NevOn

Pricey freedom of the press

BBC News: Danish-Swedish dairy giant Arla Foods says the ongoing boycott of Danish products in the Middle East had so far cost it between £40m and £50m. As the Muslim world refuses to buy Danish goods in protest over cartoons published in a Danish newspaper, Arla is losing £1m a day. Arla has also had to send home 170 employees across Denmark due to the impact of the reduced sales.

Ouch.

I thought it was extraordinary for the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten to publish those cartoons (caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed) when it would have been apparent to anyone that they undoubtedly would cause major offence to large numbers of people (and clearly have). Like most western countries, Denmark enjoys freedom of the press. But just because they could publish them doesn't mean they should.

The situation is further worsened when other newspapers in France, Germany, Spain, Switzerland and Hungary re-published those cartoons this week. What on earth were they thinking? Ah, freedom of the press. Right.

Allan Jenkins - who has been chronicling some interesting things at Arla Foods regarding their blogs - has a thoughtful post on what this story can teach us. In his post he also raises a key point of distinct relevance to organizational communication:

[...] What do communicators need to think about in a world where an article in an obscure newspaper calls down boycotts on your company? When a controversy like this can leave employees pulled in several directions: loyalty to religious faith, a desire to do a good job, a desire not to be beaten at the factory gates.

Empathy for different cultures and beliefs - even when tolerance by some of the differing beliefs by others runs very thin - must be a prerequisite for any organization today doing business in any country, not just those in the Middle East. Respect for such differing beliefs would be woven into the corporate fabric (or DNA, as some would call it) of any organization. This isn't a new idea - tolerance, respect, etc, are already part and parcel of the expected behaviours and attitudes by employees in most companies today.

So it's not too hard to see the role communicators can play within an organization confronted with the situation as Allan describes. Indeed, a situation such as is confronting Arla Foods and many other Danish businesses.

Where it gets pretty complicated, though, is making any difference or exercising any influence on the strong (and inflexible-looking) opinions of people outside the organization.

These are easy answers. The fact is - there are no easy answers.

Choice podcasts from Davos

I've spent a little time today listening to a few of the audio recordings from the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland. Interesting listening, many of them, even though they are recordings of speeches and sessions which you can read about in mainstream media reporting.

The really interesting ones, though, are the informal and short podcast conversations (no, not interviews: chats, really) recorded by Loic le Meur which are not listed in the link page referenced above. To get those, go to the Forum blog.

Loic's first podcast last Wednesday was a conversation with Richard Edelman, CEO of Edelman PR (discussed in show #106 of FIR: The Hobson & Holtz Report podcast on Thursday). Loic's disarming style enables him to easily draw out commentary and opinion from his conversation partners in a way that seems relaxed and natural, and undoubtedly more spontaneous than if it were a journalist engaging in formal interviews.

Four other podcasts are definitely worth a listen.

• Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, talks about why he comes to Davos; comments on Google.org, the philanthropy arm of Google launched last November; talks about what digitizing content is all about; and online advertising with an interesting "that's a good point" comment about the ad potential in podcasting.
• Thierry Breton, French Minister of Economy and Finance, says entrepreneurs who set up in France won't pay taxes for six years; some people have a wrong perception about France, he says, and it's engaged role in the world today.
• Shai Agassi, SAP board member, believes every second transaction in the world at some point goes through SAP, and 30-40,000 companies worldwide run SAP software; about responsibility, leadership, lack of fear and willingness to take risks; praises Microsoft chairman Bill Gates (he calls him a 'statesman') for his philanthropy; has wry commentary on being quoted out of context regarding open source software during a presentation at the Churchill Club a few months ago and how a podcast of the event helped set the record straight. Plus he takes a swipe at a competitor and its anti-SAP advertising. (No prizes for guessing who the competitor is. No, not Microsoft.)
• Frederick Kempe, assistant managing editor international, The Wall Street Journal, on coming to terms with the integration of print and online as quickly as possible; the Davos zeitgeist; and views about bloggers - quality ones, trusted ones and those who will end up in the trash.

Check out the complete list of podcasts (and on Loic's blog). Listen and learn.

Related NevOn post:

• The road to transparency at Davos

[Technorati: davos, wef]

The road to transparency at Davos

The 2006 annual meeting of the World Economic Forum begins today in Davos, Switzerland. The organizers say there will be 2,340 participants from 89 countries including 15 heads of state or government, 13 union leaders and over 30 heads of non-governmental organizations. This year, 735 participants are at the CEO or Chairman level.

What makes this year's meeting especially interesting is that many of these movers-and-shakers will be blogging the event.

This is not private or ad hoc blogging - the World Economic Forum Weblog is an integral part of the 2006 meeting. The blog doesn't yet list who all the bloggers are but some of them have already begun posting. An indicator of what to expect as the meeting gets underway:

[...] We will blog here summaries of the sessions we participate in and some personal ideas about them. As I said, this is an experiment and should be taken as is. In no way should the notes you will find here express the voice of The Forum itself but rather our personal experience of the Summit, as participants.

That text looks as though it was written for the 2004 meeting. Nevertheless, that's what the 'About this blog' currently says.

And not only blogging at Davos - podcasts and webcasts as well. With the podcasts in particular, I think we can expect some interesting and worthwhile content for our listening enjoyment when the first podcasts are available starting tomorrow (I've already subscribed to the RSS feed).

At last year's meeting, blogging played a key role as the catalyst for a highly-controversial issue leading to the resignation of Eason Jordan, chief news executive at CNN. Jay Rosen described that event pretty well.

