a victim.

And in the future, make sure you have a robust communication plan for friends and family.  Do your investigation of those channels before the storm strikes.  David Stephenson has some excellent advice on how to use new media and personal tech to communicate during disasters.  Of course, my former colleages at the American Red Cross are in the space as well, with an official newsroom on WordPress and accounts for news and family disaster inquiry on Twitter.  There’s also a nice Ning community up.

Just use your head.

[tags]Ike Pigott, Occam’s RazR, disaster, disaster communications, Ning, American Red Cross, Twitter, WordPress, David Stephenson[/tags]

Filed Under: Communication Tagged: ,

The Dream Job

Posted on August 22, 2008 Written by 11 Comments
dream-job-venn

When I was interviewing for my current job, I was asked why I wanted it.  True, everyone loves getting a paycheck (and some even love being employed.)  But my answer came back to the intersection of things I enjoyed.  I actually traced the following diagram on my desk for the interview committee:

These are three things I truly enjoy:  helping people tell their story in times of stress and strain; geeky tech tools; and teaching others.  The real actualization comes when those spheres start overlapping.  My experience with using New Media tools to communicate during disasters comes in an intersection.  Likewise my media training, and even the time I spend on Twitter and elsewhere helping others “get” Social Media.

I’m lucky to have a job that allows me to play in the mixed colors, and even work in that bright white zone in the middle.

Have you ever mapped out your motivations in this way?  There might just be some fulfilling intersections that you’re missing because you haven’t tried overlapping…

[tags]Ike Pigott, Occam’s RazR, motivation, Venn, career[/tags]

Filed Under: Communication, Philosophy Tagged: ,

Statistics and Context

Posted on August 18, 2008 Written by 11 Comments

Lies, damned lies, and statistics.  Well, what about damned statistics that are meant to mislead people into incorrect conclusions?

I happened upon a passage in this weekend’s Parade Magazine that made me nearly foam at the mouth.  The piece was challenging the notion that the United States was the “World’s Richest Nation,” as though everyone really believed it was anyway.  There are countries with a higher median household income, and even a higher per-capita GDP!  (Gasp.  Let’s all give up and eat cheese.)

This is the paragraph that got me boiling:

Income inequality also is greater in the U.S. than in other developed nations, and some economists believe that makes us more vulnerable to hitting the skids than the rest of the world. “Low-wealth children are unlikely to become high-wealth adults, while high-wealth children are very likely to become high-wealth adults,” says Dalton Conley of the Center for American Progress, a Washington think tank. “That should sound alarms for policymakers.”

Alarms?  I’ll tell you what alarms me…

  1. Why is it assumed that income inequality is a bad thing?  Incomes are equal in undeveloped socialist states.  “The trees were all kept equal with hatchet, axe and saw.”  Income inequality can be a sign that varying levels of input (sweat and brains) will give you varying levels of results.
  2. “Some” economists.  Really?  Who?  Let’s get more stringent with that attribution.  I’ll bet there are “some” economists who think the earth is flat, or who think we faked the moon landing.
  3. Poverty is relative.  A child born into a family on the U.S. poverty line has a standard of living (nutrition, air conditioning, square footage of abode, etc.) that is equal to the average European.
  4. “Low-wealth children are unlikely to become high-wealth adults.”  This, on its face is true.  Nowhere on the planet are low-wealth children likely to become high-wealth adults.  That is not unique to the United States, nor to capitalist democracies.
  5. The Center for American Progress is a think tank – and “think tanks” are usually in the tank for whichever ideology is footing the bill.

#4 is the piece that really turned me red.  As it happens, a child born “poor” in the U.S. has a greater chance of moving into the top income levels than in any other country.  Conversely, a child born “rich” in the U.S. has a better chance of dropping down in status – not because of risk, but because if you just sit on your money and don’t work, others will take advantage of opportunities to surpass you.

It’s like saying that a baseball player “is unlikely to reach base on the next attempt.”  Well, duh.  If you consistently hit .300, you can be an All-Star.  If we had a bet where every time Albert Pujols had a base hit I gave you a dollar, and every time he made an out you gave me a dollar, I’d win!  The issue here isn’t raw outcome, it’s comparative. And compared to the rest of the world, there is more fluidity in our wealth.  Our rich are more likely to get poor than Luxembourg’s rich, and our poor are more likely to get rich than Denmark’s poor.

Content without context is a spinmeister’s best friend.  We’d be better served if more people were trained in critical thinking – the internal alarms that go off when information is offered with big gaping holes.

[tags]Ike Pigott, Occam’s RazR, Economics, income, Parade, spin[/tags]

Filed Under: Communication Tagged: ,

Losing Face with Cuil

Posted on July 28, 2008 Written by 4 Comments
Someone who is not me

A few former Google guys just rolled out a brand-spanking-new search engine called Cuil.  They claim it indexes the web deeper and smarter than any other algorithm.

So, what do you get when you put in my name?  A search for Ike Pigott does indeed pull up things written about me, but very little written by me.  The Cuil team claims:

Rather than rely on superficial popularity metrics, Cuil searches for and ranks pages based on their content and relevance.

I have a problem with this claim, as you can go through the top fifty results and barely find a single website that I actually run.  Instead, you find several Tweets with my name in them, or even worse, Jaiku messages that were nothing more than a re-post of my Twitter feed.  It seems as though the more-traffic-more-authority model is still at work here.

Even worse, I seem to have lost my face.  Look at these results:

Someone who is not me

Someone who is not me

this guy is popular

this guy is popular

So, in the first fifty results for my name, a person who does not know me would logically assume that is my picture.  To make things even more strange, the picture that’s linked to the ZoomInfo result does not appear on the Ike Pigott ZoomInfo page.

