I Media, Skopje, Macedonia

The reason why I travelled to Skopje was a very kind invitation from GVers – @ieli and @razvigor (working on a daily basis for Metamorphosis Foundation) to I Media conference dedicated to discussion around state of traditional and new media in Macedonia. First day was based on panel discussions, whereas second gave all attendees a chance to actually discuss the state, challenges and future of media in the region.
To cut the story short I will only share my own observations and learnings, as you can find the rest on their site here. I do apologise if I am wrong at any point – do correct me. I only had one day to come to those initial conclusions.
First of all I am honoured that I witnessed the times when Macedonian media is just at the verge of social media revolution in a very unique way: opening itself to the global arena, sharing regional developments and passion for spoken/written word. I saw a country where old media sees the revolution coming, is weary of full usage of  the new tools as – sadly for some – they will advocate freedom of speech. I do not think that (mentioned by a local worker of press industry) manipulated photos posted in newspapers will be accepted without comments for long. I do not think ladies like @Arheoblog will need to face potential difficulties with their brave initiatives to disclose unlawful behaviours, this without network of strong, supportive voices from her community and from outside of it. I do not think global, English speaking social media will appear distant and slightly patronising for long. As soon as the regional voices, organisations, NGO's and other initiatives enter the space with strong commitment to make a change – and realise the true power of social media -we will all see the big shift some are so scared off, and others impatiently await.

From the discussions during the conference my first impression was that the is a strong feeling of passiveness – for instance why would a young generation of users expect Wikipedia to come up with ideas on how to improve the content of the site it this particular project is based on open, public contributions and almost per definition is there to take ownership of it?
I felt it was crucial to remind everyone the main characteristics of social media there and then, and luckily I had a second during the open discussion on the second day of the event:

• Social media is open and transparent – there is no space for pretending to be who you are not.


• Social media requires you to be genuine, thus gives you power to use or misuse the potential of building trusted voices and brands – you can easily, for free show the local and global community who you are, what you do, what are the things you are passionate about and what are our opinions. As NGO you have a great potential to introduce your work, and if you link it to activities for your cause you can  promote the transparency of your spendings. You can join the discussion, you can listen to the needs or your target audience and establish a dialogue with your audiences.


• Social media is social – you build personal, hopefully long term relationships with people representing themselves, but also organisations and brands, so you can use it for networking, informing, searching information, or co-operation.


• Social media is about contributing and sharing – you need to put a side the financial motivation here, because this community is build on social capital; you are almost expected to share openly and to contribute meaningfully to the discussion. Take a test: take 10 bits of information you own and put it on paper – look at the list and decide which one can you give away easily? Which one would be the second? Can you give away the 5th one without any expectations to gain smth back? Can you give away the 10th, the most unique and valuable idea of yours? Why not? Yes? Why would you do it? Why would you not mind to do it? Why would you loose on sharing it? Once you get used to the idea of giving away the 10th idea you are just about there to join this community;) You will also be expected to cooperate – to comment on others blogs with valuable opinions, to add content and to commit your skills to projects where those can be needed. Why? Because if you do so, you will become a respected personality and trusted voice – and when it is you who needs help, you can count on the rest of us!


• Social media is free but might need a financial injection – when it comes to NGO's in social media I totally understand that we are tempted to think of grants and donations, however vast amount of social media branding, communication and cooperation can be done for free. Actually if you use free tools, those tend to be used by large communities and are enhanced with more and more networking options. This should b enough for a start. Once you have your on-line presence and community you can use it for projects which do involve financial investment to enhance your brand and activities (events, self-hosted platforms or simply fees for maintaining your presences). But when you're at this stage you should have a clear idea of how much money you need because you are using the tools already and know which bit of your project needs further development so it should be easier to put a proposal together and pitch for money as well as predict results, measure risks.


• Social media is not a monster – I am preaching about social media because yes, I do believe it's extremely powerful world with very appealing mechanisms and so far the most supportive, creativity and achievement focussed communities I have seen. But please do not forget there is always a human being at the end of the line. It

So learn to listen, talk, share, contribute and co-operate. Join global arena (not because it's better, but because it is there to listen and contribute to your great ideas too!). Do it openly. Be brave in your honesty and goals. And do not forget: social media is tools to empower us, at the end of the day it's always about people – incorporate this virtual reality in to your every day life and use both wisely.

I really trust the ambitious bloggers from Macedonia are gradually heading towards those realisations and with their initiatives will change the face of local traditional media and support their NGO's in their wonderful work. Mind me - some of the local bloggers are now aware of the fact IT IS ALREADY HAPPENING THERE;)

Thank you for the invitation!

Update: here is an article on the conference from Macedonian press (here in Macedonian).

Retrospective

For the last few weeks I was working on few things - a blogger interview, though this time on the other side - I was interviewed by my dear fellow GVer, Juan Arellano, in series featuring people working for Global Voices. I poested already about the site, community and how it enriches my life, so I am happy that celebration of 100th post on GV Polska we could collaborate on this text. It's good to have all my current initiatives in one piece, and good to know that others share my thoughs. Here is the entire post.

As a result of this post I was pointed to this OSI initiative and suggested some new, brilliant ideas for Barcamp Transparency! Amazing, how blogging makes my life more exciting.

I have also met and had a chat with a great ethics blogger, Emmanuel Tchividjian. It all started with my comment under his post on recent arrest of Roman Polanski, but since we are in touch now I hope we can collaborate. I will try to think of few interesting posts for you, but in the meantime I strongly advise you to check his blog! It's worth it!:)

I usually do not post about topics directly related to work, but as this one has many of my friends involved and is interesting for everyone to some extent involved in social media, I decided to link you to it. It's called WOM Expert Groups and is a monthly chat about social media in different regions. It's open, friendly and fun! It's a great place to learn about events and developmemnts happening in different parts of the globe. You can always see the recent discussions here.

