The FIR Podcast Network

Monday, May 02, 2005

The Hobson & Holtz Report - Podcast #29: May 2, 2005

Content summary: Listeners’ comments (on communication strategy, measurement, champagne and tea “from our Australian correspondent”; on communication impact of blogs; podcasting at Les Blogs; identifing a blog author; equipment for mobile podcasting); Doc Searls at Les Blogs; Business Week’s cover story on blogs; lots of developments with podcasting; upcoming interviews in May; suggestions for co-hosts and panel discussions; blogging conference in New York.

Show notes for May 2, 2005

Welcome to For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report, an 81-minute conversation recorded live from Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and from New Orleans, Louisiana, USA.

Download the file here (MP3, 32.5MB), or sign up for the RSS feed to get it and future shows automatically. (For automatic synchronization with your iPod or other digital player, you’ll also need software such as the FeedDemon RSS aggregator, or the free ipodder or DopplerRadio).

In this edition:

Intro:

00:30 Shel and Neville introduce the show; Shel on the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival
09.47 Listeners’ comments with Shel, including 1 MP3; how to give your feedback; show notes

Features:

26:24 Doc Searls’ presentation at Les Blogs - what blogs are and what they’re not
40:01 Business Week on blogs - the evangelical cover story and who it’s aimed at
48:56 Developments in podcasting - Warner Bros, Paris Hilton, Disney, Adam Curry’ and Ron Bloom, PR and marketing. What are the connections?

Short Takes:

69:02 Upcoming interviews in May - Mark Elbertse, CEO, Tulip Computers, on May 11; Peter Clifton, Editor, BBC News Online, precise date to be confirmed.
71:12 Suggestions for guest co-hosts and panels on the show - let us know what you think
72:25 Blogging goes mainstream - conference tomorrow in New York

Outro:

73:15 Shel solo on next Thursday’s show with recorded contribution from Neville; show notes; how to give your feedback; about the music and the band; outro music

Links for the blogs, individuals, companies and organizations we discussed or mentioned in the show:

Intro - New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, iPod, Bourbon Street, Mid City Lanes, Virgin Records, Charles Pizzo, IABC, Lee Hopkins, Alan Weiss The Ultimate Consultant book, Douglas Armour, Wendy’s, Microsoft, Lloyd Davis, Les Blogs, Matthew Gertner, Sony Walkman MZ-NH700, Vivanco, Constantin Basturea, Loic Le Meur, Les Blogs coverage, Global PR Blog Week 2.0, Mike Manuel, The New PR Wiki, Ned Lundquist, Pete Shinbach.

Features - Doc Searls, Cluetrain Manifesto, Linux Journal, The 1st Amendment, FCC, Society of Professional Journalists, Washington Post, eWeek, Business Week on blogs, , Leonard Witt, Michael Strangelove, The Internet Business Journal, Steve Rubel, Blogspotting, TypePad, Warner Bros, The House of Wax, Paris Hilton Podcast, Adam Curry, Daily Source Code, Captain Morgan’s Rum blog, Barbie blog, iPodder, Chris Thilik, The Simple Life, Nicole Ritchie, Internet Movie Database, Disney, Disneyland, Michael Geoghegan, Podcast Alley, GM Fastlane Blog, May It Please The Court, Adam Curry’s & Ron Bloom’s strategy podcast (MP3, 106Mb), ipodder.org, Podshows, New York Times, Infinity, Sirius Satellite Radio, Adam Curry’s Podshow press release, KYOURadio, Daily Source Code, Skype, SkypeIn.

Short Takes - Mark Elbertse, Hans Mestrum, Peter Clifton, Keith Sheldon, Wilma Matthews, Dan York, Craig Jolley, The Gillmor Gang, “Blogging Goes Mainstream: Is Your Company Ready?” conference, Robert Scoble.

Outro - Umphrey’s McGee, The Bottom Half, Etree.org, For Immediate Release, A Shel of My Former Self, NevOn.

If you have comments or questions about this show, or suggestions for our future shows, email us at comments@forimmediaterelease.biz, or call the Comment Line at +1 206 984 0931. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

So, until Thursday May 5…

Posted by neville on 05/02 at 11:47 AM
Show Notes • (2) Comments • Permalink

Thursday, April 28, 2005

The Hobson & Holtz Report - Podcast #28: April 28, 2005

Content summary: Listeners’ comments (on featuring FIR, snarkiness by Business Week, having a guest host for the show, archiving and broadcasting audio input, blogs that float in outer space, audio blog summaries, syndicating RSS feeds, yet more on character blogs, doing promos like Adam Curry, searching podcasts by keywords); a broad review of Les Blogs; Apple is the new ‘old Microsoft’; lawyers start podcasting.

Show notes for April 28, 2005

Welcome to For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report, a 64-minute conversation recorded live from Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and almost live from Detroit, Michigan, USA.

Download the file here (MP3, 25.6MB), or sign up for the RSS feed to get it and future shows automatically. (For automatic synchronization with your iPod or other digital player, you’ll also need software such as the FeedDemon RSS aggregator, or the free ipodder or DopplerRadio).

In this edition:

Intro:

00:29 Neville introduces this show; how to give your feedback; show notes
03.00 Listeners’ comments with Shel, including 3 MP3s

Feature:

23:37 Les Blogs - blogging it, podcasting it, photographing it, talking about it, presenting it… a great and authentic social networking event [Technorati tag: lesblogs. Flickr tag: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/lesblogs/]

Short Takes:

49:22 Apple in the press and taking over the arrogance label
53:33 A law firm podcasts

Outro:

55:36 Doc Searls Les Blogs presentation; two very interesting interviews scheduled in May; show notes; how to give your feedback; about the music and the band; outro music

Links for the blogs, individuals, companies and organizations we discussed or mentioned in the show:

Intro - New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, Audacity, Chris Ritke, 49Media, Scott Solomon, Business Week on blogs, Robert French, Steve Rubel, Johannes Gutenberg, Dan York, Peter Dean, Nicecast, Apple PowerBook, iPod, NewsFire, Steve Lubetkin, Olympus DS2, Union for Reformed Judaism, Disney World, Sherlock Holmes, Lee Hopkins, Richard Byrom, Adam Curry, Thalys, Podscope.

Feature - Les Blogs, French Senate, Fredrik Wacka, Lloyd Davis, Lee Bryant, Anu Gupta, Loic Le Meur, Euan Semple, Martin Dugage, Doc Searls, New Communications Forum, Skype, Flickr, BBC, Yat Sui, Outblaze, MSN Spaces, Peer Pressure, Mary Hodder, BloggerCon, Dave Winer, Guillaume du Gardier, Blogging Planet.

Short Takes - Apple, RIAA, Steve Jobs, Microsoft, Channel 9, Robert Scoble, Houston Chronicle, GM FastLane podcasts, iPressRoom, The Williams Law Firm, May It Please The Court.

Outro - Doc Searls Les Blogs presentation, Garageband.com, Cara Luna Amica, Rebecca Dru, Alta Vista Babel Fish, For Immediate Release, A Shel of My Former Self, NevOn.

So, until Monday May 2…

Posted by neville on 04/28 at 11:07 AM
Show Notes • (2) Comments • Permalink

Monday, April 25, 2005

The Hobson & Holtz Report - Podcast #27: April 25, 2005

Content summary: Listeners’ comments (on character blogs, recording with an ipod, our mention in the New Scientists article on Skype, FeedDemon, our review of Yahoo 360 and employer monitoring of employee e-mail and online activity); Les Blogs update; Business Week’s cover story, “Blogs Will Change Your Business,” communication strategic planning, executive voice in a CEO blog, Wendy’s PR efforts in the wake of a customer finding a finger in a cup of Wendy’s chili, a client’s perspective on PR, the difference between marketing and PR.

Show notes for April 25, 2005

Welcome to For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report, a 68-minute conversation recorded live from Concord, California, USA.

Download the file here (MP3, 28MB), or sign up for the RSS feed to get it and future shows automatically. (For automatic synchronization with your iPod or other digital player, you’ll also need software such as the FeedDemon RSS aggregator, or the free ipodder or DopplerRadio).

In this edition:

Intro:

00:31 Shel introduces this week’s show; how to give your feedback; show notes
03:22 Steve Rubel cites NevOn during Dave Winer’s podcast
04:43 Neville’s remarks from Les Blogs in Paris, along with several of the comments we’ve received from listeners.
24.46 Shel talks a bit more about Les Blogs and wraps up comments from listeners.

Short Takes:

37:12 Business Week’s cover story, “Blogs Will Change Your Business” - discussion of the article and some reactions to it, and a look at the associated “Blogspotting” blog launched by Business Week
41:09 The role of strategic planning in deciding which tools to use in a communcation effort (with a link back to the “character blog” discussion)>
49:00 Wendy’s PR efforts in the wake of a customer’s “discovery” of a finger in her cup of chili
54:27 A client lauds his PR agency’s efforts
55:46 What is the appropriate tone for an executive on a CEO blog?
1:00:33 Jim Horton’s essay on the differences between Marketing and PR

Outro:

1:02:37 Show notes; how to give your feedback; about the music and the band; outro music

Links for the blogs, individuals, companies and organizations we discussed or mentioned in the show:

Intro - Les Blogs, New Scientist article on Skype (including references to your humble hosts), Doc Searls, Cluetrain, Open Sauce Marketing, “What Is Open Source Marketing?”, Flickr, Fredrick Wacka, David Tebbutt, Halley Suitt, Marry Hodder, Skype, Technorati, Yahoo 360, Yahoo 360 blog, MSN Spaces, Global PR Blog Week, Vodaphone, Mike Manuel, Packard Bell AudioDream, Recording on an iPod, Andrew Marritt, Neil McIntosh’s Les Blogs post, Stowe Boyd’s Les Blogs posts, Frerick Wacka’s Les Blogs posts.

Short Takes - Business Week, Robert French, Wendy’s piece from Business 2.0, Robert French’s Business Week post, San Jose Mercury News item on Wendy’s PR, Paul Graham’s blog post on the value of working with his PR agency, Trevor Cook, “Whose Blog Is It Anyway” by Susan Solomon, GM Fastlane blog, IABC Cafe, Jim Horton’s “Marketers v. Counselors: Never-ending Misunderstanding”.

Outro - PodcastNYC, Underwhelmed, Reveal, For Immediate Release, A Shel of My Former Self, NevOn.

So, until Thursday, April 28…

Posted by shel on 04/25 at 08:33 AM
Show Notes • (3) Comments • Permalink

Thursday, April 21, 2005

The Hobson & Holtz Report - Podcast #26: April 21, 2005

Show notes for April 21, 2005

Content summary: Listeners’ comments (on not knowing what to think about blogs; recording on an iPod; on enjoying open source marketing interview; more on character blogs; screencasting and Camtasia; on IBM intranets and good publicity; suggestions for transcribing interviews; syndicating RSS content; from our Australia correspondent); report on the Blognomics conference; don’t dismiss press releases; restrictions on employee bloggers during an acquisition; internal communication measurement; update on re-publishing blog posts.