So… this is a search engine that claims not to be influenced so much by popularity, yet it draws from websites like Twitter with insane amounts of traffic.  It also claims to pull information in a more contextual way, yet misses the bulk of my input and gives me a complete facial makeover.

Yes, I’ll give these folks some time.  After all, in the minutes it’s taken me to write this, the resultant buzz about this new shiny toy has already overwhelmed the server.  It does make one wonder, however, just how many other search engines are out there popping up strange results.  Google is well on its way to being a permanent verb, yet there’s still a significant amount of search traffic on those fringes.  Most people can’t name more than two engines.

[tags]Ike Pigott, Occam’s RazR, cuil, search, search engine optimization[/tags]

Filed Under: Communication, Marketing Tagged:

Brevity

Posted on June 26, 2008 Written by 2 Comments

“There are volumes one can write about brevity, provided the author doesn’t understand how to properly employ it.”

- Ike Pigott


- Inspired by Chris Brogan and Liz Strauss on Twitter, where attempts at brevity sometimes succeed.

Filed Under: Communication, Language, My Quotes Tagged:

Proud and Tickled

Posted on June 20, 2008 Written by 4 Comments

I have to say that I am immensely proud of all the Red Cross disaster relief workers who have used New Media tools to share the word about what is really happening.  You guys have really picked up the ball and run with it — and now more than ever it’s important to showcase what disaster relief is, and how it impacts the lives of those in need.

Go visit the Midwest floods online newsroom and see for yourself.  There’s an impressive array of tools, from Flickr to Utterz to Slide to Facebook integration.  Definitely check out the Google Maps disaster operations mashup.

I’m proud of you guys.  Every one of you.

[tags]Ike Pigott, Occam’s RazR, American Red Cross, disaster relief, midwest floods, technology, Social Media[/tags]

Filed Under: Communication, Personal Tagged: , ,

The 90-Trick Pony

Posted on May 26, 2008 Written by 11 Comments
ponyride

Back in my teevee and radio days, I worked with some amazing people. Many are still contributing to the business, and everyone had something important to share. Some of those lessons, however, were by negative example.

We’ll call him Carl. Carl was a journeyman, bouncing from station to station in town. He was well-respected on the air, with a decent reputation for hard work. To his detriment, he had a short fuse and an even shorter tolerance for seeing things done “the wrong way.” This wasn’t the lesson I learned from Carl.

Carl was an instant charmer. He was glib, and some of the funniest things I had ever heard came out of his mouth. I wish I could remember some of the examples, as the phrases and humor would just flow with no effort.

The Turning Point

After about three months or so, I started to learn Carl’s secret. After you spend a significant period of time with a person, you start running across some of the same triggers. And wouldn’t you know it, those same glib turns of phrase would come spilling out of Carl’s mouth. Just like Pavlov ringing a bell, here came the catchphrase.

In the sitcom world, a catchphrase needs to be hammered home every week for it to permeate the culture enough that you’ll want to buy the t-shirt. In real life, catchphrases are inside-jokes at best, divisive at worst, and annoying to most everyone. It’s one thing when a violent hit in the football game results in six guys yelling “Blammo!” It’s another to be known as Blammo Guy in the mall.

Carl wasn’t as obvious as the Blammo Guy, because it took a while to experience all his triggers. Yet after a while, he was just as predictable. And not as funny or charming.

The Ninety-Trick Pony

It took me a long time to verbalize the concept of the 90-Trick Pony, but the notion has been a touchstone for me for years. And it took me even longer to understand why Carl was that way. He wasn’t stupid, nor was he shallow. For a long time, I thought it was a manifestation of insecurity, and it probably is to some degree. But now I know that Carl’s biggest problem was over-programming. He patterned himself into a rut.

When you’re a disk jockey, you have to multi-task constantly in a very unforgiving environment. For every Howard Stern who gets paid millions just to talk, there are tens of thousands who have to talk while punching buttons. In Carl’s day, it was punching buttons, swapping stacks of carts, spooling reels, and taking phone calls. And in Carl’s day, the equipment was never your friend.

Carl figured out that he could “program” himself with some fairly lengthy witticisms, and run his mouth on autopilot while briefly turning his attention elsewhere. I don’t think Carl ever discovered what he had done, and I’m not sure he was conscious of it. Half the time, I don’t think he remembered which of his catchphrases he’d just used.

Communication Ruts

Maybe you know a Carl in your life. Maybe you secretly are a “Carl,” with your own subconscious patterns that once served you well but now drag you down. We all have a little Carl in us — the part that wants to be accepted, and knows that killer line will kick us up a notch in the approval rankings. Unless, of course, everyone has heard all 90 of your Tricks and sentences you to the Pony Stable.

Carl’s biggest sin was that he merged his on-air persona with his personality. His routine became a rut that got in the way of face-to-face communication. Don’t get me wrong, he could function very well and was capable of delightful conversations. But every so often, someone would hit a trigger, and out would spill the catchphrase. It made you wonder how often he lived there in the moment with you, and just how often his brain was drifting elsewhere.

What Carl Got Right

Real communication is about making a connection. It’s about listening, talking, and remembering. It’s rather ironic, but Carl is the one who taught me the secret of connecting over the air: whether you’re broadcasting to ten or ten-million, you’re talking to one at a time. This is the part Carl got right, and it’s the piece that I hope I’ve carried over into the online realm. You don’t “talk to an audience.” You connect with people.

Now, go back and look at your online trail. See if there are any patterns you’ve relied upon too much, and change your routine before it becomes entrenched. After all, ponies that learn no new tricks stay in their ruts, running circles forever.

Filed Under: Communication, Personal Tagged: ,
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