There is a clear disclaimer and guidelines on what is allowed for blogging at this meeting, and what isn't:

On- and off-the-record policy for the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2006. All sessions in the Congress Hall, and in addition Sanada 1 & 2 of the Congress Centre, are on the record and you may attribute panellists' remarks to their owners. All other sessions in the Congress Centre are off the record. You can report on the tenor of the debate, but you must not quote participants directly. If, however, you receive their subsequent permission you may quote them. All of the private sessions are "off-the-record meetings" and are not to be blogged.

This semi-transparency makes it clear what's public and what's private. Yet it was a private or closed session last year that was blogged (on an individual's blog, not the WEF one) leading to Jordan's downfall, which brings to mind one reality for me - little these days seems to be off the record. So the maxim of being cautious about what you say even in a private session is worth keeping in mind, especially when there's wi-fi (and podcasters with portable MP3 recorders) around.

Still, I expect to see some good personal commentaries on this blog to balance the official stuff we'll read about in the media. Not only on the official blog, though, on others as well (follow the Technorati tags, below).

Loic Le Meur is the driving force behind the WEF blog and will be in charge of that show. Good luck, Loic!

[Technorati: davos, wef]

Disintermediating the news

A thoughtful article on Friday by Richard Sambrook, director of global news at the BBC, on how the internet is disintermediating news:

[...] News organisations do not own the news any more. They can validate information, analyse it, explain it, and they can help the public find what they need to know. But they no longer control or decide what the public know. It is a major restructuring of the relationship between public and media. But it will affect politics and policy as well.

People can now address politicians directly, and politicians can reach the public without going through the media any more. Public discourse is becoming unmediated.

[...] The availability of information and the pressure for transparency is raising new political issues which we have not had to confront before.

[...] The information revolution is in its earliest stages. But it has the potential to alter the dynamics of public debate, and the interaction between politics, media and the public, beyond recognition.

Interesting aside - Sambrook wrote a blog with his thoughts and opinions about the News Xchange conference for broadcasters last November in Amsterdam, focusing on citizen journalism.

BBC News | How the net is transforming news

Related Nevon posts:

• BBC getting into blogging
• BBC call for 'citizen journalism'

The Quaero oxymoron

If you've been following the story of the Franco-German Quaero project - a planned European multimedia search engine, the answer to Google and brainchild of the French government - you'll know that European politics have contributed to the mire it's been in for some months.

The Quaero website used to be online and provided useful information on the project. No longer is it online. Or, rather, you now need a user ID and password to access the site. Try it and see: http://www.thomson.net/EN/Home/Quaero/

News yesterday in the Financial Times that things might get moving again with German media conglomerate Bertelsman close to signing up as the German leader of the project. The FT's article has a good summary of the project and where things now stand:

[...] It is part of an attempt by French and German governments to mobilise public and private resources to close the research and development gap between Europe and the more innovative economies of the US and Japan.

Funding on the French side of up to €150m will come from the new Agency for Industrial Innovation, set up on the recommendation of Jean-Louis Beffa, chairman of Saint-Gobain, the glass and ceramics group. Thomson, the media services and equipment group, will lead the French team, along with the French National Centre for Scientific Research.

The formation of the German team was stalled by the German elections but the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology on Friday will assemble potential members to a meeting in Berlin. Heinrich von Pierer, the chairman of Siemens who is close to Angela Merkel, German chancellor, is playing the same co-ordinating role on the German side as Mr Beffa.

The most striking proposal seeks to create a search engine for the general public that can sort through audio, images and video as well as text. Current multimedia search engines rely on written descriptions of audio, images and video, which lead to inaccurate results.

Quaero would incorporate techniques to transcribe audio automatically as well as image and video recognition.

The idea of Quaero is a terrific one. Yet I can't imagine anything more oxymoronic than "government-backed search engine."

Financial Times | Bertelsmann set to head Quaero web project (paid sub)

Related - Seek and you may not find from the FT also yesterday. An analysis of the history of Quaero as well as some commentary on additional ideas for Quaero (it's more than just about the internet). My favourite snip from that article:

[...] "There is already a good French search engine – it's called Google.fr," jokes one blogger. The French satirical newspaper Le Canard enchaîné has also poured scorn on Quaero: "Compared with Microsoft's €30bn [£20.4bn] profits or Google's €100bn capitalisation, Chirac's announcement is really going to spread panic in Silicon Valley."

True, any panic has thus far been taking place in Europe. The continent's fears about its lack of progress in research and development, faced with the challenge from the US and Japan, are felt acutely in France and have played a part in the setting up of Quaero.

Blair and Cameron podcast firsts

You know podcasting has now definitely entered the mainstream when two politicians - one a Prime Minister no less, and both leaders of their parties and members of the government - use the medium in conjunction with two national newspapers to convey particular messages to voters in the UK.

Yesterday, Prime Minister Tony Blair was interviewed by The Sun newspaper in that paper's first podcast. He uses the medium to talk about cleaning up anti-social behaviour in towns and cities (a hot political issue in the UK at the moment).

On Tuesday, new Conservative Party leader David Cameron became the first UK political party leader to record a podcast by using The Daily Telegraph's regular podcast service (which the paper launched in November) to speak about broader political issues and attacked Blair's anti-social behaviour plans. Unlike Blair's podcast, Cameron's was not an interview - he simply talked during a seven-minute segment in conversational style.

Initial impressions - Blair's interview doesn't sound that different to the type of scripted interview you'd hear on the radio. In contrast, Cameron's delivery sounded spontaneous and informal.

A very interesting development in communication in UK politics.

Shel and I will be talking about these podcasts from the communication perspective in today's edition of For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report podcast, which we'll be recording this evening Amsterdam time.

[Update] In a comment to this post, Niall Cook points out that the first leader of a UK political party to do a podcast was, in fact, Charles Kennedy of the Liberal Democrats. Kennedy did six podcasts in April and May 2005 - that's eight months ago - during the UK general election campaign.

