Teblog

Interactive Infographic: How To Handle The Media

Since 1988, Martin Banks and I have been running media skills training courses. Early on, we introduced an 'architecture' for the process. We drew it on flipcharts for a few years then, in 2004, we formalised it and started giving it out as part of our wallet-sized plastic business card. The model acts as an 'aide memoire' for all who've attended our training.

A few weeks ago, I was rummaging (as you do) some infographics - pictures that speak well over a thousand words - and took a shine to the interactive variety, where the graphic responds to the user's actions.

I'd just been doing some training work with the Racepoint Group and, coincidentally, one of its US staff Kyle Austin wrote a blog post: Are Infographics the New Slide Shows?  Good point, I thought, having just taken someone through our 'architecture'.

So I set to work to convert our flat image into something a little more lively. It's aim is to refresh the memories of those who've attended our training and to give others an appreciation of how they might set about handling the media.

The first attempt was an animated .gif file with text boxes to expand on each element of the image. Horrible. Boring. Sequential. No user interaction. Didn't lend itself to the web. Etc.

I wanted an interactive infographic that would work in more or less any browser and not depend on the presence of JavaScript, Flash or any other kind of plug-in. Just HTML and CSS. (I'd done some simple stuff before, here and here, so I was optimistic that it could be done.)

The second attempt was a graphic that the user could mouse over, highlighting image elements and showing the relevant text in a nearby box. The size was determined by my computer screen, which was a bit stupid because many of the people I'd like to share it with might have a smaller screen - an iPad for example.

So I reworked it with the iPad in mind. The hover can be achieved with a finger, even on the smallest graphical element. And while I was resizing everything, I added drop shadows and rounded corners to the text boxes.

If you're interested, the end result is at How To Handle The Media

I hope you enjoy it.

PS If anyone wants the gory technical details of how to do this sort of thing, I'll pen another post. Just ask.

Media Skills 101 (reprise)

First of all, apologies for radio silence. I've been on holiday. Very nice it was too. We hired a motorhome and stayed at four sites in Dorset. We hired the highly specced and almost new vehicle from Ferndown-based Abacus which turned out to be a very professional company. Highly recommended if you fancy that sort of holiday.

Before I get stuck in to blogging again, I thought you might be interested in some posts I wrote over five years ago about handling the press. While a lot of the press appears somewhat emasculated these days and the new media folk are largely more kindly, the suggestions I made then are no less valid for shaping your outlook and approach to the media of any kind.

Unearth, Write, Polish, Share

Well, the die is cast. It took a while but my new life is well and truly sorted out. The idea that I'll spend the rest of my working life helping others to be better communicators feels really good. The ego's parked and the doors are open for business at Tebbo Towers. Actually, the 'Towers' is a joke. I live in a bungalow.

Before I say anything else, I have a ton of 'thank you's and I hereby grovel if I've left anyone off the list. These are to people who, wittingly or not, have helped me gather my thoughts this year: Adriana Lukas, Al Tepper, Anne Marie McEwan, Brian Smithson, Cathy Pittham, Dale Vile, David Terrar, David Topping, Euan Semple, Luis Suarez, Marjolein Hoekstra, Mark Chillingworth, Martin Atherton, Martin Banks, Matthew Pudney, Nick Spencer, Robert Norum, Ronnie Simpson, Sophie Morrow, Tim Lawes, Tom Foremski and Tracey Poulton.

In different ways, whether it was feedback or inspiration, every one of those people has edged me closer to an understanding of what services I should offer and what my website should look like. Along the way, I've tried to give some value back to some of these people. It's been unevenly distributed and, for that, my apologies.

Tom Foremski deserves special mention for his understanding of the role of the organisation in new media terms. His slogan "Every Company Is A Media Company" may still be ahead of its time, even though it's already four or five years old. 