Show notes for April 21, 2005

Welcome to For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report, a 66-minute conversation recorded live from Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and Oakland Airport, California, USA.

Download the file here (MP3, 27MB), or sign up for the RSS feed to get it and future shows automatically. (For automatic synchronization with your iPod or other digital player, you’ll also need software such as the FeedDemon RSS aggregator, or the free ipodder or DopplerRadio).

In this edition:

Intro:

00:30 Neville on what’s in this week’s show; Shel‘s traveling so pre-recorded contributions from him; how to give your feedback; show notes
02:28 Comments from the last shows including 2 calls to the Comment Line and 2 MP3s

Short Takes:

24:19 Blognomics - brief report on the first business blogging conference in The Netherlands
34:42 Press releases - there’s still a place for a targeted vehicle that gets information to mainstream media
43:23 The lawyers take control - Abobe‘s acquisition of Macromedia provides some insight into what employee bloggers can and cannot say
51:00 Internal communication measurement - finding out who actually uses the company jets, not who you think uses them
56:28 PR Blog Watch update

Outro:

59:56 Show notes; how to give your feedback; about the music and the band; outro music

Links for the blogs, individuals, companies and organizations we discussed or mentioned in the show:

Intro - Peter Dean, IABC, Homer Simpson, Nicecast, Technorati, Skype, New Scientist, Dan York, iPod, Griffin iTalk, Packard-Bell, James Cherkoff, Johnnie Moore, Eric Eggertson, Steve Rubel, Jeremy Pepper, Chad Wandler, Camtasia, John Udell, del.icio.us, Heavy Metal Umlaut, Techsmith, MemberGate, Google, Bud Gibson, IBM, Adam Curry, Richard Byrom, Dragon Naturally Speaking, iPAQ 4150, eBay, Office 2003, Debbie Weil, Sallie Draper, WELS Imprint, Lee Hopkins.

Short Takes - Blognomics, RAI, Colby Stuart, Jonathan Marks, Ton Zijlstra, Elmine Wijnia, Marco Derksen, Frank Janssen, Eduard de Wilde, Guido van Nispen, Frank Meuuwsen, Krijn Schuurman, Loic Le Meur, Les Blogs, Flickr, Paul Molenaar, Web-log.nl, Joost Bon, MSN Spaces, Yahoo! 360, MSN Messenger, Feedster, Blogpulse, Gouden Gids blog, Nike, SEC, First Call, Andy Lark, Yahoo! News, Wall Street Journal, Investor’s Business Daily, Verizon News Center, Atlanta Journal Constitution, Adobe, Macromedia, Fredrik Wacka, Mike Chambers, Kevin Lynch, iRiver, Brad Whitworth, Hewlett-Packard, PR Blog Watch, Don Cowther’s 101 Public Relations, Constantin Basturea, Yahoo! RSS News feeds.

Outro - PodcastNYC, Melanie Disa, Ease The Pain, Les Blogs, For Immediate Release, A Shel of My Former Self, NevOn.

So, until Monday April 25…

Posted by neville on 04/21 at 03:32 PM
(3) Comments • Permalink

Monday, April 18, 2005

The Hobson & Holtz Report - Podcast #25: April 18, 2005

Show notes for April 18, 2005

Content summary: Listeners’ comments (on syndicating your RSS feeds and what a church is doing; Technorati search on your name can turn up unknown aggregated content; on keeping up the good work; more on professional journalists vs bloggers; thanks for the mention and the cool show; considering joining IABC and is MyComm any good?); intranets, folksonomies and tagging at IBM; how effective is your RSS measurement?; quick takes on Yahoo! 360; podcasts and accessibility; guesting on the Tech Knowledge podcast; Skype’s new services roll out; blog comment deletion and should you do it?; are character blogs a complete waste of time?

Show notes for April 18, 2005

Welcome to For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report, a 76-minute conversation recorded live from Concord, California, USA, and Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Download the file here (MP3, 30.6MB), or sign up for the RSS feed to get it and future shows automatically. (For automatic synchronization with your iPod or other digital player, you’ll also need software such as the FeedDemon RSS aggregator, or the free ipodder or DopplerRadio).

In this edition:

Intro:

00:29 Shel and Neville on what’s in this week’s show; how to give your feedback; show notes; Shel not live in Thursday’s show
03:43 Comments from the last shows including 1 call to the Comment Line and 1 MP3

Short Takes:

22:53 Intranets, folksonomies and tagging - how IBM is developing a tool used by 315,000 employees worldwide
35:02 Measuring RSS - how effective are you in getting the message out? We discuss David Berlind’s recent post
40:00 Yahoo! 360 - our quick takes: easy to use, integrates well with Yahoo!, nice social networking tool, but not for business
46:29 Podcasts and accessibility - should communication tools like this not be used if they’re not accessible by all?
50:14 Neville joins Mike Wendland’s Tech Knowledge podcast for a conversation on communication and technology
52:56 Skype’s new phone number and voicemail services launched today

Features:

54:33 Blog comment deletion - should you do it?
61:06 Character/fake blogs - are they a waste of time or a valuable marketing tool? (We’re 50/50 on this one - what’s your view?)

Outro:

70:10 Show notes; how to give your feedback; about the music and the band; outro music

Links for the blogs, individuals, companies and organizations we discussed or mentioned in the show:

Intro - iRiver, Adam Curry, Lee Hopkins, Andrew Beacock, Peter West, Sallie Draper, WELS, My Yahoo!, IABC, Catholic Insider, CNN, Don Crowther, Peter West’s post on journalist vs blogger, Mack Male, MyComm, Cisco Systems, Roger D’Aprix, Ragan Report, David Murrary.

Short Takes - IBM, Bud Gibson, American Society for Information Science and Technology, Technorati tags, del.icio.us, IA Summit 2005, IBM’s presentation (PPT), Mike Wing, Lou Gerstner, David Berlind, Nooked, Libsyn, SWAG, iPodder, iPodderX, Yahoo! 360, Mike Manuel, Kevin Dugan, MSN Spaces, Yahoo! 360 reviews, LinkedIn, Hotmail, Global PR Blog Week 2.0, Eric Rice, iPod, Pete Shinbach, Mike Wendland, Detroit Free Press, Skype, SkypeIn, Skype Voicemail.

Features - Shel Israel, The Red Couch, Wiley Publishers, Toby Bloomberg, Paul Chaney, Gourmet Station, Allan Jenkins, GM FastLane Blog, BigHa, Steve Rubel, Hugh McLeod, Captain Morgan’s Rum Blog, Rok Hrastnik, Fredrik Wacka, Susan Getgood, Cartman, South Park, McDonald’s Lincoln Fry Blog, Barbie blog, Constantin Basturea, FakeBlogsWiki.

Outro - Garageband.com, Macromedia, Adobe, PodcastNYC, The Girl Who Has Everything, Motherboard, For Immediate Release, A Shel of My Former Self, NevOn.

So, until Thursday April 21…

Posted by neville on 04/18 at 01:31 PM
Show Notes • (5) Comments • Permalink

Thursday, April 14, 2005

The Hobson & Holtz Report - Podcast #24: April 14, 2005

Show notes for April 14, 2005

Content summary: Listeners’ comments (on open source marketing and the interview with James Cherkoff and Johnnie Moore; podcast tags; on Rupert Murdoch and the internet; where will co-creation take us?; world’s first train wi-fi in UK - not; on video news releases and FCC clarification; blog post republication without attribution will grow; on GM, the blog and the LA Times; enjoying the banter and smoking the podcast dope); blogs and censorship in the US - survey; journalism and blogging - investigative reporting and definitions; Creative Commons; aggregating PR blog posts Part 2; another forecast on podcasting growth; GM, the LA Times and GM’s blog commentary.

Show notes for April 14, 2005

Welcome to For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report, a 66-minute conversation recorded live from Concord, California, USA, and Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Download the file here (MP3, 26MB), or sign up for the RSS feed to get it and future shows automatically. (For automatic synchronization with your iPod or other digital player, you’ll also need software such as the FeedDemon RSS aggregator, or the free ipodder or DopplerRadio).

In this edition:

Intro:

00:29 Shel and Neville on what’s in this week’s show; how to give your feedback; show notes; new host for podcast MP3 files
04:30 Comments from the last show (April 11) and on the interview with James Cherkoff and Johnnie Moore (April 12) including 1 MP3

Features:

16:15 Blogs and censorship - survey reveals Americans support blog censorship. Really?
24:14 Journalism and blogging - would a blogger undertake investigative reporting? What’s the difference between a journalist and a blogger? (And is that the right question?)

Short Takes:

41:52 Creative Commons - how do you enforce your intellectual property rights?
43:10 Don Crowther and aggregating PR blog posts - where do things stand now? And what can an individual blogger do to protect his or her copyright?
38:49 Forecast on podcasting growth - (credible) data from Forrester Research
52:23 General Motors and the LA Times ad pull - media analysis and GM’s blog commentary

Outro:

60:33 Show notes; how to give your feedback; about the music and the band; outro music

Links for the blogs, individuals, companies and organizations we discussed or mentioned in the show: Intro - Libsyn, FeedDemon, DopplerRadio, James Cherkoff, Johnnie Moore, Uri Levanon, Podcast Tags, Richard Rowan, Rupert Murdoch, Jon Froda, Lenn Pryor, Robert Scoble, Channel 9, Seattlest.com, Stuart Bruce, Caltrain, Daily Telegraph, WiMax, Om Malik, Pew Internet & American Life Project, Washington Post, FCC, Scott Solomon, GM FastLane Blog, Michael Wiley, Andy Beacock, Lee Hopkins, iPressroom. Features - Slashdot, ZD Net Australia, CNET News, Hostway, Google, Mark Jen, Dan Gillmor, New York Times, Society of Professional Journalists, PubSub, Guardian Unlimited Newsblog, Observer Blog, Ketchumgate, Jay Rosen, Mike Manuel, PR Week. Short Takes - Creative Commons, Don Crowther’s 101 Public Relations, PR Blog Watch, Constantin Basturea, BL Ochman, Jay Rosen, Frances Flynn Thorsen, Yahoo! News RSS feeds, Forrester Research, iPod, Apple, BBC Radio, Virgin Radio, Podshows, Adam Curry, Podshow, General Motors, Dan Neil, Bob Lutz, GM FastLane Blog, David Kiley, Automobear.com, Miro Pacic, Pontiac G6, GrandAm, Gary Grates. Outro - PodcastNYC, George Barnett, In the Back Room, For Immediate Release, A Shel of My Former Self, NevOn. If you have comments or questions about this show, or suggestions for our future shows, email us at comments@forimmediaterelease.biz, or call the Comment Line at +1 206 984 0931. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show. So, until Monday April 18…

Posted by neville on 04/14 at 01:36 PM
Show Notes • (4) Comments • Permalink

Tuesday, April 12, 2005

Interview: James Cherkoff and Johnnie Moore on Open Source Marketing - April 12, 2005

In this first of our new series of For Immediate Release podcast interviews, separate from our “Hobson & Holtz Report” bi-weekly podcasts, Shel and I enjoyed a 35-minute conversation with James Cherkoff and Johnnie Moore about open source marketing.