So much for journalistic fact-checking - the Telegraph says quite clearly in its podcast that Cameron is the first party leader to do a podcast. Clearly not so.

FIR Interview - Gerald R. Baron, author, "Now is Too Late" - January 11, 2006

In this edition of For Immediate Release podcast interviews, Shel enjoyed a 55-minute conversation with Gerald Baron, author of the crisis communications book, "Now is Too Late: Survival in the Era of Instant News."

Download the conversation here (MP3, 21MB), or sign up for the Interviews RSS feed to get it and our future interviews automatically. For automatic synchronization with your iPod or other digital player, you’ll also need a podcatcher such as the free Juice, DopplerRadio, iTunes or Yahoo! Podcasts, or an RSS aggregator that supports podcasts such as FeedDemon. To receive all For Immediate Release podcasts including the twice-weekly Hobson & Holtz Report, sign up for the full RSS feed.

About our Conversation Partner:

Gerald Baron is the founder and vice president of Audience Central with involvement in thought leadership around public information management and crisis communications. Mr. Baron founded AudienceCentral shortly after his role as spokesperson during the Olympic Pipeline rupture and explosion in 1999. He is also a contracted PIO for the Shell Puget Sound Refinery and other clients. He has been involved in producing crisis communications plans, as well as conducting numerous drills and exercises for various crisis scenarios.

Mr. Baron has been in marketing and public relations for over 24 years, serving as president of Baron & Company. He was a regional magazine publisher, co-founder of a successful vertical market software company and a university professor. He holds an MA in Communications from Wheaton College and Doctorate of Humanities (Honoris Causa) from Trinity Western University. He has written three books including "Now is Too Late: Survival in an Era of Instant News," published by Financial Times/Prentice Hall in 2003. He is a frequent speaker at national public relations and industry conferences.

Interview Segment Time Points:

• 00:21 Shel introduces the interview
• 00:56 Gerald runs down his background
• 03:55 Gerald's business focus, including crisis communications
• 05:15 Gerald defines "crisis"
• 06:13 Can you plan for a crisis?
• 08:41 Gerald pinpoints the changes to crisis management since the introduction of the 24-hour news cycle
• 09:31 The key implication is the difference in the speed with which information travels
• 12:23 Gerald talks about when he wrote his book and the update he's currently working on
• 12:56 Blogs are now in the picture as a big part of the post-media world
• 13:45 Gerald addresses the significance of blogs on crisis management
• 14:50 Some crises -- like the "60 Minutes II" crisis at CBS -- are generated by blogs
• 16:15 Organizations are now the broadcaster; we don't have to rely on the media to get our information out
• 17:00 CBS should have engaged bloggers
• 18:59 Gerald discusses the mishandling of the West Virginia coal mining tragedy communications
• 22:38 The balance between accuracy and speed: Accuracy shouldn't always come first
• 23:46 Overcoming the time lags caused by review and approval processes
• 26:07 Public react to crises emotionally
• 27:52 News is now infotainment; fear is an important element of how news is conveyed
• 29:25 Should a company take advantage of its own blog in a crisis?
• 32:32 Should companies with blogs allow comments during a crisis?
• 35:53 Shel asks about companies that complain about the time and resources required to monitor citizen journalism and other consumer-generated media
• 37:42 The age-old principles of crisis communication still apply
• 40:50 It's important to conduct crisis drills with the leadership team
• 44:51 Online crises should be addressed the same as you would address a media crisis
• 48:08 Gerald uses the Apple iPod Nano crisis as an example
• 48:53 The importance of dark or crisis-ready sites; Gerald's PIER product accommodates this
• 52:10 PIER is a virtual communications center for crises and emergencies
• 53:26 Gerald says the second edition of his book will be out in two months
• 53:32 About this podcast and where to find For Immediate Release
• 54:43 Where to send comments

Podsafe intro music - On A Podcast Intrumental Mix (MP3, 5Mb) by Cruisebox.

(Cross-posted from For Immediate Release, Shel's and my podcast blog.)

The continuing rise of citizen journalism

BBC News: 2005 was arguably the year citizens really started to do it for themselves. Raising mobiles aloft, they did not just talk and text, they snapped, shared and reported the world around them.

Commentary by Jo Twist of the Institute for Public Policy Research think tank illustrates the far-reaching effects and changes in the reporting of events during the past year as a direct result of the power of new media communication channels like blogs and podcasting as well as tools like camera-equipped mobile phones that facilitate almost-instant publishing.

Examples:

• The Asian tsunami disaster that began on 26 December 2004
• The London terrorist bombings last July
• Hurricane Katrina in August
• The massive UK oil terminal blaze last month

It's about societal and attitude change and how we all can create news and information and share it as well as consume it.

But it's mostly about individual empowerment (a very big thing in the US especially) with blogs being proclaimed as the biggest thing since Gutenberg and the printing press. Now, everyone has a voice and anyone can be a communicator. Indeed, anyone can now be published in the mainstream media.

BBC News | The year of the digital citizen

FT: 'Tolerate some libel for the greater good'

There has been much written in recent weeks concerning the character assassination of John Seigenthaler over his biography in Wikipedia, prompting much discussion over the trustworthiness of an open information resource like Wikipedia which anybody can edit.

The character assassin was outed and Wikipedia is now implementing tighter controls over who can edit material.

The Financial Times has a report that includes a recap of the Siegenthaler affair, and looks at it from the libel point of view. The FT says that under the laws of the internet, Wikipedia cannot be held liable for any mistakes, even defamatory ones, because it is merely hosting other people’s speech which, the FT says, gives it immunity under the 1996 Communications Decency Act in the US.