I take the view that we are in a period of transition: some organisations buy into Tom's story and they're out there delivering real value directly through (mainly) new media. Others are holding back and still getting their stories out indirectly through traditional journalists and bloggers. Yet others have a mixed model. No-one knows where this will end. I'd like to think that the value of real journalism will become appreciated once more. But maybe the checks and balances will come from the more responsible parts of the social media world. We'll have to see.

In the meantime, with the help of Tom and others, I have been lucky enough to construct a life that is based on one thing: enabling skilled communication. And, whatever the evolving shape of the media, these skills are universal and perpetual and they apply to other spheres of our lives.

If you have a moment and you're interested getting help with unearthing and sharing your valuable stories, then please drop me a DM, an email or give me a call. The details are on the website at http://www.tebbo.com/. I look forward to hearing from you.

Is authority the first word or the last?

David Weinberger was one of the co-authors of the Cluetrain Manifesto which looked at the impact of the internet on markets and organisations. He wrote his first blog post in 1999 but didn't hit his stride until 2001. That's probably years before any of us had even heard of a blog, or social networking, which is where this particular blog post is heading.

He's a genuine guy and a deep thinker and he's written some great books and delivered some brilliant lectures.

Last week he came up with a gem about authority being increasingly about having the first word rather than the last. His exact words were:

"...in the old days, we took expertise and authority as the last word about a topic. Increasingly, the value of expertise and authority is as the first word - the word that frames and initiates the discussion."

This is at the heart of the dilemma that traditional management faces when trying to figure out the role of social networking in the organisation. Assuming the value is understood, it becomes mainly a cultural issue. Some organisations - especially knowledge-based ones - are predisposed to sharing, openness and self-direction, while others are more into command and control. In the first instance, management might define the desired outcome and leave employees to decide how to get there; Weinberger's "first word". And in the second, the process will be rigidly defined.

The management of each type of organisation adopts its style because it believes that is the most effective way to get things done. Although, it has to be said, persistence with a command and control approach could also be a function of fear (of the lunatics running the asylum) or laziness (because it's always been done this way).

Some organisations realise that some departments are well suited to a more collaborative, networked, style while others are best run in a traditional way. Marketing versus computer assembly, for example.

The problem such companies face is social networking creep. It's as if one lot of employees have freedom to work where they like and when they like providing they achieve their objectives and the other lot are chained to their desks or their workshops and have little discretion over their use of time and (in particular) online resources. The deskbound ones are the ones who will be eyeing the socially-networked crowd with some jealousy.

So what's a company to do? Widen access to online resources and social networking, even to those who don't really need it, and trust staff not to abuse it? Some companies who have done this believe that a lot of time and IT/communications resource is being wasted doing non-work-related things. Downloading and watching questionable movies probably being the most extreme example. (In philosophical terms, it’s actually not so different to previous upheavals when companies abandoned switchboards for direct dial telephones or introduced email to all and sundry.)

One company solves the problem by allowing anyone to participate but it's thrown a firewall around all social activity - restricting it to dialogue between the company employees only, although it is about to invite some customers and business partners to participate. Another says, "do what you like, but achieve your work objectives." Another is trying to monitor all online activities in order to reprimand those who step out of line.

What's important is to figure out what strategy is best for your own organisation:

Do you keep communication behind the firewall? This would restrict access to valuable information and external contacts.

Do you let people do what they like as long as they achieve targets? This might work best if they pay their own communication costs.

Or do you monitor every move? Employees may find this distasteful, if not illegal in some countries.

In the end it comes down to trust. The social media evangelists will argue that it's only through openness, transparency and trust that organisations will move forward. Others will argue that this is nonsense and that some people simply cannot be trusted with these new tools.

The organisations that will have the toughest time are those that have embarked on the social thing, spread it too far and now wish they could stuff the genie back in the bottle. Perhaps an answer lies in ground rules and education...

To paraphrase Dr Weinberger, this blog is only the first word. If you have experience-based views on the foregoing, we’d love to hear them.