Download the conversation here (MP3, 14.6MB), or sign up for the RSS feed to get it and our future shows automatically. (For automatic synchronization with your iPod or other digital player, you’ll also need software such as the FeedDemon RSS aggregator, or the free ipodder or DopplerRadio).

About our conversation partners:

James Cherkoff was an Associate Director at Burson-Marsteller, the global marketing consultancy, where he ran communications programmes for Phillip Morris, Unilever and Accenture. He was then a Director of a London based web consultancy. He now specialises in supporting companies develop marketing plans that suit the new marketing environment.

Johnnie Moore has worked in marketing and branding for more than 20 years, for clients ranging from financial services to education. He’s also trained in a range of facilitation and counselling techniques which he uses for creative team building and coaching work.

Interview Segment Time Points:

01:08 James introduces the concepts of open source marketing as published is his Open Source Marketing manifesto, available from ChangeThis
06:08 James - new concepts are moving to authenticity and transparency in the new marketing environment
07:15 Johnnie on fear and the flip side of excitement - more people are getting switched on
09:52 Johnnie - opening up the marketing spectrum: the two ends of consumer participation
11:03 Shel asks what is the role of the marketer? Creating engagement? Coordinating messages?
11:26 Johnnie on the shift of mindset in marketing people - from agent to facilitator
12:37 Johnnie - you can’t control what consumers do, only influence them; marketing is not turning on its head
13:31 Shel asks about the Volkswagen terrorist commercial - where does the organization wield its influence?
14:06 James - you can’t stop this happening; discusses other campaigns; encouraging things to happen; involving customers with brands
17:06 Neville asks about the recent Nike commercial - does such a ‘citizen advertising’ concept fit into the open source marketing concept?
17:36 James - traditional marketing mindset doesn’t think much of consumers; the Converse Gallery and getting customers involved - you can feel the energy; be a brand host not a brand guardian
20:30 Neville asks what do you think about fake blogs such as Captain Morgan Rum? Is it a trend?
21:10 Johnnie - companies on a steep learning curve, early efforts may fail; you learn as you go - the customers also influence you; fake ones will fall by the wayside
22:31 Neville asks what role fake, or ‘character’, blogs would have in the new marketing model?
23:17 Johnnie - don’t focus on the technology, far more important are the effects of the technology - to create markets which are transparent and authentic, where consumers have greater control
24:32 Shel asks how the ideals of open source software development relate to open source marketing, as the manifesto states - is the role of the marketer like the central authority in the open source software developer community?
25:26 James - open source creates less structure and more freedom; it’s not an either/or thing - less structure is more effective than more structure; if you’re responsible for marketing, then one of your roles is to be the ‘host’ and hold things together
26:13 Shel - so you’re not advocating anarchy where anybody can produce anything they want?
26:22 James on moving from 50 years of command-and-control marketing heritage can produce reactions of ‘this is anarchy’; it applies the old rules to the new environment
27:43: Neville on parallels with the PR industry and the need to educate people in the new ways of thinking - is that part of the Open Sauce Live events you both do?
28:58 Johnnie on the Open Sauce Live workshops, exercises from improv theatre
30:25 Neville asks how is response to these events?
30:44 Johnnie and James - we’re pleased! Example of last week’s event
31:47 Shel asks about the balance between open source and traditional marketing - not a complete abandonment of traditional marketing?
32:11 James on the emperor’s clothes are gone, the 30-second TV ad slot has come to the end of its natural life; many values are being taken offline, eg, Mercedes consumer photos campaign

Links for the brands, individuals and companies we discussed or mentioned in the conversation:

Bittorrent, GE, Robert Scoble, Volkswagen USA, Budweiser, Anheuser-Busch, South Park, Nike, Joseph Jaffe, Angel Delight, Converse Gallery, Captain Morgan Rum blog, GM FastLane Blog, Steve Rubel, Open Sauce Live, John Naisbitt, Procter & Gamble, Mercedes-Benz.

Further examples of open source marketing - http://del.icio.us/opensaucelive

Posted by neville on 04/12 at 01:43 PM
(5) Comments • Permalink

Monday, April 11, 2005

The Hobson & Holtz Report - Podcast #23: April 11, 2005

Show notes for April 11, 2005

Content summary: Listeners’ comments (podcasters’ and bloggers’ credibility on reporting information; what’s your favourite tool for conductng a communications audit and why?; on not liking listening to Catholic Insider; another perspective on the Gomery inquiry in Canada); blog aggregators, attribution and copyright; video news releases re-visited; organization turf wars on who owns branding; General Motors, the LA Times and the GM blog; IABC blog relaunch looking good; EFF guide to anonymous blogging; podcast and blog at the Marriott Courtyard; the world’s first wi-fi train service, maybe or not.

Show notes for April 11, 2005

Welcome to For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report, a 75-minute conversation recorded live from Concord, California, USA, and Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Download the file here (MP3, 30MB), or sign up for the RSS feed to get it and future shows automatically. (For automatic synchronization with your iPod or other digital player, you’ll also need software such as the FeedDemon RSS aggregator, or the free ipodder or DopplerRadio).

In this edition:

Intro:

00:31 Shel and Neville on what’s in this week’s show; how to give your feedback; show notes
01:52 Comments from the last show including 1 from the Comment Line and 1 MP3

Features:

22:50 Aggregating blog content, attribution of authorship and copyright -
42:32 VNRs revisited - attribution and who has the obligations for transparency
45:37 Branding - turf wars between advertising, marketing and PR departments

Short Takes:

50:47 General Motors pulling advertising from the Los Angeles Times - should they be talking about it on the GM blog?
57:23 IABC Café - the relaunch last week is looking good
60:37 The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s guide to anonymous blogging - good or bad advice? (We think it’s bad.)
65:25 If you blog or podcast, and you travel, The Marriott Courtyard is the place to stay!
66:44 The world’s first wi-fi broadband on a train is in the UK. Is it really the world’s first?

Outro:

70:12 Show notes; how to give your feedback; interview coming up with James Cherkoff and Johnnie Moore on Tuesday 12 April; about the music and the band; outro music

Links for the blogs, individuals, companies and organizations we discussed or mentioned in the show:

Intro - Richard Rowan, Lee Hopkins, Sebastian Keil, iRiver 799, Pew Internet & American Life Project, Adam Curry, Pew Charitable Trusts, National Public Radio, Pew Research, Nielsen, TechDirt, Darren Barefoot, Tudor Williams, Angela Sinickas, Mercer, Alex Bellinger, Smallbizpod blog, David Frost, Glenn Watson, Skype, iPressRoom, David Satterfield, Andy Lark, Elizabeth Weise, Eric Schwartzman, Media Relations 2005 Conference, Catholic Insider, Podcast Alley, Todd Cochran, Dan York, Gomery Commission, Captain’s Quarters, BBC News report ‘Scandal anger mounts in Canada.’

Features - Constantin Basturea, The New PR Wiki, PR Blog Watch, Don Crowther’s 101 Public Relations, Google AdSense, Steve Rubel, Creative Commons, BL Ochman, Yahoo! News RSS feeds, Lawrence Lessig, Jonathan Marks, Informitv.com, BBC creative archive project, British Film Institute, Kevin Dugan, Alice Marshall, Marc Snyder, Matthew Podboy, Colin Mackay, Web Pro News, Fredrik Wacka, IEntry, PR Perspective, Google, Philipp Lenssen, Headlines from PR Weblogs, Video Monitoring Services, ABC’s World News Tonight, Judith Phair, PRSA, PR Tactics, Tom Robinson, Advertising Age, Allergan.

Short Takes - General Motors, Los Angeles Times, Dan Neil, GM FastLane Blog, PubSub, Dukes of Hazzard, Hot Wheels Blog, C2IT, David King, International Motor Press Association, IABC Café, Warren Bickford, Robert Holland, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Apple, Marriott Courtyard, Steve Rubel’s post on Marriott Courtyard, Daily Telegraph, Southern Railway, T-Mobile, WiMax, Stuart Bruce, GNER, The Register, Caltrain, Lufthansa, City of Philadelphia, Hotspot Amsterdam.

Outro - James Cherkoff, Johnnie Moore, Garageband.com, Daddy-O, New Tonal Directions, For Immediate Release, A Shel of My Former Self, NevOn.

So, until Thursday April 14…

Posted by neville on 04/11 at 01:09 PM
(2) Comments • Permalink

Thursday, April 07, 2005

The Hobson & Holtz Report - Podcast #22: April 7, 2005

Show notes for April 7, 2005

Content summary: Listeners’ comments (employee monitoring and performance; don’t write off podcasting; time-shifted podcasting, cars and home PCs; more on VNRs and responsibility, and audio search; smoking the podcasting dope down under); political scandal in Canada and media muzzling; update your crisis communications plans; Pew’s lost credibility; Macaw Nederland’s employee bloggers; IABC Café launches.

Show notes for April 7, 2005

Welcome to For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report, a 71-minute conversation recorded live from Concord, California, USA, and Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

In this edition:

Intro:

00:28 Shel and Neville on what’s in this week’s show; how to give your feedback; show notes; interview coming up with James Cherkoff and Johnnie Moore on Tuesday 12 April
02:05 Comments from the last show including 6 from the Comment Line

Features:

35:50 Payola in Canada - the Gomery Commission, media muzzling, US bloggers and bringing down the government.
46:44 Crisis communications - why the plan you created a year ago is already out of date

Short Takes:

53:28 Pew Internet has a crisis of credibility and trust following podcasting stats fiasco
56:24 Blogging the workplace - Macaw Nederland at the leading edge
60:58 IABC Café - the relaunched IABC Chair blog gets off to a cracking start

Outro:

66:34 Show notes; how to give your feedback; “editor’s note”; about the music and the band; outro music

Links for the blogs, individuals, companies and organizations we discussed or mentioned in the show:

Intro - James Cherkoff, Johnnie Moore, Craig Jolley, Robert French, Podcast Alley, Geek News Central, GM FastLane Blog, Bud Gibson, SXSW, iPod, Skype, Stuart Henshall, Audacity, Josh Hallett, Wired, F1 Magazine, National Geographic, PC World, Dan York, VON, Lee Hopkins, The Doobie Brothers, Lovin’ Spoonful, 10CC, Internet Explorer.

Features - Tudor Williams, Gomery Commission, Canadian Liberal Party, AdScam, Ed Morrissey’s Captain’s Quarters, John Dvorak, Jean Brault, Toronto Star, Michael Napier’s The Blue Maple Leaf, Deep Throat, Watergate, Brian Kilgore, Parti Quebecois, GroupAction, Toronto Sun, Judge Gomery, New Communications Forum 2005, Wendy’s, Technorati search Wendys+finger, Kryptonite bike lock, Eason Jordan, CNN, BigHa lasers, PubSub, Technorati, Intelliseek.