Individual contributors are liable for what they say online, says the FT, but internet privacy laws make it hard to connect the address of the computer used to post the entry with the name and address of the real human being who typed it.

And the FT says this:

[...] But there is no easy solution to the problem highlighted by the Seigenthaler episode. On one level, it is a welcome reminder that no one should rely on Wikipedia without double-checking its facts through another source. That is easy enough to do, says Wikipedia’s chief legal officer, Jean-Baptiste Soufron. “Just Google it!” he says. And stung by the criticism, the Wiki itself is looking for ways to improve accuracy, including an online rating system that will be tested in the new year.

Politicians may be tempted to react to the incident with stricter regulation – especially if their own biographies are mutilated during next year’s elections, says Mr Seigenthaler. But there are great risks in doing so, says Mr Soufron: without immunity “there would be no Wikipedia – but there would also be no chat rooms, no internet at all”. Professor Ezor [director of the Institute for Business, Law and Technology at Touro Law Centre, New York State] agrees: “Every blogger who allows people to comment would also be at risk.”

The defamed deserve redress – but not at the cost of crippling the interactive potential of the internet. It is worth tolerating a little bit of libel, for the greater good.

The bold text is my emphasis.

My question is simply - what price freedom of speech? The FT has a thought-provoking report and a controversial idea, sure to create continuing debate.

Financial Times | Allow libel to slip through the net (paid sub)

Growth of the global internet

It won't surprise anyone to learn that the top language of internet users is English, according to stats from Internet World Stats:

English represents the language of nearly one-third of all internet users, according to these stats.

What's especially interesting, though, is to see the growth rates of languages other than English during the past five years.

French, for instance, up nearly 230 percent. Or Portuguese at 280 percent. Biggest growth (and also unlikely to be a surprise) - Chinese at just under 285 percent.

The figures makes for some interesting interpretations when you view the usage numbers and compare them to the percentage of all speakers in the world of the languages concerned. Chinese is the biggest eye opener where the growth in Chinese-speaking internet users still represents less than 10 percent of all speakers worldwide.

It's likely that Chinese will stay top of the growth table in the coming years as well as show significant increases in the overall volume (but see below)

Internet World Stats also has some interesting numbers on overall world internet usage and population over the past five years:

Biggest growth areas are in the developing countries such as in the Latin America/Caribbean area (303 percent), the Middle East (392 percent) and especially Africa (nearly 430 percent).

I wonder how that will look during the next few years when populations in African countries (in particular) have access to tools like the sub-$100 laptop computer when it rolls out. Needs the wireless networking technology to go with it, though.

(Hat tip: IFTF's Future Now)

Who cares about Windows XP N?

CNET News: A major U.K. retail store and three of the largest PC vendors worldwide still have no plans to sell the version of Microsoft Windows that does not contain its media player, five months after the version was released. Microsoft started offering Windows XP N, a version of Windows without a bundled media player, in June of this year to comply with last year's antitrust ruling by the European Commission.

Slashdot reports that Windows XP N is a sales flop. Hardly surprising, and surely indicates that most people who use Windows really couldn't care less about what the politicians and vocal critics in the mainstream media say and do regarding a PC operating system.

Dell is one of the PC vendors mentioned in CNET's story. When I bought a new Dell computer in August, it came with Dell's OEM version of Windows XP Pro which included Windows Media Player.

I don't actually use Media Player, preferring Winamp and iTunes for playing and managing music. If Windows XP N minus Media Player had a cost advantage, then it might be different. But it doesn't:

[...] Earlier this year, PC World--the U.K.'s largest computer store chain--said that it would not stock XP N since the full version of Windows XP was the same price, thereby offering a better value to its customers. A PC World representative said Thursday that this situation hasn't changed and there had been "no demand" for XP N, as far as she was aware.

So do I care about this news and the EC ruling? Not at all. Which, I suspect, reflects what many other Windows users think.

BBC web users have their say

Some lively conversations going on in the BBC News website's Have Your Say section, a forum where anyone can contribute comment and opinion on topics presented for discussion.

One of the interesting things about this forum is the comment recommendation system where readers can recommend a comment to tell the BBC and other readers which comments they think are best and worth reading. Comments are then ranked on the popularity of recommendations.

How do you use the web to create and share?" is one of the topics which so far has attracted over 280 contributions from around the world. The topic was prompted by the recent Pew Internet research on how American teenagers use the internet to create, repurpose (or remix) and share content. A glance through a random selection of recommended comments shows there's no prominent common theme in how people say they use the web, other than uses you'd expect (online gaming, research, self-expression, etc).

A highly topical issue that's attracted over 680 comments since it was posted last Wednesday is "Paris riots: Your reaction," with some passionate opinions over the dreadful social unrest in France during the past ten days. A sampling of the recommended comments indicates a clear divide in opinion between those who say the rioters are justified and those who say torching cars and buildings is the work of thugs and criminals.

Have Your Say is a good experiment, a clever way for a mainstream broadcaster to directly and interactively engage with listeners/viewers/users (how do you best describe people who use the BBC website? Just 'visitors'?). A sign of the times, too - the site actively solicits people to send in photos:

News can happen anywhere at any time. We want you to be our eyes. We have already received thousands of images from around the world and we'd like you to send us yours. If an event is unfolding before your eyes and you capture it on a camera or mobile phone, either as a photograph or video, then please send it to BBC News.

How will this further evolve, I wonder? It's labelled as a beta.

The blogger two heartbeats from the US President

I saw the news the other day that Dennis Hastert, Speaker of the US House of Representatives, started blogging. Interesting, I thought, even though the blog doesn't have an RSS feed nor a way to leave comments. So I blogrolled it for a look now and again and moved on.

Until I saw this comment just now in my RSS feeds in a post by Jeff Jarvis:

[...] So the man two heartbeats away from the Presidency is blogging.

