Show & Tell: Northern Voice Part 3

Enjoyed a much needed coffee break Friday afternoon and then went into the last leg of the unconference.

Twitter, Yammer, and More: Bite-size Blogging (Richard Eriksson)

AKA: Better Living Through 140 Characters.  I had my doubts about twitter.  Twitter can best be described as social media being used for social commentary; kind of a play-by-play of life as it happens.  Think of a conversation limited to facebook status updates.

Twitter’s not just used by individuals.  Some savvy businesses are in on the tweet, too, like WestJet.  They use twitter to announce timely deals or offer ecoupons.

On twitter you can follow, and be followed, by fellow tweeters.  More followers means more exposure.  So, how does one collect followers?  Richard says: follow others, be interesting (but authentic, don’t overdo it), listen, reply,  and have fun with the media. Oh yeah, and don’t forget to create short usernames (counts as part of your 140 characters).

Borrowed Content: What’s OK, What’s Not (Mack D. Male)

Had to attend this session because it made such a nice bookend to James Chutter’s Mash Media presentation.  As the name implies, borrowed content is posting anything that ain’t yours. Fair use of borrowed content includes transformative, factual, or limited amounts. So what’s OK to use? Well, anything you created, established facts and info in the public domain, links are generally OK, and content licenced with creative commons.  What’s creative commons?

Creative commons licensing is the new copyright!  As a creator, when you add content to creative commons you can choose your license: attribution (give props to the creator), share alike (work using your work must also be creative commons and referenced), non commercial, no derivative works (con’t remix or use pieces of).

What’s not OK?  If the license isn’t clear then it’s probably not OK.  If it’s a song, video, or movie it’s probably not OK.  If it’s an excerpt or images in entirety without adding anything transformative it’s probably…say it with me…not OK.

And then there is everything else that falls into the “grey area”, where you are probably OK to use it (or at least if you don’t get caught): educational excerpts, images used in a transformative way, media where imbedding is encouraged, trademarks (as long as you’re not selling a competing product or service, suggesting the company is endorsing you).

Mack says, “When in doubt, just ask the person or organization who owns it for permission.”

Explaining Social Media to People Over 30 (Dave Pollard)

This was a presentation/discussion on why it would be beneficial for companies to lift the ban on social media in the workplace.  By allowing apps like twitter, certain businesses would benefit from the efficiency of information exchange.  Guess the big bosses see it as passing notes in class…they don’t understand that twitter can be used as a resource, saving time and money.

(Tomorrow? Stellar keynotes and the worst radio station.  Ever.)