Short Takes - Pew Internet & American Life Project, TechDirt, Fredrik Wacka, Macaw Nederland, Blogger, .ASPNet, Charlene Li, Forrester Research, Intel, IBM, ING, IABC Café, David Kistle, Warren Bickford, Allan Jenkins, Eric Eggertson, O’Dwyer, Jeremy Pepper, BL Ochman, Steve Rubel, Pete Shinbach, Edelman/Intelliseek blog report, Charlene Li blog presentation video, Firefox.

Outro - Judy Gombita, PodcastNYC, DealbreakeR, For Immediate Release, A Shel of My Former Self, NevOn.

So, until Monday April 11…

Posted by neville on 04/07 at 12:53 PM
Show Notes • (3) Comments • Permalink

Monday, April 04, 2005

The Hobson & Holtz Report - Podcast #21: April 4, 2005

Show notes for April 4, 2005

Content summary: Listeners’ comments: podcast annotating, indexing and navigating; running VNRs and press releases is shoddy journalism; mainstream media is not the way to go with youth messaging; searching blog feeds for photos, audio and video; Print media will still be around for a while; Darren Barefoot’s not smoking the podcasting dope; Catholic Insider at the Vatican; Jakob Nielsen and URL visibility; IABC Chair blog relaunching; preparing for Global PR Blog Week 2.0; Upcoming interview.

Show notes for April 4, 2005

Welcome to For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report, a 72-minute conversation recorded live from Concord, California, USA, and Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Download the file here (MP3, 30.4MB), or sign up for the RSS feed to get it and future shows automatically. (For automatic synchronization with your iPod or other digital player, you’ll also need software such as the FeedDemon RSS aggregator, or the free ipodder or DopplerRadio).

In this edition:

Intro:

00:29 Shel and Neville on what’s in this week’s show; how to give your feedback; show notes
02:43 Comments from the last show

Features:

11:03 Digital media supplanting printed media - Canadian survey says no, US survey says yes; electronic ‘books’
25:26 Darren Barefoot‘s not smoking the podcasting dope - Here’s why he should be; Catholic Insider podcasting from the Vatican

Short Takes:

50.58 Web usability guru Jakob Nielsen responds to Shel’s post on URL visibility
56:36 IABC Chair blog to relaunch on 6 April. Can it become the place to engage with communicators?
60:23 Global PR Blog Week 2.0 now in preparation. Do you want to be part of it?

Outro:

65:30 Upcoming interview Tuesday April 5 - James Cherkoff and Johnnie Moore on open source marketing
66:35 Show notes; how to give your feedback; about the music and the band; outro music

Links for the blogs, individuals, companies and organizations we discussed or mentioned in the show:

Intro - Uri Levanon, Annodex, Dan York, Peter West, Chris Ritke, 49media.com.

Features - Judy Gombita, Marketing Daily, Washington Post, US Online Publishers Association survey, Brian Kilgore, 17, Cosmo Girl, Allure, Cosmopolitan, The Times, Independent, PC World, Business Week, Business 2.0, Wired, PARC, Jakob Nielsen, Darren Barefoot on podcasting, Adam Curry, FCC, Catholic Insider, Roderick Vonhogen, Podcast Alley, Bob Edwards, Endurance Radio, Emile Borquin, Dawn & Drew Show, Rock & Roll Geek Show, GM FastLane Blog, Eric Rice, Warner Bros, Autoblog, Volvo, PEW Internet podcasting survey, iPod, Associations Unorthodox, Podcast Brothers, Gatorade, Silicon Valley Watcher, Tom Foremski, Nielsen Norman Group, David Berlind, ZD Net, Internet Explorer, IABC Chair Blog, David Kistle, Warren Bickford, IABC Memberspeak, Allan Jenkins, Global PR Blog Week 1.0, Global PR Blog Week 2.0, PR blogger directory on Bloglines, Constantin Basturea, The New PR Wiki, Elizabeth Albrycht.

Outro - James Cherkoff, Johnnie Moore, ChangeThis, Open Sauce Live, Garageband.com, BB Chung King & The Buddaheads, Company Graveyard, For Immediate Release, A Shel of My Former Self, NevOn.

So, until Thursday April 7…

Posted by neville on 04/04 at 12:15 PM
(1) Comments • Permalink

Thursday, March 31, 2005

The Hobson & Holtz Report - Podcast #20: March 31, 2005

Show notes for March 31, 2005

Content summary: Listeners’ comments: audio comments and a few written ones, too, on VNRs, multimedia search, and new blogs; Elizabeth Albrycht’s advice column; Nielsen-Norman’s top 10 intranets; Microsoft’s newly named stripped-down Windows XP for Europe; new bloggers at GM’s Fastlane blog; Yahoo 360; faux blogs; and monitoring employees’ onliine behavior.

Show notes for March 31, 2005

Welcome to For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report, a 63-minute conversation recorded live from Los Angeles, California, USA, and the UK.

In this edition:

Intro:

00:29 Shel on what’s in this week’s show; how to give your feedback; show notes
02:01 Comments from the last show

Features:

28:36 Elizabeth Albrycht’s new blog advice column
29:53 Nielsen-Norman’s 2005 top 10 intranet listing
35:29 Microsoft and the EU settle on a new name for Windows XP in Europe
35:29 New executives are blogging to the General Motors Fastlane blog
39:50 Yahoo launches Yahoo 360
44:34 Faux blogs
47:49 Employee monitoring

Outro:

58:07 Comments and show notes reminder

Music:

58:45 “Jean Jacket Girl” by the Gordon Bennett Band Links for the blogs, individuals, companies and organizations we discussed or mentioned in the show: Intro - Peter West Public Relations, Sony Minidisc, Electrovoice Microphones, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Brian Kilgore, Sebastien Keil’s new blog, Notes4Review.com (Carl Rogat’s e-mail is appended to the end of these show notes), Nexidia‘s NexMiner, Blinkx, Lee Hopkins, British Broadcasting Corporation, Shel’s blog post on use of the word “blogosphere,” the Contra Costa Times, the San Jose Mercury News, MSNBC’s earthquake moblog, MSNBC’s citizen journalism site, Marqui, Stowe Boyd’s post on Marqi and Wordpress, Wordpress. Features - FeedDemon, Elizabeth Albrycht, Elizabeth Albrycht’s blogger advice column, NewComm Blog Magazine, Blogging Planet, New Venture Marketing Blog, Nielsen-Norman Group, NNGroup’s 2005 top 10 intranets, Cisco Systems, Banco Espanol de Credito, Electrolux, NedTrain, Orbis Technology, Gerry McGovern on the Nielsen Norman intranet list, Shel’s post on the Nielsen Norman list, Microsoft’s Windows XP N, European Union, , GM Fastlane Blog, Yahoo 360, David Jackson’s Internet Stock Blog, Danah Boyd’s review of Yahoo 360 in Corante, MSN Spaces, Kevin Dugan’s Corporate PR blog, Steve Rubel’s review of Yahoo 360, Captain Morgan blog, Herring & Waffleman faux blog, Ned Lundquist’s Megalocorp faux blog. Outro - The U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division, The Gordon Bennett Band, For Immediate Release, A Shel of My Former Self, NevOn.

So, until Thursday March 31…

Click “More” to read Carl Rogat’s e-mail about multimedia search.

In your March 28th podcast # 19 you mentioned that it would be quite useful if there was a way to search audio files for specific occupancies or words or subjects without having to depend on the rather meager data included in metatags. Several companies are now marketing search products that use new approaches to accomplish this task.

E-Content Institute (www.econtentinstitute.org) states in their May/June 2004 resource section that:

“Nexidia’s ( http://www.nexidia.com ) NEXminer product processes unstructured multi-language audio and video content so that users can search actual audio or video files phonetically for any set of sounds. Rather than using speech recognition technology, which tries to match your words against a spoken lexicon, or transcription technology where you search a full text index, they have created a way for you to find what you’re looking for simply by spelling it out fo-net-ik-lee (or as it sounds, not necessarily how it’s spelled). Which, of course, comes in handy when a proper name or place or thing can be spelled several ways and when the content you’re searching comes in a variety of languages (for example, international news clips). Your search terms get resolved down to phonemes (the units of sound at the heart of any language) and the search engine returns all spoken references that match. Without having to transcribe or index, the process of getting new content into the system is fast and so is performance—over 30 hours of material can be searched in less than one second. What about homonyms (words that sound the same but are spelled differently)? That’s a problem. So are text mining strategies like pattern searching for related concepts (remember—there’s no text index). The system currently supports American English, Latin American Spanish, Modern Standard Arabic and Iraqi. Nexidia has partnered with others in the search market, like Convera www.convera.com , to provide an audio search capability where users can search for spoken words without having to convert the audio to text.‰

Source: http://www.econtentinstitute.org/issues/ISarticle.asp?id=149459&story_id=8987132500&issue=05012004&PC=&RType= )

Nexidia (an outgrowth of a company formerly known as Fast-Talk)) has also partnered with: CACI International Inc. (www.caci.com), IBM (www.ibm.com, Dictaphone (www.dictaphone.com), and SAIC (www.saic.com)

Source: http://www.nexidia.com/partners2.asp

Blinkx (www.blinkx.com) a new search engine for audio video content with a focus on Television, also uses a phoneme search technology, possibly Convera‚s platform. An Article by By Dinesh C. Sharma on Dec 16, 2004 notes that Blinx uses:

‰Ground breaking automatic transcription technology, which transcribes content straight from the cable box on the fly or from video already stored on the Web, together with advanced phonetic matching speech recognition technology, automate the process of searching TV clips for the first time,” Blinkx founder Suranga Chandratillake said in a statement.‰

Source: http://news.com.com/Blinkx+unveils+video+search+engine/2100-1032_3-5493660.html

In Blinkx‚s own words” The system technology is based around decomposing digitized speech into its phonetic constructs. The phonetic sequence is then analyzed in conjunction with acoustic model and statistical improbabilities to calculate which is the most probable sequence of hence words and utterances.”

In addition to Convera, another company that has a phoneme search engine is Aurix (www.aurix.com) Their site states:

„Aurix miner enables fast searching of large audio or video archives for specific spoken words of phrases. Aurix miner meets the need of trawling through large audio or video archives by a two-stage approach. The first stage is a one pass phonetic recognition of the audio stream using Aurix asr to determine a phonetic representation of the data. The phonetic representation accurately encodes not just the most likely sequence of phonemes but also less likely phoneme sequences. This enables the miner to smooth over phonetic recognition errors and to retrieve a higher percentage of relevant material in the audio archive. The phonetic representation is converted into an ‘index’ for efficient searching.