Knowledge Management: why not?

I will get back to 'proper' blogging soon. Honest. It's just been a bit mad round these parts as I've put my new life together. It's going well, I might add, but the blogging has been neglected. Another week or two should do the trick.

However, thanks to Computing, CIO and Information World Review, a few of my pieces have popped up in the last few days, all of them connected in some way to Knowledge Management. And, yes, I know that's a contradiction in terms. But put 'social' and KM together and magic starts to happen.

The three articles are:

Social tools take KM to a new level (Computing]

IT accumulates data but Web 2 shares knowledge (IWR)

Board level energy saving and environmental issues (CIO)

None of the titles is mine, of course. (They have sub-editors to dream these things up.)

The first was my response to a request to prepare a 'definitive guide to Knowledge Management'. The second was a column in which I postulate a kind of lifecycle of knowledge/information. And the third was created by plundering the business/CIO related threads in the recent IBM Eco-Efficiency Jam - another example of social/KM in action. It happily blended my two primary interests: human and environmental IT.

Happy reading. See you back here soon, I hope.

Is the eco-wind blowing your way?

It wasn't so long ago that all 'green' activity went under the heading of 'idealism'. Nothing wrong with that, but the so-called developed world is not big on that sort of thing. It doesn't put money in shareholders' pockets, satisfy fashion urges or keep children 'happy' at Christmas. (The quotes are because I remember our family's happiest festive times were when we were poorest.)

Now, with Copenhagen looming and the Carbon Reduction Commitment legislation just around the corner, large organisations especially are beginning to realise that a regulatory steamroller is heading their way and they will need to do something about it, quite regardless of their anthropogenic climate change beliefs, or otherwise.

In terms of business operations (as opposed to political lobbying or scientific research), it's probably best that organisations focus on what they can do which will deliver genuine benefits while minimising their impact on the environment. Generally speaking, benefits boil down to cost savings and increased revenues, although public bodies are likely to focus more on the former than the latter.

The tough bit is measurement. Like accounting and auditing, this is necessary to understand progress and to be able to report convincingly, both internally and externally. All the time the global warming, climate change and greenhouse gas discussions have been going on, it's all seemed a bit abstract to day to day life. Now that we're facing the prospect of being nailed by governments, councils, customers and investors, the need to act has crystallised. What a fantastic opportunity for the IT world. If nothing else, it's very good at collecting and processing information in very high volumes and that's exactly what organisations need as they contemplate their own sustainability, in all senses of the word. (We shouldn't be so dazzled by the CO2 story that we forget about raw material use, water, waste and other forms of pollution.)

Some software companies - Access and Microsoft Dynamics spring to mind, although I'm sure there are others - got into carbon accounting before their clients were fully aware that this was going to become important. Hats off to them, and others like them, who knew what had to be done and just got on with it. They will, hopefully, reap the rewards of their early efforts.

As ever, the pioneers aren't usually the ones that walk away with the big prizes. While journalists and bloggers have been complaining about the apparent lack of action, the big guys were getting on with the job. They were watching what's going on out there, putting their own houses in order while preparing new products and services for market. Now they're emerging from the woodwork.

For example, CA managed to secure the name ecoSoftware for its SaaS-based measurement and reporting system aimed at medium to large businesses. It looks into every nook and cranny of a business in order to assess and report on its environmental health. It takes the whole sustainability perspective, rather than concentrating on carbon or energy alone, for example. It takes its feeds from just about anywhere - hand entered meter readings, electronic feeds and inputs from other recording systems. It integrates with other software, especially the major ERP systems. Users can drill in and out of detail, and filter the information in a variety of ways - by business process, by GHG Protocol Scopes, per shipping unit, by floor area, and so on. The end result is action plans based on genuine insights and, of course, the ability to measure progress.