Tomorrow evening and on Thursday morning I am in London representing Global Voices and meeting specialists of media, journalism and citizen journalism to discuss few opportunities for government to move to the new levels of communication on-line. I am really interested in this one, and in the fact I will meet personally another GVer and listen to Skype session with Jeff Jarvis (whose posts on ethics were my starting point when I decided to move in the direction of social media ethics, whose words prepared me for presentation in Cairo, and whose attitute towards blogging is an example of what transparency is about). Promise to post my thoughts on Twitter while it happens or later here!

Ideas Worth Spreading

I did not pick it up, it was Blogus Pospolitus again, but it made my day! It's the light in the tunnel of my pretty challenging life recently!

[ted id=481]

I am very, very excited about Google Wave, but the way it changes our communication seems linear to me - we will speak faster and host discussions on our blogs so we will loose the moderators role a bit. Not that I want to put aside the marvelous work of many Google Wave developpers, no - I still think you guys and ladies are doing great job!

However this development made me realise how close we are to something I always dreamt of - some of you will probably find me crazy at this point;) - blogging via microchip in my head. Watch the TED clip! The point when the student is taking photos with his hands is exactly what I want to do - I want to be able to blog, take photos, record podcast WITHOUT any additional devise! I want to be albo to walk the streets and have an 'on and off button' in my head  - I would love to be able just to think 'I am starting to blog now' and have that happening on my wordpress site; but hey - if a middle solution is to have to say it out loud - I could cope with strange looks;)

Can someone please, please, please build it and do it fast! I am loosing out on a lot of good content simply because I have no time to put it down 'on paper'.

BTW, would love to see what you think - solutions like that have huge ethical consequences!

This Sixth Sense stuff is awesome!:)

Blogging tips from Monik, fellow blogger from India

This a guest post by Monik Pamecha, student in his actual life, a blogger, entrepreneur, web developer and designer while he's on-line. Passionate soccer, table tennis player and amateur photographer. Read his Tech Blog Etiole or catch him on Twitter and Facebook.

Blogging, ha? What the Hell is this Monik?, What do you do sitting in front of your computer for hours? Why don't you come with me and play video games than sitting on the computer? - These questions were thrown at me when, I started blogging 4 years back.

It all started in an amazing way, unexpected though. I had a big fight with one of my mates at school, and at that time, all I knew was internet for finding project information on-line. But that day, I was just jumping from one website to other and landed on wordpress.com. I don't remember exactly which blog it was, but it said you could make your voices heard by just making a account on wordpress.com and then publishing it. Once published it will be up and you will get famous.

I wasn't good with my grammar at that time, so all I knew was how to use pics. So with some support from Wordpress Help and Forums I found how to add images. One thing anyone would notice of my friend, that he had lots of hair over his body... So I posted something, called Hairy Potter. That was just the beginning. Within 2 days the post got 200 visits as the message spread all over the school and children started teasing the boy.

Proud I was, as I was too young to understand the consequences, later I was forced to pull of the content due to force from higher authorities (you know who I am talking about ). I just thought that night, if I could do something like this, why couldn't I use this tool to spread info! There my journey began.

First, I started blogging on monik2kinom.wordpress.com , which later got shifted to etiole.blogspot.com and as I started generating revenue I shifted to etiole.com as a custom domain on Blogger. More progress and then finally I jumped to wordpress . Well, that's my journey till now. I hope to go a long way, and spread my knowledge to affect and mostly to improve .

But my journey has gone through many up and downs. From 1000 visits a day or none at times, I still focused on blogging, as at that time (I mean now also) I blog for my love for writing and not for attracting readers, but what can iI say? Humans want attention so, I am forced to follow it. But it feels nice to know, that what you are writing, someone is reading. But you should not loose focus on your content or you may crush out your dreams of making a successful blog.

Don't just post stuff that's online, give your opinion. You can find news everywhere but your opinion, insights are all what differentiate your blog content from others.

Marketing also forms a important aspect, but concentrating on content is major part of marketing being done. If you have amazing stuff, then you really don't need to worry much about consumers. They'll come running to your blog. Check out a blog post by me on how to increase blog readers which mentions some marketing tips .

Using media is an amazing way to enhance your content, video's and images will make it easier for readers to understand stuff you write and if you do some math then, a video is worth 1000 words and if a video is worth 1000 images then a video is worth 1000000 words!

Also, respect your readers. Always reply to comments and be interactive with your commentators. If they have taken the pains to leave a comment, you can surely give a reply to them. It will make them feel happy, and you too! :)

That's it for now. I do give tips on blogging and free consultation :D Contact me anytime - monik@etiole.com

The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web by Tamar Weinberg

Tamar Weinberg is best known from her contributions to Mashable and her post 'The Ultimate Social Media Etiquette Handbook', but recently her book 'The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web' becomes equally popular.It is basically a student book for everyone interested in how social media works for marketing purposes and personally I think it should be a mandatory course tought at every single marketing school. From the introduction to social media and settign up goals and strategy, she is guiding us through major types of media - blogs, microblogs, social networks, social bookmarking, news sites, touches upon types of content (photo, video, audio) to finalise the process of understanding on-line marketing with coherent approach and ethics of it. Perfectly structured book full of practical advice and interesting additional reading coming from the best source! I strongly advice everyone already working in social media marketing or intending to do so to read it and keep it on their shelf! It's one of those books you read once and come back to it many, many times!

I am so happy Tamar decided to put it all on paper and share with us! Thank you!:)