In the second stage the user-specified search keywords are converted to phonetic sequences by looking them up in a phonetic dictionary, or by using letter-to-sound rules. A fast search algorithm then searches through all the indices in the archive for the phonetic sequences and returns a list of ‘hits’ sorted by audio by confidence. „

Source: http://www.aurix.com/dynamic/technology/developers/Technology.aspx?story=196

An interesting summary of phoneme development by Leavitt Communications (www.leavcom.com) can be read at http://www.leavcom.com/ieee_oct02.htm .

Another interesting articles Article appeared on Panda Central‚s website out of Oslo, Norway. It discussed Blinkx and it’s phoneme search engine. Check out http://www.pandia.com/sw-2004/65-blinkx.html .

Finally, an excellent, article that appeared in the December 13,2002 issue of InfoWorld, though dated, it is worth checking out at http://www.infoworld.com/articles/ap/xml/02/12/16/021216apfastalk.html.

I enjoy your excellent podcasts and find your meticulous show notes of tremendous value. I am sure that it takes a great deal of time and effort to produce your shows and hope that the two of you pace yourselves and do not burn out too quickly. If you were to drop off the podcast scene it would be a real loss to what I am sure is a growing audience.

Carl S. Rogat, Pres.
Notes4Review.com

Posted by shel on 03/31 at 12:11 PM
Show Notes • (2) Comments • Permalink

Monday, March 28, 2005

The Hobson & Holtz Report - Podcast #19: March 28, 2005

Show notes for March 28, 2005

Content summary: Listeners’ comments: keep it up, ego boosting and a listening experience; video news releases and responsibilities; relying or not on third-party web services; new tool for tracking where a conversation goes; the Disney mouse that roared; asking the blogosphere for input on policy; the risks of writing and posting without due diligence.

Show notes for March 28, 2005

Welcome to For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report, a 70-minute conversation recorded live from Concord, California, USA, and Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

In this edition:

Intro:

00:29 Shel and Neville on what’s in this week’s show; how to give your feedback; show notes
02:01 Comments from the last show

Features:

06:50 Video news releases - The responsibilities of producers and broadcasters, and trusting the news you watch on TV
19:06 Using third-party tools and web services - How much can you rely on them? How much should you?
27:48 Blogpulse conversation tracker - Now you can see and track where a story spreads in the blogosphere
34:28 PR and building relationships - A missed opportunity for the Walt Disney Company
44:48 Blogging policies in the workplace - Thomas Nelson Publishers asks the blogosphere for input and comments
54:12 The responsibilities and obligations of bloggers, and the risks of posting without checking

Outro:

64:41 Shel only on Thursday’s show; how to give your feedback; show notes; about the music and the band; outro music

Links for the blogs, individuals, companies and organizations we discussed or mentioned in the show:

Intro - Morgan McLintic, Chris Thilk, Dan York, iTrip, iPod, Frederick Gilbert, iPodder.

Features - New York Times, Jay Rosen, Ketchumgate, BBC, BBC World, Boston University Journalism School, del.icio.us, Blogrolling, TypePad, Technorati searchlet beta, Freepolls, Technorati, Dave Sifry, Zoomerang, Blogpulse conversation tracker, Steve Rubel, Jeremy Wright, Politech, Boing Boing, MSNBC, AP, CNET, Kryptonite bike lock, eWatch, Cybervalence, PubSub, Walt Disney Company, Jim Hill, SaveDisney.com, Pixar, The Blog Herald, Michael Hyatt, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Tom Reynolds, London Ambulance Service, Hart Scientific, Charlene Li, Forrester Research, Google, Mark Jen, Technology Review, Wired News, Web Pro News, Jayson Blair, Vanity Fair, Wall Street, Journal, Financial Times.

Outro - Tourist, Garageband.com, Jacob’s Ladder, For Immediate Release, A Shel of My Former Self, NevOn.

So, until Thursday March 31…

Posted by neville on 03/28 at 11:31 AM
(2) Comments • Permalink

Saturday, March 26, 2005

An Open Conversation with Steve Rubel, Micro Persuasion

Transcript of interview with Steve Rubel, Micro Persuasion, March 21, 2005.

Last Monday 21 March, Shel and I interviewed Steve Rubel for The Hobson & Holtz Report bi-weekly podcast.

Steve is Vice President Client Solutions at CooperKatz, a New York PR firm, and author of the Micro Persuasion blog. He is arguably the most prominent and influential blogger in the PR profession either side of the Atlantic.

We enjoyed a stimulating and wide-ranging 45-minute conversation that covered many topical issues, including blogging as an integral element of the practice of public relations; the General Motors blogs; the growing importance and significance of tags and folksonomies; influence, celebrity and responsibility; ethics and the public relations profession; and whether Steve wears pyjamas when he blogs.

You can download the show containing the interview (MP3, 30.8Mb) and subscribe to the RSS feed to receive future shows automatically.

To complement the podcast, the following is a complete transcript of our conversation. As a transcript, it has no editing nor editorializing - it’s the raw conversation including all the ums and ahs, reflecting what happened in our conversation.

One thing words on a page can’t convey is the emotion and humour of our conversation. We all had a lot of fun doing this interview! The sense of that comes across best by listening to it.

Here’s the transcript:

Shel: Well, Steve, thanks for joining us, we really appreciate your taking the time. And, just to start with, can you tell us how things are going with your blog - any changes planned, any developments?

Steve: Heh! Should there be? Um, no, I’m going to keep doing what I’m doing, blogging like a madman, and, er, what I’m trying to do is really, I want to shake the tree because I think that PR professionals need to really, you know, get what’s going on here and jump on board and I think that the three of us and the other 97 of us who currently blog in the PR industry, we need to do a better job of talking to the everyday PR man or woman and what it means to them.

Because I think a little bit of what we’re doing now is talking amongst ourselves, and talking amongst the people who do get it in social media land. Actually, in mainstream media land as well, as you know, with the different opportunities we get to talk to the press. But I think we need to get everyone on board.

I spoke at the Council of PR Firms meeting in Chicago last week, and I talked about RSS and using Bloglines and things like that. I think that’s something that we, everyone of us, needs to take responsibility for in getting, you know, somebody in their agency, at their competitor, at their clients, wherever, understanding what RSS is, what blogs are and what this all means, because I think we have a lot more work to do there.

Neville: Yeah, I think you’re absolutely right. Let me add something to that, Steve. You know about the, er, postponement of the New Communications Forum in Paris, right? That was postponed last week. And I think the picture’s different in Europe because in the US, that event in January attracted, you know, loads of people who have heard about blogs, not amongst that 100 group you mentioned, who came along and wanted to find out what was going on, what it was all about, how to use it, all that… and the picture’s slightly different in Europe and it’s got me wondering that, you know, what you mentioned - I do that, you do that, we all do that - and there is a lot of talk amongst the converted, yeah, I agree with you.

But going out to take that message out to people, it seems to be falling on deaf ears a lot over here, so what else can we do, do you think?

Steve: Um… I think it’s going to fall on the responsibility a little bit of not just the 100 or so us folks in the blogosphere. It’s going to rely on the leadership of the agencies, it’s going to reply on some of the clients… I mean, as you know, I wrote a month or two ago that I believe there’s this silent, non-blogging, blog-believing majority that’s out there in corporate America. I hear from them a lot, you must hear from them a lot as well.

And without naming any names - I can’t get into them - I can tell you that they believe. They know this is important and they have to go and sell this up the food chain. I don’t know about you, but I get a lot of, “well, Steve, how many readers does this blog have, how many readers does that blog have?”

And I say, ok, you know what, that’s one way to look at it. But you can’t look at it that way because that doesn’t matter. What I’m going to say to you is 250 readers and you’re going to say, “Steve, why are we wasting our time?”

This is not… this is a very different medium with very different sets of metrics with very different ways of measuring it, and I think that somehow we… I’m hoping that, you know, almost every day you go and do a Google News search for blogs and it’s there every day. And somebody from Fleishman-Hillard who I met at this meeting with the Council of PR Firms said, you know, “hey, the press throw these words around like everybody knows what they mean.” So there is a classic disconnect here between the press and the PR professionals.

I don’t quite know how we bridge that gap but I know it’s not just all on our shoulders. It’s on our shoulders to tell as many folks out there as possible who are probably not reading blogs to get on the Cluetrain.

Neville: Right. So we just keep on hammering at it, er… the point you made earlier, just going back to that, the way I see it, it’s not so much talking about blogs as a lot of us do - I’m guilty as well, you know, these are the new tools, etc - it’s what they can do and just keep repeating that message to as many people as possible until we reach the critical mass. Is that… would that be a fair summary of what you’re saying?

Steve: I think that’s fair, but I also think that the PR community views things as safety in numbers. So as more companies start to blog and there’s more demonstrable results through that blogging, uh, and they see blogs getting picked up in the press, as, er, sources, I think that will have that kind of cascading effect once that takes place.

So, I’m talking to a lot of major companies right now, I mean, our practice has very healthy interest in what we’re doing, and I think that, you know, as we work and you work and Shel, I know what you’re doing is working with companies and Voce is doing great work with blogs. As we get more proof of concept out there, I think there will be that cascading effect.

But with that, there will be people making mistakes as well.

Shel: Oh, no doubt. Uh, one thing I’ve noticed in Micro Persuasion lately is sort of an emphasis on the value of blogs as a search engine optimization tool. Do you see that as one of the benefits to tout to companies so that they understand?

Steve: Actually, that’s a really good point. Yeah, I thank you for observing that. Yes, I definitely think that is critical because they understand, they already have that… so much of what we want to sell into blogs is new, right? And the newness of it may prevent people from actually doing it. But when you link it to something else that they are already familiar with and value, it’s going to have more inherent value in itself.

So search engine optimization is a good one, um, I think you can demonstrate that the blogs will get mentioned in the press, um, that’s also another good way to link it, if you can link it to an online marketing campaign or an offline marketing campaign, um, and say how they might be able to build on that by talking in a human voice.

So, yeah, it always makes it easier to sell something that people are already convinced they need.

Shel: And is the flip side of that the notion that talking to them at this stage about engaging the customer in a conversation might be, er, a little too much for a lot of organizations?

Steve: It definitely will, I mean, I think you have… the companies fall in two camps and there’s some in the middle. Um, there is a Doctor Phil or there is a Soviet Union. Ok? And what I mean by Doctor Phil is that they, quote-unquote, keep it real. They’ll talk to you in a real voice, they’ll, you know, um… Debbie Weil mentioned she’s disappointed in some of the bloggers from Boeing because they didn’t know enough because they didn’t know enough of the facts that their CEO had issues. Um, I don’t know if that’s quite going so far but it’s certainly talking about real issues. And that’s going to be cultural, I think.

You’re going to have another group of companies that are going to want to be, you know, controlling the message, marching it through Red Square when they’re ready and putting it into a silo and launching it. So those companies, I don’t think blogging is for them. And then you have the companies who are in the middle.