Another company, 1E, is probably best known for its NightWatchman system which minimises the power use of the desktop computing estate. It has recently announced a system for measuring data centre energy use and identifying how much useful work each server is doing. It can change the power profile of each device according to the work it is (or is not) doing. The system reports what's been going on in charts and tables and users can drill into any unusual patterns. It will integrate natively with hardware vendors' own tools or scripts can be created for exceptions or new developments. Crudely stated, the point of the exercise is to maximise the business value delivered with the least use of equipment and energy.

These examples serve to show which way the wind is blowing. Organisations will find that the IT industry will be key to helping them get a grip on their environmental obligations and costs. It is a case of a win all round but, as is frequently the case, no one will win bigger than the IT industry itself. 

Frighten the kids, or encourage the grown-ups?

Have you seen the Act On CO2 'bedtime stories' advertisement that our dear government has spent £6M on? Although it's a cartoon, the words are real enough. Fundamentally, it tells children that they're victims of grown-ups' actions and, if the grown-ups change their ways, they may (note: only 'may') be saved. According to the advertisement, over forty percent of the emissions of CO2 are caused by 'ordinary things' that grown-ups do, like warming homes and driving cars.

The Advertising Standards Authority has received hundreds of complaints which it plans to investigate. Good luck to it. According to a BBC report, "An ASA spokeswoman said the watchdog would be investigating whether the claims about climate change could be substantiated and whether the ad complied with taste and decency rules."

The ASA hasn't a hope in hell of validating the climate change science. It should concentrate instead on the taste and decency angle. When Sky News wrote about the ASA complaints, it received masses of contradictory comments (I ploughed through 94 of them). Goodness knows who Lisa is, but she made a good point when she said, "Upsetting children can never be right ... Why worry them so young when they can't do anything right now?!" Quite.

What is clear (if you didn't know already) is that climate change has become a religious debate and, if the Sky News commenters are representative of the population at large, the non-believers greatly outweigh the believers. And the powers-that-be are at their wits' end to turn us into believers.

The stupid thing is that the more rabid they become, the more they will turn off even the most reasonable citizen. Somehow the debate needs to become less accusatory and more inclusive. It might want to take into account that not everyone is the same or driven by the same values.

The latest EcoPinion Survey Report from strategic marketing agency EcoAlign parsed the attitudes of 1250 USA citizens and, in the process, identified five different categories of consumer. In terms of motivation to use new technologies and participate in new energy programs, they were: Cost-Conscious Saver (41%), Value Buyer (20%), Environmentalist/Green Consumer (19%), Traditional Consumer (10%) and Tech Enthusiast (10%).

The same messaging can't work with such a disparate set of people. Judging from that list, only 19 percent look as if they might fit in the 'believer' category in the USA. In Europe it may be different, but you can bet that the different categories exist. And it's therefore clear that a single message is going to fall on largely deaf ears, unless it happens to focus on the needs of the Cost-Conscious Saver.

And maybe this is a clue to the answer. Forget global warming, climate change, CO2 or any of that 'big-brotherish' terminology. Talk about simple financial and environmental sustainability through energy and fuel savings, through the avoidance of waste and other pollution and through the minimisation of raw materials.

In this way, instead of negative, frightening stories from those in power, the environmental tale can become a  positive one put out by everyone who is making an effort to improve our collective lot.

Mind-mapping with MindJet and MindGenius

Ever since Tony Buzan started popularising mind-mapping in 1974, it's had a bit of an uphill struggle to reach the mainstream. Over sixty commercial applications are available for the PC, the Mac and the web. A sprinkling of others are available for the Pocket PC, iPhone and BlackBerry. And you'll even find open source and freeware versions.

So mind-mapping is an industry, albeit a bit of a niche one. And the products/services keep on coming. October saw announcements from two well-known players, MindJet and MindGenius, which suggested that the mind-mapping world has yet to run out of puff.