Now that makes it a far more interesting proposition than seeing it as just another politican who's started a blog as a one-way communication channel.

The power of illustrative speaking!

Kick starting new copyright laws

A subject I've posted about before is that of the inadequacies of copyright laws in this age of instant copy-and-paste and relying on decades (if not centuries) old geographical-based laws to help you protect your intellectual property rights.

So it was with keen interest I read Copyright for the digital age on the BBC News site yesterday which talks about the Adelphi Charter:

The Adelphi Charter was prepared by an International Commission of experts from the arts, creative industries, human rights, law, economics, science, R&D, technology, the public sector and education. The Charter Office is based at the Royal Society of Arts in London which is concerned with innovation in the arts, sciences and industry.

This is what the Adelphi Charter proposes:

1. Laws regulating intellectual property must serve as means of achieving creative, social and economic ends and not as ends in themselves.
2. These laws and regulations must serve, and never overturn, the basic human rights to health, education, employment and cultural life.
3. The public interest requires a balance between the public domain and private rights. It also requires a balance between the free competition that is essential for economic vitality and the monopoly rights granted by intellectual property laws.
4. Intellectual property protection must not be extended to abstract ideas, facts or data.
5. Patents must not be extended over mathematical models, scientific theories, computer code, methods for teaching, business processes, methods of medical diagnosis, therapy or surgery.
6. Copyright and patents must be limited in time and their terms must not extend beyond what is proportionate and necessary.
7. Government must facilitate a wide range of policies to stimulate access and innovation, including non-proprietary models such as open source software licensing and open access to scientific literature.
8. Intellectual property laws must take account of developing countries' social and economic circumstances.
9. In making decisions about intellectual property law, governments should adhere to these rules:

• There must be an automatic presumption against creating new areas of intellectual property protection, extending existing privileges or extending the duration of rights.
• The burden of proof in such cases must lie on the advocates of change.
• Change must be allowed only if a rigorous analysis clearly demonstrates that it will promote people's basic rights and economic well-being.
• Throughout, there should be wide public consultation and a comprehensive, objective and transparent assessment of public benefits and detriments.

We have Creative Commons but that seems to have no teeth at all.

Could Adelphi be the real kick start for change needed today?

Help victims of Pakistan earthquake

The devastating earthquake in Pakistan on Saturday that so far has claimed around 20,000 lives in that country as well as in parts of India and Afghanistan is headline news worldwide, as you'd expect.

Some media reports say that the death toll is closer to 40,000.

Blogs and other social media undoubtedly will come into their own once again during a disaster as a channel for enabling people in the affected areas and elsewhere to communicate and find out what's going on.

Last year's South-east Asia tsunami disaster produced the SEA-EAT Blog, a tremendous volunteer effort that included posting SMS messages via mobile phones by bloggers on the ground.

Now, there is the South Asia Quake Help Blog:

Several founders and members of the SEA EAT (South East Asian Earthquake And Tsunami) blog & wiki, which gained worldwide attention at the time of the earthquake and tsunami on 26th December, 2005, have remobilised to aid in the relief efforts after the 'Quake of 8th October.

As ever, the victims of this latest human tragedy need our help. Wherever you are in the world, visit the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies to donate online, or to get links to Red Cross or Red Crescent websites in your country.

FIR Interview: Charles Pizzo, Katrina evacuee - September 25, 2005

In this edition of For Immediate Release podcast interviews, Shel and Neville spoke with Charles Pizzo, a 20-year veteran of communications, a top-ranked speaker and writer and a former Chairman of the Board of IABC and its Research Foundation. A native of New Orleans, Charles evacuated from that city following Hurricane Katrina and the total loss of his home and business premises. He is temporarily located in Arlington, Texas.

Our 28-minute conversation focused on Charles' experiences from the evacuation and the challenges of communication when infrastructures including telecommunications fail - reflected in the less than optimal sound quality of our phone conversation carried out not via Skype but via a ConferenceCall.com session.

About our conversation partner:

A former chairman of the board of both IABC and its Research Foundation, Charles Pizzo is a top-rated speaker and Ragan contributor. He also serves as counsel to v-Fluence Interactive Public Relations. Pizzo has been speaking about media relations online, reputation management, and leadership, plus has written on a host of technology communication issues. He has led teleseminars for both IABC and Ragan on such topics as corporate social responsibility and cybersmearing: attacks on reputation that start online. (Bio and photo courtesy of Dallas IABC, where Charles will be a speaker at the Chapter's Professional Development Day, Bronze Quill Awards & 35th Reunion on October 7.)

Download the conversation here (MP3, 14MB), or subscribe to the interviews RSS feed to get it and future interviews automatically. You can also subscribe to the full feed to get all FIR podcasts. (For automatic synchronization with your iPod or other digital player, you’ll also need a podcatcher such as the free iPodder, DopplerRadio or iTunes, or an RSS aggregator that supports podcasts such as FeedDemon).

Interview Segment Time Points:

• 00:21 Shel introduces the interview
• 02:41 Charles talks about his immediate experiences following evacuation from New Orleans and locating in Arlington, Texas, and what he's left behind
• 05:51 What's happened to Charles' property and that of his mother
• 07:55 Writing for the Ragan Postcard blog
• 08:44 Telecommunications have collapsed, isolated from the world, records and documents lost
• 11:53 Immediately following the hurricane, text messaging was all that worked
• 12:36 No inbound cellphone service for six days
• 12:56 Surge of 'chain email letters' on who's missing and who's been found
• 13:37 Groups taking photos of damaged homes in New Orleans
• 14:14 City and government websites down because the servers are under water
• 14:38 The difficulties for Red Cross staff and volunteers
• 15:40 Four weeks on and communication channels still not coordinated
• 16:08 All overwhelming
• 16:26 Email has been effective as a communication channel
• 16:55 Continues working thanks to great help from colleagues and friends
• 19:06 Advice for planning on managing communications and related infrastructures in such a crisis; what some companies have been doing
• 23:00 Thoughts on going back to New Orleans, or not
• 24:02 The charm of New Orleans was threatened by chaos and anarchy - will people feel safe in returning? More on infrastructures
• 26:46 Didn't expect to lose everything so left with little in the evacuation, unprepared
• 29:40 The only thing we can do is press on and rebuild - the future is what's ahead
• 31:06 Shel with concluding comments about the interview; how you can help Charles in his search for work
• 32:04 About this podcast and where to find For Immediate Release.