But, you know, blogging doesn’t have to be black or white. It can be: start small. And it may be starting whether you like it or not, because your employees could be doing it.

Neville: Yep. So it’s dip your toe in the water and see what happens, no matter what you do, try it?

Steve: Yeah. Well, I don’t know about no matter what you do, try it. I think you have to say, ok, is it culturally right for us?

Neville: Yeah, that makes sense. So, you do a lot of speaking. I was looking at your speaking schedule and you mentioned the one you gave in Chicago last week. Your feeling… I mean, do you feel like you’re almost an ambassador for the profession in this regard? Uh, how do you feel about that, Steve, I mean you’re putting a lot of time into that, obviously CooperKatz supports you in doing those things, but your feeling from all the people you’re talking to, everywhere you’re going… what’s your sense, again from what you’ve been saying in this discussion so far, but your feeling on when will the catalyzing moment happen? Is it in three months’ time, six months’ time, or is it difficult to say still?

Steve: Well, I mean, I would say I’m one ambassador for blogging. We all are. I mean, I think you and Shel are in a huge way. You’re doing something I just wish I had the time to do! Because your programme is just outstanding…

Shel: What makes you think we have the time to do this?

Steve: I don’t know how you do it and I looked at your equipment set-up over the weekend, you blogged about it, and I said that was just fantastic what you’re doing. But it is good that I get to go out on the streets because, you know, it’s like here’s the flaming madman, you know, here’s the lunatic on the fringe, right, who belongs at [indistinguishable] or something like that, ok? Uh, you know, coming down from the mountain to talk to people about something they could care less about!

Uh, no, in all honesty, I’m happy to do it and it’s a perk to me and yes my agency is wonderful in letting me do that and getting out there. I actually turn down a lot more than I’m actually able to do.

Um, but my sense is that there’s a tremendous amount of curiosity on this topic. They are hungry for information. They want to know what this means for them. I think there is a little bit of FUD out there, ok? You know, fear, uncertainty and doubt about what this all means, you know. Is it really important or is it not important? Uh, I think people are intimidated by all the words. You know, blogs, wikis and RSS. So am I! Right? Ok, so it’s lions, tigers and bears.

So I think there’s an education process and I’m happy to actually fulfill that role offline, because actually I think that’s kind of like what we all ought to be doing to the degree that we can, and initiatives like the New Communications Forum are great because that’s, er, that’s a very welcome move. But I think we should be taking up… maybe we need a whole PR campaign around blogging, you know? I don’t know, it couldn’t get more media attention than it does now, but, I mean… PR Week, God bless them, they hardly cover blogging. Right? Now PR Week dot com and Keith O’Brien does a great job. But again…

I think we’re talking a bit in circles here, so I’m hearing curiosity, I’m hearing fear, I’m hearing, um, what do we do with this? And so I think it’s… when does it happen? When does it hit the tipping point? I’m kind of thinking that we already did and I got to think GM blogging, you know, when the smokestackers start blogging, ok, you know something big is happening.

Neville: Maybe there’s a lot going on under the surface that we just don’t know about. I’m thinking, you know, on the one hand there was that news recently about IBM’s 2,800 internal blogs and you think, wow, they’re doing all this stuff and they’ve been doing it for a while. Then you’ve got news like, er, talking about GM, Hass MS&L with their MS&L Blogworks practice that they started about a month ago.

And you, er… I keep hearing about what Hill & Knowlton are doing in particular countries. And you think to yourself, maybe some of these big agency groups are quietly working away at getting into this area and suddenly we’re going to see a load of these people announcing moves into this which clearly would help raise that, er, you know, awareness and acceptance to that level in quite a few leaps all at once, don’t you think?

Steve: But I think there’ll be skepticism around that as well, because… we all lived through the dot-com era, right? Ok? And what we say is that… I have a practice here. But, I mean, the best way to maximize the use of that practice is to tie it in to everything else you’re doing with PR.

You know what? I mean, there was no such thing as a press release practice. Right, guys?

Shel: Right, absolutely!

Steve: There’s no such thing and even 25 or 30 years ago there was no such thing… and if you are, you’re a freelance writer. Ok? Alright, so, I mean… and there’s a role for that, ok? There’s a void to fulfill. But not a practice. A practice is actually looking at social media, looking at big media, figuring out, you know, how do you treat each one. And how do you get those two things going in a good way.

Um, I wrote today, I mean, Richard Edelman is out there today talking to, er, the Globe and Mail in Canada and he’s actually saying that PR professionals need to think like journalists now especially now that blogs are getting big. I thought that was so terrific that he said that, but, you know… and I think that what you’re going to see is the big agencies begin to embrace this, right, and the [indistinguishable] as well.

But I hope what they do is not just launch a PR practice and say, gee, we can now do this blogging thing, it’s cool. But what they do is if they really actually like Hill & Knowlton is doing and put it into the bloodstream, ok? Give the employees the keys to blog, ok? Let them blog with their blessing, even if it’s internal. I can understand if they don’t want to let them go external, if they’re nervous about that but at least get them blogging internally.

Because, you know, you can’t… as I see this, the best way to be an expert in this environment is to be in it. It’s like the lottery - you’ve got to be in it to win it.

Shel: Well, Steve, you, er… as long as we’re on the topic of the blogging practices, could you talk a little bit about how the blogging practice at CooperKatz integrates with the more traditional public relations efforts there?

Steve: Well, first of all, I should just back up and give you an overview of what our plans are, what we have in mind here.

We started with blogs as a service to clients in early 2004. So we have two clients that we have blogging going back to, er, the beginning of last year, even before I had a blog. Um, and we learned a lot through those experiences and saw how they were… how the media were subscribing to the feeds and picking up on what they were writing. So we got ingrained in this, um, game early on by actually making it a part of the PR programme.

So obviously now, you know, you’ve launched a blog and there’s a lot more interest in this… I’d like to think that the three of us were ahead of the market and the market is now kind of catching up to us. Um, so now that that’s happening, what we’re doing is we’re launching a series of different services under the Micro Persuasion brand, which in and of itself was a decision I had to make. Do I want to affiliate, quote-unquote, my brand with this agency? And I am committed to this agency, this organization, so I decided to do that.

The services… the first one is much more of a crisis communications counselling service because we felt that would appeal to the, um, to the corporate communication crew. And the way that would integrate is really serving as the eyes and the ears and actually helping them build an overall crisis communications plan and an audit, er, that helps them prepare but tailoring it more towards the blogosphere, but also figuring out how that would integrate with the press.

Is the person who’s talking to the press the same person who’s going to blog? It may not be, ok. Is what we say on a blog going to be different to what we say to the press in a crisis? It may not be. And how we say it and how we do it. When do we use the blog, when do we use the press?

Shel: What about internally, Steve? How does this relate to the relationship with the client that’s maintained by, say, the account executive?

Steve: Well, we’re small enough with a 20-person firm that I’m now basically, er, utilized by the corporate client base. So if there’s interest in blogging from one of the clients, or if they want to know more about it, we’re sitting on feeds for every client. er, when I say feeds I mean PubSub feeds, Flickr feeds, and, er, Feedster feeds and Technorati feeds, etc. So we’re monitoring for all the clients.

So they’re interested in doing something with blogs and we sell it to them, but to some companies it’s much more of a “let’s jump in” and other companies it’s “let’s wait and see.” Ok? Much to our discussion earlier.

So I’m really leading that effort when they are interested. Now look at me not only as a, er, kind of a resource person the other accounts have. In addition I also have a new business role here at the agency obviously, and that’s where all the speaking comes in and talking to all these different accounts. But, er… prospects, I should say.

But the other thing that’s happening is the other services we plan to launch are much more involved with what I call, for lack of a better word, flee. Ok? Our philosophy is four-fold.

We say: one, find your evangelists and your vigilantes online. Two, create every channel and means possible to listen to them, actively, ok? Three, engage them in a dialog. And four, and this is not for everybody but if you can, empower them to do great things online and to spread your message for you.

Ok, so I’m going to give you an example. Engage. I think GM is engaging. I think Spread Firefox is empowering.

So the services we’re going to roll out under the MP brand will cover all facets of flee. Which I hate the name, by the way.

Neville: How do you spell it?

Steve: f-l-e-e-. I hate it! It’s an acronym for find, listen, engage, empower.

Neville: Yeah, flee, it’s cool!

Steve: I guess so, otherwise…

Shel: I just picture the character from Monty Python and the Holy Grail saying “run away”!

Steve: Yeah, it is humorous in that sense but don’t say run away, run towards it. But, you know, er, [indistinguishable] called it flee and we’re stuck with it!

But that’s where I think the opportunity is here and that’s the new world of PR.

Shel: If you extrapolate that out to, er, the really big agencies, a Hill & Knowlton, a Fleishman-Hillard, somebody like that, how would they handle a practice like this? You’re small enough that can just sort of be part of all the engagements, er, but when you get to the…

Steve: My goal is to make this place bigger, so I mean if that’s going to happen, it’s not just, you know, Steve Rubel comes in and teaches everyone how to do this. We’re training our entire teams in how to use these tools, how to know what the ins and outs are, so, er, we are delegating a lot of this beyond the… I’m immediately involved at a strategic level but executionally I need a lot of help with the team and the expertise of the team and their own ideas come in here as well.

So this is far from the Steve Rubel show. I mean, this is an organization and a team with a lot of talent. So it’s up to me to train the folks to be able to do this, and the bigger agencies I hope they’re doing that.

Neville: Yeah, I would be very surprised if they weren’t, Steve, to be honest. The thing that’s been in my mind, too, listening to how you’ve described the structure at CooperKatz, thinking about the big agencies they tend to be more, well, bureaucratic by virtue of their size and traditions and things like that, and I would imagine that, you know, for the larger more global firms, they’d need to approach the concept of where this fits into their existing infrastructure in a different way than if they were just setting up a department. I mean, that’s how I imagine it would be, don’t you think?

Steve: It’s integration, like I said. I mean, it’s er… ok, so when you hire an account coordinator, right, or an intern, you teach them how to write a press release, right? You teach them what makes a pitch work, what doesn’t. Right? Well, at some point, you’re going to teach them how to use RSS feeds, so hopefully this will start the academic level, ok. And I think it’s already starting there. And that’s terrific.

But at some point, they’re going to have to come in and know how to use RSS feeds, and know… ok, you know what, if you want to set up a blog, I’m not going to expect them to know how to set up Movable Type on a Unix server, um, but I’m expecting them to know a bare minimum on how to use Technorati and PubSub, ok, which our entire team now knows. And to know just to be aware that things, you know, could start there that could have an impact.

And then at the higher level, I’m teaching them to engage with the bloggers. I mean, I… Weatherbug is the typical example here. I’ve been working with them in the blogosphere now for a year. And that is the one account that I still run from day to day because it’s a legacy account that I’ve been working with for over three years now. But my team is advising them on what to blog about. They’re feeding them links to link to. They’re sitting on PubSub feeds and reacting, knowing how the media and the blogosphere and the two hands work together as part of the programme. So a lot of that I am able actually to delegate because we’ve done a very good job of teaching that in our organization.