MindJet has blended communications and mind-mapping into a single web-based collaboration service with Catalyst. Its premise is that most so-called collaboration tools are actually communication tools, completely lacking an application at their heart with which participants can engage. It feels, with some justification, that a mind-mapping application is exactly the right thing for this. It's useful, easy to understand and the nodes can activate files inside their own applications.

The counter to this might be that a generalised voice-video-IM-screen-sharing communication service allows you to run whatever applications you like at the desktop. Either a scribe can do updates or, more clunkily, control can be passed between participants.

The second announcement of the month fits the latter category. It is a desktop application. MindGenius claims that, with an addressable market of 400 to 500 million English-speaking users, it can focus uncompromisingly on improving the mind-mapping experience for this particular market. And it does a good job. Information entry is slick, navigation can be through the graphical image or through a separate 'outliner' pane (called Map Explorer) and any notes attached to the selected entry are visible in another pane. It offers smooth two-way integration with Office applications such as Word, Excel and Project.

Mind-mapping started out as a very personal thing. The aim was to enable you to take notes effectively, learn quickly and plan easily. When personal computers came along, outliners grabbed our attention first, then the more graphical mind-mappers came along. As screens got bigger and resolution improved, so the visual mappers came into their own. But most people were either ignorant of the technique or they saw nothing wrong with sticking with paper and coloured pens.

Once the vendors twigged that they could be used for project work and for effective communication, the brakes came off and MindJet, MindGenius and others offer some good tools for facilitating projects from inception to completion. They also offer varying degrees of data exchange with other applications.

The thing to watch out for is how many brain cycles are consumed with actually operating the application as opposed to getting something done with it. Ideally, you want the program to more or less fade into the background while information is quickly transferred to the screen, moved around, navigated and absorbed.

Bearing this in mind, of the two applications mentioned, I must confess to a slight leaning towards MindGenius.

Am I qualified to comment? Well, I started using mind-maps in the mid-70s and wrote a mind-mapping program in 1981 which, incidentally, is still being published today from somewhere deep in Colorado. I've been using my own program habitually for 28 years and others as and when they find their way into my computer. If you'd prefer to follow a couple of subject experts, then I'd recommend Chuck Frey and Vic Gee.

Collaboration and Control

Once upon a time, the boundaries of IT management were fairly straightforward. All your customers were inside the company and exchanging digital information with the outside world was highly controlled, if it happened at all. Not only that, but you sat down and figured out the business needs and then bought or developed the appropriate software which you then ran in-house. The users were obliged to take what they were given. Not quite easy peasy, but close.

Nowadays, users have their own views. They want to collaborate electronically with each other and with the outside worlds of business partners, suppliers and customers. They want to hold webinars, share screens, instant message each other, maybe even work on wikis together and comment on each others' blogs. You have to decide whether to allow these things to happen formally or informally. If formal, at least you have some control over what holes you allow in the firewall. If informal, you've probably given them web access and told them to behave themselves. Although the social media brigade will say, "Trust everyone," only you will know if that's going to work in your organisation.

If you do try to restrict what users can do, you'll be surprised at how inventively they'll sidestep your controls. Research suggests that if they can, they will. You are driven by the need to keep the enterprise system secure. They are driven, usually, by achieving results in the most effective way. These two drivers are not usually compatible.

Knowing that 'collaboration without travel' is at the heart of their needs, you start looking around at what's available. Broadly speaking, the bottom line is a choice between an externally hosted service and one you look after yourself. The externally hosted approach is a bit nerve-wracking because all your company's digital collaborations will be stored on someone else's servers. What if something goes wrong? The service provider could fold or you could simply fall out with it. Can you get all your records back? Will they be in a usable form? This is the stuff nightmares are made of. Some very major vendors are beginning to offer such hosted services. Perhaps you'd feel more comfortable entrusting your data to an IBM, a Citrix Online or a Microsoft, for example.