Links for the individuals and organizations we discussed or mentioned in the conversation:

Charles Pizzo, IABC, New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina, Kaye Vivian, Hurricane Rita, Ragan Postcard, Gerard Braud, American Red Cross, Ragan Communications, Dallas IABC, Shell Oil.

Podsafe intro music - On A Podcast Intrumental Mix (MP3, 5Mb) by Cruisebox.

(Cross-posted from For Immediate Release, Shel's and my podcast blog.)

Trade unions can demonstrate relevance

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the relevance (or otherwise) of trade unions in the UK workplace. This was commenting about a lengthy article in the Financial Times that included interviews with a number of former trade union officials who had made the switch, so to speak, to the 'other side,' taking management jobs with companies.

In a comment to that post, Stuart Bruce pointed out the examples of two UK trade unions who have taken a practical approach to the realities of change in many industries and have modernized themselves, especially this example:

[...] Community now does what it says and is focused on supporting communities in areas that have been hit by the decline of traditional manufacturing industries. This even includes working in partnership with "employers" to bring new jobs into those areas.

Stuart's comment added some good balance to my post, illustrating that in many areas of the labour movement in the UK, some good things are happening today to the mutual benefit of employer, employee and union, and thus local communities.

Yesterday I read a story from BBC News, focused on painful changes required to reshape Germany's business and industrial landscape, regarding a situation in Germany where a trade union played an instrumental role in, literally, rescuing an entire community.

The story concerns a plan by Grohe Water Technology to cut 3,200 jobs from its German workforce of about 4,500 and move production to China.

According to a representative of the IG Metall union quoted in the BBC report, this would have ended Grohe's industrial production in Germany and dealt a devastating blow to the people of the town of Hemer in north-west Germany, where the company is headquartered, who have even named their town square 'Grohe Platz.'

The story has some major complications (political, with a general election soon in Germany; recommendations on the closure from the McKinsey management consulting firm; plus the ownership of Grohe being two foreign private equity firms) and you can read the full details of that in the BBC report.

What I found most interesting was the successful outcome resulting from the key role the union played and how they played it:

[...] Rather than launching industrial action, IG Metall proposed a compromise - accepting almost 1,000 job cuts and one factory closure, in return for fresh investment at remaining German factories to secure future employment. Grohe - wary of negative publicity - swiftly took the union's recommendations onboard and sorted out the dispute internally.

There was praise for IG Metall's efforts in the dispute and the union's membership, which had been slipping steadily for years, was given a much needed fillip. "It is always difficult to call it a victory when several hundred jobs are lost, but compared with the alternative it was a victory," insists [regional IG Metall union representative Joerg] Weigand.

Relevance indeed in the face of some hard reality.

Disaster planning, consequences and inevitabilities from Katrina

Two thoughtful articles in as many days from the Financial Times examine broad consequences of the Hurricane Katrina disaster from the business, economic, political and social standpoints.

In the first, a feature on disaster planning, the FT says the consequences of Katrina for businesses worldwide are likely to be significant. Insurance claims are expected to run to many billions of dollars, and the closure of oil refineries is already causing a surge in fuel prices in the US.

The FT quotes from Why Some Companies Emerge Stronger and Better from a Crisis, a seminal work on crisis planning and management by Ian Mitroff, published last January:

[...] Prof. Mitroff argues that businesses should develop emergency operational procedures, but these must go hand-in-hand with methods for coping with the shock and grief employees may feel, particularly if they and their families are among the victims. When planning for contingencies, managers must think creatively.

It is generally agreed that those companies that plan for and manage major crises such as natural disasters have a competitive advantage over those that do not. They are able more quickly to replace damaged stocks, find alternative supply sources and transportation routes and resume profitable trading.

The FT's article discusses examples of what some US companies have done in past crises and concludes with these five steps to disaster planning:

• Accept that disasters and crises are inevitable, and must be planned for
• Assess threats from as many quarters as possible - not just the particular hazards of your own industry, but also universal and complex threats
• Disasters affect a company’s stakeholders in different ways; take all their views into account during planning
• Because disasters can affect every part of the company, look at the whole business and consider what role each unit or department can play in planning and recovery
• Recovery from disaster is not a process or problem-solving exercise; steps to deal with shock and grief, not just among employees but in the wider community

Financial Times | Softening the blows of disaster (paid sub) 4 September

It's clearly apparent that many businesses in the US (and elsewhere) have moved with alacrity to mobilize their employees and marshal organization-wide efforts to provide help and assistance, either directly to those in the disaster zones or indirectly through stimulating donations to aid organizations, or both.

No such alacrity by top-level political and other public leaders is illustrated in a lengthy and critical opinion piece on the political repercussions for the US government arising from Hurricane Katrina, published yesterday:

Police appeal for photos of London bombings

More bombings in London today, as media worldwide is reporting. Minor this time and, thankfully, no deaths reported.

As with the 7 July bombings in London, people directly caught up in events record and publish those events with cameras, camera phones and whatever means of communication they have available.