Uh, back in June, I had Robert Scoble and Buzz Bruggeman come and talk to our agency, and they taught us a lot. And obviously you know from my own blogging and writing and speaking that I’m doing a lot of teaching myself, externally, outside the agency.

So you’re right - it’s got to be ingrained in the blood. And a small agency, a mid sized agency, is going to be in an easier position to do that. Two or three years from now? No. I think everybody will be able to do that. But this is, as you know, like a cheetah, in the jungle, ok, it is moving fast! You have to, you’ve got to stay ahead of it. And my wife says to me, Steve, I worry that you’re tying your wagon to this blog thing and it’s going to be a fad, you know, like New Coke! Or it’s going to be like the hula-hoop or the Rubik’s cube! Ok, um, and I explain to her, actually no, it’s now podcasting!

Shel: It’s like my father still says, the internet is the CB radio of the decade, so…

Steve: Yeah, but, you know, the trend is that consumers want to have a say, they want to have a share, they want to have a voice, and that I think is… and they’re using the net to empower themselves to do that, ok? Whether it be blogs, boogie-boards, podcasting or whatever it is they use to do that, ok, that trend is there.

So that’s what we’re hitching our wagon to.

Shel: I don’t know if you had a chance to read Kevin Dugan’s blog today, um, but he, er, raises the question... as long as you brought up the FastLane Blog at GM, he says anyone that’s visited the company’s Smallblock Engine and FastLane blogs knows they do not lend themselves to discussing job actions but blogs are dialog and readers may steer the conversation to this news. Obviously talking about GM’s bad news last week. How would you counsel them if you were working with them on dealing with that?

Steve: Well, generally speaking, when you have news out there that’s negative, right, you don’t want to talk about it unless you really have to. Right? Unless you really feel it’s going to steer the dialog in the right way. Right? So, um, because sometimes you can only fuel the flames that way. So in their case, I mean… I think it’s a little unrealistic for everyone to think that these blogs are going to talk about everything that’s happening to an organization at any given point in time.

Ok. I think that if GM… if you look at those blogs, they’re really about thought leadership and about marketing. They’re not, you know, the sole voice of the organization. So I don’t criticize them for not talking about that there. I think if there was, for example, a glitch in the smallblock engine, ok, that they had to recall the engine, then I think you could make a real case that they should be talking about that there. But I think that’s a little bit, er, idealistic to think that companies should talk about everything that’s happening to them through their blogs. They’re not at that stage yet. I mean, we should be happy that the smokestackers have blogs.

Neville: I agree with you, Steve. I’ve seen a number of blog posts, in fact not just Kevin’s, I saw Debbie Weil commenting on this too, that basically they’ve got a blog, why aren’t they talking about these issues? That’s not the objective of the blog. Plus they have other channels to address, you know, stuff related to finance is one example and news such as their announcement last week. So I agree with you that, er, you know, the current blog isn’t necessarily the channel to discuss that.

Steve: Let me ask you a question. I mean, here’s how I clear it, ok? Let’s just say, Neville, that you’re an alcoholic. I know you’re not…

Neville: I only have two glasses of wine doing the podcasts, ok?

Steve: That’s good that you’re able to hold it! Um, but let’s say you were, right, I wouldn’t expect you talking about that on nevon dot net, right? I wouldn’t expect that because it’s a personal challenge you have and you have another channel to talk about that if you’re addressing it, ok? Now, this is an extreme example, ok, but it’s much the same here, ok. You choose what you want to write about. You choose what you want to cover. Now if you make it all like lollipops and candy and isn’t everything great, then people will get turned off.

But on the other hand, I think it is having a dialog. Now are they getting a lot of questions from their readers on this, on that topic? If they were, then I would think, hmm, then there’s something interesting.

Neville: Absolutely. If the FastLane blog were full of comments, you know, on their latest post by Bob Lutz about, you know, the Cadillac or whichever GM vehicle, if all the comments coming in were asking what’s going on with your financials or what about the layoffs, now that would definitely be a different thing. But that’s not what we’re seeing on the blog.

Steve: Then I think they’re ok right now. Until they hear this podcast and everybody starts!

Shel: Well, I don’t think those folks are listening to this podcast, but I do think the people who are participating…

Steve: Well, Robert listens to the podcast!

Neville: That’s cool!

Shel: I do think that the people who are participating in the FastLane blog are people who want to talk about cars, er, and not about the business of making cars.

Steve: What a shocker!

Shel: Yeah, so it’s my hope anyway that they’ll stay focused on that and not let this be a dilution of the, er, ability to engage the audience on that topic.

Steve: You know, when you go to somebody’s house you try to steer away from the room that’s being renovated, right, ok, and focus on the magnificent deck you’ve built in the back yard…

Shel: I try to steer them away from my daughter’s room, but that’s another story…

Steve: Well that’s what they’re doing here, ok? And you know what? That’s PR.

Neville: Yep. Exactly. So related to all this, that takes us down another avenue. You’ve written a lot in recent weeks about folksonomies, or folk-so-nomies... how the hell do you pronounce that word? Folk-son-omies, right?

Shel: Folk-son-omies.

Steve: That’s how I do it, yeah.

Neville: Yeah, exactly. Um, and reading some of your stuff, I find it very interesting because I read elsewhere on other… not a lot, I must admit… there are some people who I read say, you know, these tags and stuff don’t matter. Now, you are one of the, er, I would argue champions of how these things do matter. How do you see it then, Steve, in terms of, you know, the linking, the connectivity… thinking about John Udell’s excellent screencast and how to use del.icio.us, for example, that to me would make it clear that these things really can be very powerful tools. That’s how you see it, obviously.

Steve: Yeah, I think that… obviously you can tell that I think they matter in a big way. Number one is, they make content that’s difficult to find, easier to find. Ok. So let’s just say I wrote a flaming post about GM. And somebody finds that post and tags it under GM in delicious. Or it’s, you know, if I have a Technorati tag for it, it will show up in Technorati under the tag GM. Or whatever it is. All those tags.

Instantly that content is much more discoverable because people who are interested in autos, really interested, ok, are going to use delicious to find information like that. So it’s critical, it makes that kind of content much more discoverable. So, that’s one.

Two, it’s for the marketer and gives a sense of how people think. Ok. If people are categorizing something, er, under one genre as opposed to another, or one tag as opposed to another, it gives you a sense for how they view this stuff. So it’s almost like a living focus group, it’s available to you 24 hours a day. Ok, and you might say, you know what, people don’t think of whatever our product is or whatever our service is in this way; they think of it as… this. Maybe they don’t think of the features, they think of the benefits. Ok, so I think that’s… it’s a window onto the psyche of the world.

So I think for those two reasons that they’re incredibly, incredibly powerful and I think that, er, they seem to click with consumers, they get it, they say gee, I can share my information the way we want and you just kind of decide how to classify things together, and I think it’s, er… for the two reasons I said earlier, extraordinarily powerful.

Neville: Ok, I agree with you in fact. So, how does it feel to be a celebrity blogger? I’m thinking about Media Magazine’s Media 100 list.

Shel: A-list blogger, Steve.

Neville: Yep, A-list celebrity blogger!

Steve: Am I a celebrity blogger? I doubt…

Neville: I think you are.

Steve: It’s unreal to me that I am. Er, I’m actually… I’m a little uncomfortable with it. Because… I think it’s… especially with that Media Magazine 100. I’m honoured by that, but my wife asked me, gee, how come they don’t have a party for all those folks?

Neville: Maybe that’s coming up!

Steve: Right, you know? Are you going to go to the party with Oprah? No, I don’t think so! Unless I, you know, figure out a way to have a child by myself, um, and end up on the show! But, um, I think that… the one thing I will say about it is that it shows that I am a guinea pig for the power of blogging in PR. I’m a walking guinea pig, ok, for what I preach.

And if you’re out there, and you’re thoughtful and you’re engaging in a dialog and you’re, um, pushing things in the right direction and you get noticed, you can end up being part of the public discourse, whether that be online or offline.

So, um… and I’m a little uncomfortable with it that I’m not here because… I know that there are some PR bloggers especially like Tom Murphy, Phil Gomes, that were blogging when dinosaurs were walking on the earth. Ok? And so, who am I to be any more important, so to speak (and I don’t believe that for a second) than they are or you are?

And I think what you guys are doing is amazing and actually I’m sitting here thinking, gee, how come PR Week has not got a story about this podcast?

Neville: Excellent!

Shel: We haven’t sent them a press release yet!

Steve: You know what? I’m going to send Julia Hood an email, because… and she’s the editor… because I think that what you are doing is outstanding and…

Neville: Well, thanks.

Steve: I think you should be submitting it for awards also, because it’s carrying our profession forward in a new way and its lending more transparency into the PR community, so… I mean, it feels… it is what it is and, um, it’s my 19th minute of fame, Neville!

Neville: Right.

Steve: It’s [indistinguishable]

Neville: Ride the tail in that case! Going back to Micro Persuasion, your blog, I mean… Shel’s the same, the reality is everywhere I look, I see you referenced all over the place. And you can do, as I do, you know, those rankings. Look at that Preople thing that we were trying to figure out, for example. But the reality is that you are referenced by so many people and, you know, people look to you as, you know, “we read this on Micro Persuasion.” I see that kind of reference a great deal.

So you have an awful lot of influence in the, er… actually it goes beyond the PR community. And that, you know, that’s great and I think you should be proud of that because Micro Persuasion is an excellent connector resource and you seem to find out stuff and comment on it before most other PR bloggers do, so clearly people see you as a great window on commenting on what’s going on. Which is, you know, very interesting in such a short time I think.

Steve: My God, you make me want to go out and buy a candy bar for myself!

Shel: Well, Neville raises an interesting question, Steve…

Steve: Wow, a special treat for me today!

Shel: Well, there’s your ego boost for the day, but Neville raises an interesting question, you do seem to find…

Steve: Neville, did you hold back, because I felt like you were holding back there!

Neville: Yeah, I need to tell you what I really think!

Shel: But as a result of having this higher profile, are people forwarding you stuff, is that one of the ways you’re learning things?

Steve: I get so much… well, some of it I get forwarded, I get pitched a lot, ok, and actually so I kind of got sick of it! And I said here’s a way to do that using delicious so let’s open that up, um… yeah, so that’s… I guess I am, I mean… you know, why me and not Richard Edelman? Why me and not Richard Edelman? And that’s a good question. Here’s one of the most influential people in the PR industry and a guy from a 20-person agency that most people had never heard of until… for a while, now has influence.

Um, it’s fun, it’s fun. And I’ll tell you, Neville, it gives me incredible responsibility. Ok? Because, like you, my blog posts are in Web Pro News. And Web Pro News gets indexed by Yahoo and Google News, ok. So, you know, if I’m writing about eBay or GM or Google, which I’ve been known to do, um, and it gets picked up, it’s read by those organizations.