But the alternative, hosting it all yourself, brings its own problems. Scaling is one, but that's probably fairly easy to address. What about your own users, who are now merrily collaborating with each other, being able to collaborate with external partners of various kinds? Your lock down could end up as a lock-out. And, in these days of close collaboration between organisations, this could be greatly to your detriment.

If partners, suppliers or customers are running different collaboration systems to you (as many will), be wary of the glib salesperson who assures you that interoperability is a piece of cake. Ask to talk to real users with similar needs to your own. Find out if your licence terms allow you to extend membership of your collaboration systems beyond the firewall. Ask a few of your business partners if they would be happy to work in this way. After all, they may be just as nervous about engaging beyond their own firewall.

It's so easy to find private systems that satisfy internal collaboration and security needs. The danger lies in forgetting that, over time, the constituency you serve is increasingly likely to involve ever larger numbers of outsiders.

Audience power and the death of deference

How do you feel if you're addressing a large group of people and some of them are hammering away on laptops and smartphones? Do you use your own kit when you're a conference delegate? If you're peeved at the first and averse to the second, then you are going to become increasingly uncomfortable as this behaviour becomes the norm.

Some would say that acting like this is disrespectful of the speaker. They make their judgements on their interpretation of what the audience is doing online. In short, they think that these delegates cannot possibly be paying attention. In fact, they could be doing a number of things, some of which are enriching their conference experience, some of which are not.

For example, they could be looking up things mentioned by the speaker, participating in the 'back channel', Tweeting what's going on, blogging, playing games, checking emails, or simply taking notes. In general, the speaker hasn't much of a clue which, unless they hear a sudden burst of laughter unconnected with the presentation. This would probably be a reaction to something that’s been said on the back channel.

More than ever, the speaker’s challenge is to capture and keep the audience’s interest and stimulate their thinking. Their ability to do this will largely determine the audience's subsequent behaviour. The audience mix will make a difference too. If they have different levels of understanding, their need to seek clarification online will vary. However, the knowledgeable are likely to be most active in the backchannel. And anyone could be making notes so the behaviour observable from the podium will be similar.

Many people claim to be able to multitask with ease - reading wikipedia while listening to a lecture, for example. With two incoming language streams, this seems an unlikely claim. It's more likely to be a case of rapid task-switching, taking advantages of pauses, dull bits and so on. Back channel activities are highly focused on the event in progress, with pretty terse individual comments. Classically, they're IRC (Internet Relay Chat), although IM (Instant Messaging) or Twitter are probably more common now. They provide a good way for audience members to keep in touch, questioning, commenting and, sometimes, reporting the action to the outside world. And, indeed, picking up feedback from outside.

Occasionally, when members of Freeform Dynamics are on the same conference call, we'll set up a temporary Skype IM group, so that we can raise and answer questions internally without wasting the speakers’ time. We might also comment to each other, “isn't this a rehash of the May announcement?”, or whatever. These things take seconds to say and read and barely ripple our concentration on the speaker. We can align our own understanding and, possibly, elect the most appropriate member of the team to ask the burning question(s) at the end. It works well and we believe that this approach helps us and the speakers get the most out of these briefings.

Some brave conference organisers have tried putting the back-channel on display to the whole audience. It doesn’t always work. While very 'open', it can be a destructive experience. A classic case was when an audience member accused the speaker of spouting bullshit. It provoked fury on the part of the speaker, followed by a massive discussion, which eclipsed the purpose of the presentation itself. Maybe it’s better to do what some others do which is to assign a colleague of the speaker to monitor the back-channel and use it to guide the subsequent Q&A and, maybe, the direction of the presentation itself.

Just as power is moving to the consumer in so many areas of life, so it is moving to the audience in conferences and other gatherings. This is especially true when they have online access to information sources, to each other and to the outside world. If the speakers are engaging and accepting of this new phenomenon, the outcomes can be positive and enriching. If they see it as an affront, then they’re going to find themselves increasingly out of step with our customer-empowered world.