So direct appeals by the police to the public for photos, etc, shouldn't be a surprise to anyone now, and appeals such as this one today undoubtedly will be part of standard procedures, so to speak, in the future:

Detectives today issued an urgent appeal for any photographs, video footage or mobile phone images that were taken on either Thursday 7 July or on Thursday 21st July 2005, either in or close to the areas where the incidents took place.

Police believe that these images could contain vital information and provide a crucial piece of the investigative jigsaw.

We are urgently appealing to anyone who may have photographs, video footage or mobile phone images which were taken either immediately before the attack, at the time of the incidents or immediately afterwards.

These images may contain crucial information which could help detectives in what is a painstaking and complex inquiry.

Please let us decide if the images you have are important. I would like to thank the public for their help and assistance.

Links:

• Wikipedia: 21 July 2005 London explosions
• UK Police Service
• BBC News on today's bombings
• Pictures sent in to the BBC
• Flickr London tag

Two minutes silence throughout Europe today

As a mark of respect for the victims of the London bombings a week ago, two minutes' silence will be observed throughout the European Union today at midday UK time, 1pm Central EuropeanTime (11am GMT).

(Photo courtesy of gallery 55 at WereNotAfraid.com)

Technorati tag: London Bombings

We're not afraid

I had an email overnight from Pete Quily in Canada telling me about We're Not Afraid, a blog set up last week following the London bombings that publishes photos from people around the world who aren't afraid:

[...] By saying we are not afraid, we are really saying that although we have lost people, friends, fathers, mothers sisters, we will not become afraid to live as we see fit, to make our own moral judgements, to live good lives, and love each other.

The site says it's suffering severe bandwidth overload as over 4 million hits have been recorded, so they're looking for bandwidth sponsors.

Hans Kullin has a great post about mainstream media reporting on the role of citizen journalism re the London bombings.

A reminder note for your diary - on Thursday 14 July, there will be a two-minute silence at midday UK time (GMT +1) as a mark of respect for the victims of last week's bombings.

Fox journalist says 'Terrorism ok in Paris'

The London bombings yesterday are fresh in everyone's minds. Now, 38 dead and over 700 seriously injured. The death toll will probably rise.

You wouldn't wish that on any other city, would you? Paris, for example?

Yet that is a growing reaction to John Gibson, a Fox News journalist in the US, and what he talked about in a piece published on 6 July, the day before the London bombings. His peculiar story about London winning the 2012 Olympics includes this comment:

[...] It would have been a delight to have Parisians worried about security instead of New Yorkers. It would have been exquisite to watch. But, alas, they picked London. I like the Brits. I like London. I hate to see them going through all this garbage when it would have been just fine in Paris.

In an eye-opening and insensitive diatribe entitled "missed opportunity," Gibson actually writes gleefully about how the French would pay off terrorists and how terrorism would be ok if it happens in Paris.

Then, in another piece published yesterday, Gibson says this:

The bombings in London: This is why I thought the Brits should let the French have the Olympics - let somebody else be worried about guys with backpack bombs for a while.

You are a sick man, Mr Gibson. You call yourself a commentator?

Loic Le Meur's outrage at Gibson's trash piece speaks for all decent people everywhere, whatever their nationality.

Fox News - your reputation is worth nothing if you continue to publish trash like this. How important is reputation to you?

There are some things, Mr Gibson, you cannot write about the way you have done and not expect revulsion as a reaction. You owe France an apology. London, too.

Related NevOn post:

• Safe and back in Amsterdam

BBC blogs the G8

Newsnight, the BBC's flagship news and current affairs TV programme in the UK, will be blogging the G8 summit in Scotland on 6-8 July.

Actually, that's not strictly true. Although Newsnig8t (that word really needs to be in colour so you can better spot the "g8" in there) clearly is a BBC-approved blog, it's run by Newsnight's correspondent Paul Mason. On the Newsnight website, it's referred to as "Paul Mason's G8 blog."

You'll probably think I'm just splitting hairs here. Ok, main point - there's no question, it's a great example of the growing willingness by more mainstream media journalists to embrace tools like blogs to complement traditional news and information channels. As has been clear for some time now, the BBC has been grasping new media channels like blogs, RSS and podcasts with a vengeance, and enabling more journalists to use those channels.

What I find quite interesting is that Paul's blog is a hosted TypePad blog, complete with RSS and trackbacks that you find on nearly every TypePad blog (like mine, for instance). The only thing it doesn't have is direct commenting on the blog. Instead, you're directed to a comments page and form on the Newsnight website.

In any event, it's another good move by the BBC to enable this.

(Hat tip: Joel Cere)

Schwarzenegger podcasts

Podcasting knows no boundaries as a communication channel. It was just a matter of time before high-profile and internationaly-known politicians embraced this medium.

Via Steve Rubel comes news that Arnold Schwarzenegger, Hollywood actor and current Governor of California, is now offering his weekly radio addresses as podcasts:

Podcasting is the latest in on-the-go, on-demand technology bringing the people of California closer in touch with their Governor. With podcasting, you can listen to the Governor's radio programs whenever and wherever you choose.

The last sentence above is the key one - you can listen wherever and whenever you choose. It's that simple. Not only that, a podcast reaches a global audience via the internet, not only those within physical receiving distance of a traditional radio broadcast.

The first podcast was online during last weekend - here's the feed address. It's a short one, about 3 minutes. I haven't listened to it yet (it's on my iPod ready to go). I wonder if he ends it with "I'll be back!" ...

First the foundation, then the PR

What next for European unity, following the rejection of the idea of a European constitution by voters in France and The Netherlands?

Stuart Mudie wonders if Europe needs better PR:

[...] As far as I can tell, many people feel simply that they didn't understand what they were being asked to vote on and decided that the most prudent choice was to say "no", rather than agree to something they didn't fully comprehend. Perhaps that's a wise decision. Perhaps, more than a better constitution, what Europe needs is simply some better PR.