So I take that very seriously as it puts me in a strange position when it comes to blogging about clients, because I could be accused of trying to spam those services. So it’s, er, it’s nice to have the influence but I really believe that… and I try very hard to link to other people, ok, and also my texts as full text feeds. I don’t need the traffic, you know, and it’s nice to see the people referencing my name, but… I mean, Robert is the god there. Everything I’ve learned about blogging I’ve picked up mostly from him.

Neville: Right. That’s Robert Scoble, right?

Steve: Yeah, Robert Scoble, I’m sorry. I talk about him like he’s a share, Robert, like everybody knows who he is. Um, so it’s… I mean… but I like to think that all 100 of us… at least that’s the last count I saw of PR bloggers, I think it’s 130 of us… we’re changing our industry. And maybe I’m one of the more louder voices that’s being heard, um… but I do get pitched, I get pitched, um… I also have some great tools and tricks that I won’t share with you that will help me find things before others do.

Neville: Right! Yeah, I think that you… my perception, Steve, is that you walk that very tricky path in a way that is, if you like, befriends everyone and offends nobody. You don’t tend to write, you know, seriously-opinionated posts as a lot of us do. I do a lot of that kind of stuff which puts you in one camp or another, so you’re… I would say frankly you’re seen by everyone as a, you know, key influencer - everyone has that view. That’s probably the key to why Micro Persuasion is so successful, I would say.

I’m not talking about how we measure success, I mean that’s a general phrase, I don’t think anyone would argue with it. That’s probably one of the key reasons, I think.

Steve: Well, thanks. I like to be… I like to to say it like I see it, ok. I call it like it is, I think that one thing I did was I kind of talked not only about PR because I think that’s kind of insular and only a small group of people have an interest in that, but I try to bridge out how search affects PR, and how RSS affects PR, and how PR impacts the media, and the media is changing.

So I kind of feel like I have a, um… have a bigger picture, maybe. Which is, you know, um, there’s room for all of us. So for example, when Ketchum, the whole Ketchumgate thing sprang up, I really didn’t blog about it that much, at all. Because I felt that was kind of outside what I talk about and the… but you know what? The PR bloggers did an amazing job despite what Jay Rosen says about talking about that, and that was their role.

Neville: it’s interesting you mention Ketchumgate because actually I was going to ask you about that in the context, you know, Ketchumgate, that was a particularly US thing: that was my original thinking. It’s not, it’s a huge issue, I think, this whole point of how it’s evolved into a discussion about ethics, which has still not, you know, reached any kind of conclusion. And there are a lot of people including me who advocate very strongly that that’s where the professional associations, er… that’s one of the roles for why we have professional associations, that’s my argument.

What do you think about that, Steve? Do you believe that this issue of ethics… each of us has an opinion, each of us has a responsibility as individual PR practitioners, but do you think the professional associations have a role, should be taking a stand on things like that?

Steve: Um, I think it’s… let’s back the train up here and look at the broader term. There’s much more transparency now into what public relations does. What we do with the practice, ok? Whether it be the agency side or corporate side. Because, I don’t know about… when I got into PR in 1991, no one knew what the heck it was. I didn’t even know what it was when my college guidance counsellor said Steve, you should be in PR. Actually, I did a DOS-based computer program when I went to school because I didn’t know what I wanted to be in life, and I ran through this program and it said, Steve, you should either be a union negotiator or in public relations. And I said, what the hell… what is PR? I had no idea.

Now, here we are, you know, just ten years later and everybody knows what PR is and the more educated among us and those who read certainly know what public relations is and what it does. So with that comes transparency, ok, and with all the move towards blogging and things like that, you know, there’s now a greater need for people to say, you know what, I want to know what’s PR and I want to know what’s news. I mean, God bless the people for wanting to know that. You know, so how do we… so anything that fosters that is good but I think that’s going to up, you know… that’s business unusual for a lot of companies and organizations, particularly in the government.

Neville: Ok. Shel?

Shel: Steve, that takes us to about 45 minutes, so I think that will wrap us up for today.

Neville: I’ve got to transcribe this now, you realize that, don’t you, Steve?

Steve: Yeah, and you probably can’t understand a thing I say…

Neville: Oh yeah, don’t worry, I’ll have to listen to it twice but I’ll get there!

Steve: I mumble like crazy and I talk at 4,000 miles an hour!

Shel: You are from New York, that’s ok.

Neville: It’s very clear on this call, I can hear it perfectly, so I shouldn’t have too much of a problem.

Steve: Don’t mis-quote me!

Shel: We’ll spell your name correctly, too! So thanks very much, Steve, we appreciate your taking the time to talk with us today.

Steve: Thanks, and keep doing what you’re doing because it’s just terrific and, er, it’s on my iPod and I can’t keep up with the show it’s so good! But I tell you, it makes a long flight a lot shorter.

Shel: Oh well, thanks a lot.

Neville: Thanks a lot, Steve.

Steve: By the way, I also listen while I do the laundry…

Neville: Excellent!

Shel: There you go!

Neville: Well, I listened to your show with Cameron and Mick where you were doing your laundry, I think you were in your pyjamas… you’re not in your pyjamas now, are you?

Steve: No, no I’m not. It’s only when I blog!

Neville: Ok!

Shel: Thanks a lot, Steve.

Neville: Thanks, Steve, talk to you again soon.

Steve: Bye!

Posted by neville on 03/26 at 09:17 PM
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Thursday, March 24, 2005

The Hobson & Holtz Report - Podcast #18: March 24, 2005

Show notes for March 24, 2005

Content summary: Listeners’ comments: on reporting rather than commenting, bulletin boards and blogs, listening on the bus, not listening on the run, fixing a mashup; blogs and communicators in Europe; changing demographics for media; GM’s new podcasts and other podcast developments; open source marketing; IABC; Robert Scoble and time challenges for bloggers; Creative Commons tool from Yahoo.

Show notes for March 24, 2005

Welcome to For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report, a 72-minute conversation recorded live from Concord, California, USA, and Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

In this week’s show:

Intro:

00:30 Shel and Neville on what’s in this week’s show; how to give your feedback; show notes
02:21 Comments from the last show

Features:

07:55 Are communicators in Europe ready for blogs? Comments to a blog post and a look at changing demographics
25:11 General Motors’ new podcasts; the development of podcasting; did GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz use the GM Fastlane Blog to talk about earnings?
44:11 Open source marketing - What does marketing have to do with Linux? Everything, it seems. And Open Sauce Live as well
53:21 IABC issues update; the value of IABC; member events provide value
61:30 Robert Scoble stops the link blog - one big example of the time challenge for bloggers

Outro:

65:22 New Creative Commons content searching tool from Yahoo
65:54 How to give your feedback; show notes; about the music and the band; outro music

Links for the blogs, individuals, companies and organizations we discussed or mentioned in the show:

Intro - Lee Hopkins, Sebastian Keil, Chris Thilk, Hans Kullin, Steve Rubel, Lee Lefever, Jackie Danicki, Ludo Magnocavallo, Tom Abbott, Thomas Pleil, Octavio Rojas, Morgan McLintic, James Cherkoff, Elizabeth Albrycht, Fredrik Wacka, Mike Manuel, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Online Publishers Association, Online Journalism Review.

Features - General Motors, Pontiac Solstice, Cadillac XLR-V, Michael Wiley, Clay Dean, Jonathan Marks, Dave Winer, Adam Curry, Alexander Graham Bell, Rock & Roll Geek Show, Geek News Central, Daily Source Code, Skype, Audacity, Associations Unorthodox, GM FastLane Blog, Bob Lutz, Debbie Weil, Kevin Dugan, Hass MS, James Cherkoff, ChangeThis, Linux, Cluetrain, Johnnie Moore, Corante Brandshift, Open Sauce Live, Constantin Basturea, The New PR Wiki, IABC, Allan Jenkins, Warren Bickford, Robert Holland, EuroComm Networking Summit, Barbara Gibson, IABC International Conference, PRSA, BL Ochman, Toby Ward, Robert Scoble, Pete Shinbach.

Outro - Creative Commons, Yahoo, PodcastNYC, Salme Dahlstrom, Hello California, For Immediate Release, A Shel of My Former Self, NevOn.

So, until Monday March 28…

Posted by neville on 03/24 at 01:33 PM
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Monday, March 21, 2005

The Hobson & Holtz Report - Podcast #17: March 21, 2005

Show notes for March 21, 2005

Content summary: Listeners’ comments: on suggestions for how to comment, video and vlogging trends, differences between internal blogs and bulletin boards; interview - an open conversation with Steve Rubel; discussion about the interview; planned changes in show format for future interviews.

Show notes for March 21, 2005

Welcome to For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report, a 67-minute conversation recorded live from Concord, California, USA, and Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Download the file here (MP3, 30.8MB), or sign up for the RSS feed to get it and future shows automatically. (For automatic synchronization with your iPod or other digital player, you’ll also need software such as the FeedDemon RSS aggregator, or the free ipodder or DopplerRadio).

In this week’s show:

Intro:

00:29 Shel and Neville on what’s in this week’s show; Steve Rubel interview today; how to give your feedback; show notes
01:24 Comment Line at +1 206 984 0931 for your feedback; Comments from the last show

Feature:

13:17 Interview - An open conversation with Steve Rubel, VP Client Services, CooperKatz and blogger, Micro Persuasion (Read the complete interview transcript.)

Outro:

58:27 Comments and thoughts on the interview with Steve Rubel
60:30 Format change for future interviews
61:17 How to give your feedback; show notes; about the music and the band; outro music

Links for the blogs, individuals, companies and organizations we discussed or mentioned in the show:

Intro - Dan York, Skype, Audacity, Frank Meeuwsen, Captivate, Camtasia, Lee Hopkins, Lee Lefever on bulletin boards, Common Craft, New Communications Forum 2005, SkypeOut.

Feature - Steve Rubel, Council of Public Relations Firms, Fleishman-Hillard, Cluetrain, Boeing blog, PR Week, GM, IBM internal blogs, Hass MS&L Blogworks, Hill & Knowlton, Richard Edelman, CooperKatz, Micro Persuasion, PubSub, Flickr, Feedster, Technorati, Spread Firefox, Robert Scoble, Buzz Bruggeman, Kevin Dugan, GM FastLane Blog, GM Smallblock Engine Blog, Debbie Weil, folksonomies, John Udell, del.icio.us, Media Magazine’s Media 100 list, Tom Murphy, Phil Gomes, Web Pro News, Yahoo, Google, Jay Rosen, Ketchumgate, Cameron Reilly, Mick Stanic.

Outro - Mike Manuel, Garageband.com, Sea Breeze, Verbal Klint, For Immediate Release, A Shel of My Former Self, NevOn.

So, until Thursday March 24…

Posted by neville on 03/21 at 12:34 PM
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