I think a sound foundation has to be there first, and that means a lot more than just a proposed constitution.

Jame Burke pointed me to a thoughtful article in Open Democracy, an online global magazine of politics and culture, by Dutch essayist Theo Veenkamp, in which he says:

[...] Despite the referendum outcome, a large majority of people in the Netherlands still favours European integration. But their lack of confidence in both Dutch and European political institutions makes many uncertain how to vote. In addition, many feel that European developments are just going too fast. These factors combine with people’s uncertainty about the future of the next generations to increase their sense of losing control.

In the end the European Union can only be as strong as are the democracies of its member-states. France and the Netherlands can be seen to show that referenda are a powerful impulse to unruly democratic engagement. But the feelings and perceptions articulated through their campaigns reveal a profound gap between voters and political elites that is worrying for the future political stability of these countries and therefore of their democracies.

What Veenkamp's assessment says, in effect, is that there is no sound foundation upon which the citizens of the European Union are willing to base such critical decisions on. Add to this the situation where some politicians are saying that ratification of the proposed constitution should still go ahead anyway, and it's no wonder that words like 'trust' and 'respect' as far as politicians are concerned is pretty much non existent.

So what is next? That's what Margot Wallstrom, the EC Commissioner of Communications, is asking in a post on her blog last week. As I write, that post has 167 comments.

Asking the audience for their opinions - way to go! I do hope the EU then listens.

Related NevOn post:

• Who understands the EU constitution?

Who understands the EU constitution?

So the French voted 'non' yesterday to the proposed European Union constitution. That shouldn't be a surprise, really, given the broad lack of general understanding in Europe about what the constitution means and what all its effects would be.

You can't say there's not plenty of information about the constitution - take a look at A Constitution for Europe, for instance, the EU website that has an enormous amount of information. That link is to the English-language site: the same info is there in 19 other languages.

Yet if you do wade through much of that information, it raises lots of questions in one's mind that are pretty hard to find clear answers to. That isn't helped when you listen to all the politicians' jaw-jawing from every different and conceivable point of view, all of them with different axes to grind.

So what's the average EU citizen to do? As with most things, if there's something you don't fully understand, the safe route is to not go with it. That looks like what 55% of French voters did, mixed in to be sure with lots of other French issues which undoubtedly played a role.

This Wednesday, the Dutch go to the polls to vote on the constitution. There's been official communication about it - I've had two booklets delivered during recent weeks - and the Dutch Referendum Commission has detailed information on their website. Most Dutch media are pro-constitution, though, so the reporting has hardly been impartial.

In spite of all that, many observers here expect the Dutch vote to be 'nee' as well.

Here's an interesting statement on the Dutch government's news website last month:

A government survey has found that 74% of voters consider it important that the EU have a constitution. It has also found that voters who receive information about the constitution are more likely to vote in favour of it.

Heh! Do you think they might be on to something?

Getting information is one thing, though. Understanding what it means is another. The BBC News site has a simple but pretty good analysis of the constitution's major points with some explanations on what they mean.

As I mentioned earlier, it still raises lots of questions. I'd say it's time to go back to the drawing board, not so much on the draft constitution itself, but more on looking again at what's needed to help more people gain a fuller understanding on what it all means.

EC Communications Commissioner Margot Wallstrom really has her work cut out.

Related NevOn posts:

• EU signs new Constitution
• Making the EU relevant

Blair and Prescott take to the web in election campaign

With election campaigning now in earnest as the UK general election on 5 May fast approaches, I'm not surprised to learn how the Labour Party is now using its website as an active element in campaign communication.

Prime Minister Tony Blair has a dedicated area on the Labour Party website called Tony Blair's Campaign Diary.

Looking sort of like a blog but without any of the the key attributes of one - no direct commenting, no trackbacks nor RSS feed - the site is indeed a diary with chronologically-ordered content. While that content is written in the first person, is it actually written by Tony Blair? While I can't imagine he'd have time to do this, I would guess he has direct input into the content which would likely be prepared and finalized by campaign staffers.

The site's been up for a week and already there are plenty of posts which include answers to comments sent in by site visitors via an email form on the site. The style of the answers is very distinctive - informal, humorous and with personality, reflecting Tony Blair's open approach. It is almost like a blog!

It will be very interesting watching how this site develops during the weeks leading up to the election. One thing - a post yesterday was written by a guest poster, Alex Ferguson, manager of the Manchester United football team. More of that type of contribution to come, I expect.

Not only does the Prime Minister have a campaign diary but also John Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister, does.

Called John Prescott's Battlebus Diary, this site chronicles Prescott's campaign travels around the UK with, as it says on the site, "[...] exclusive behind-the-scenes stories and pictures. A glimpse of life on the road during what promises to be a very hard fought election."

Unlike Blair's diary, Prescott's is firmly written in the third person with no indication that anything there is written by him, and with no comments.

I don't see anything similar on either the Conservatives or the Liberal Democrats websites.

When I wrote last week about the announcement of the general election, I commented on whether we'd see politicians who blog use their blogs as innovative campaign communication channels.

While these two really aren't blogs, and it remains to be seen how effective they will be, they qualify as innovative in my view.

(Hat tip for the link to the Blair site: Keith Jackson at Corporate Engagement.)

Prince of Wales "momentary lapse"

Just catching some of the TV coverage of today's marriage of Prince Charles and Camilla Parker-Bowles, I saw a brief BBC TV interview with the Prince's communications secretary, Paddy Harverson.

Amongst the tame chit-chat about today's event (eg, was the Prince feeling nervous and how many letters of support there have been from the public) came an i