Creative Chaos - Dina Mehta’s Weblog 
We’re now working with another tech company on a research project which will include blogging and the use of twitter for both participants and researchers who are located all over the world. Some issues we’re grappling with:
how much coaching and of what kind is required for those participants who are not actively using blogs […]
…. to break my blogging hiatus. How helpless we are under the force of nature’s fury. Myanmar Cyclone 28,458 deaths & 33,416 missing. China Earthquake almost 10000 dead & mounting. All of this in less than 10 days.
There’s been a huge load of blogging and tweeting live as the earthquake and its […]
There’s nothing like blog friends to make you feel guilty about ignoring your blog!!!!! Stuart first slaps his own wrist makes his affirmations a couple of days ago, Aparna pings me today with a one-liner in her sign-off on a quick chat we had today:
“ok gotto go now - will talk more about […]
… according to Clyde Bentley, who’s guest-blogging at Mark Fraser’s MediaShift is .. Comments.
Here’s the quiz of the day for 21st Century Journalism 101: What makes news critics howl, able reporters swoon and strong editors weep? (Hint: The great unwashed and untutored of the blogosphere consider them pure manna.) If I could squeeze another […]
…. does this breed exist? I got a call today asking whether I would like to blog on a freelance basis for an Indian software start-up, on their site. They sent me this email when I turned it down, and requested that their name is kept out because “we don’t want to advertise […]
I’ve enjoyed Stuart’s perspectives and reflections on Why Presenters are Failing the Social Media Communications Test, on how presenters and conference organizers can encourage, share better and benefit from the content created through social media (twitter, blogging, flickr etc), are invaluable. What’s interesting too, are the comments there. This post from Dave Snowden seems […]
Application Deadline: November 30, 2007
Rising Voices, the outreach arm of Global Voices, is now accepting project proposals for the second round of microgrant funding of up to $5,000 for citizen media outreach projects. Ideal applicants will present innovative and detailed proposals to teach citizen media techniques to communities that are poorly positioned to discover and […]
I was informed by Twitter that “Saawariya” is following you. Saawariya? Now that’s the new Bollywood movie, yet to be launched! Curious, I went over to their twitter page, and actually found it’s not a spoof (at least I think so) but actually someone involved in marketing the film. They are following 705 […]
Like for Jon Husband, this article by Dion Hinchcliffe really resonates. I’ve always been a huge fan of Dion’s visualizations of models and frameworks - check them out at Flickr - and I couldn’t resist just reposting these two here:
from SLATES:
to FLATNESSES:
Read the full post called The state of Enterprise 2.0 for detailed explanations […]
Jim McGee is celebrating his 6th blog anniversary. Congratulations Jim! He writes:
“This space is a place where I try to get my own thinking straight and a way to immerse myself in the ongoing conversation of others trying to get their thinking straight. Some of them think in like-minded ways, others in very different ways, […]
There’s been some recent discussion around whether Word of Mouth and Viral Marketing are indeed different. In my view, viral marketing is the outcome of word-of-mouth recommendations. And it’s not surprising to see Asians rely a lot on word of mouth in this study from Neilsen that reveals some interesting trends:
- 7 of […]
My blog is featured in the Sunday edition of the Indian Express today in a column called Voice of Sanity :). Thanks Stuart, for making it so readable - I’ve been getting lots of good feedback on the layout!
A good description of Gaurav Sabnis’s blog is there too.
A lowdown on the top ranking Indian […]
….. why weren’t any of these amazing ladies at the Women’s Forum? (apart from Anina and yours truly)
A day in an astrologer’s life by Jacqueline Bigar
A Girl Must Shop by Megan Garnhum
A Little Pregnant by Julie
A Luminous Halo by Cicily Corbett
Alkamar by Susan Reid
Allied by Jeneane Sessum
A Look at Art & Design: by Lisa Mikulski […]
One of the sessions that I felt would be interesting was this one. I sorely missed the fact that there was no blogger on the panel - surely bloggers are the Media too .. and one of the concerns mainstream media has around blogging is around veracity and trust! Would have loved to […]
Am speaking at the World Women’s Forum on the 11th and leaving for Paris tonight. Thought I’d just bring back a post I did a few days ago at Mosoci, on our session. There’s also going to be live-blogging from there, and I will do my bit too.
Women’s Forum for the Economy […]
is today:
Free Burma! International Bloggers’ Day for Burma on the 4th of October
International bloggers are preparing an action to support the peaceful revolution in Burma. We want to set a sign for freedom and show our sympathy for these people who are fighting their cruel regime without weapons. These Bloggers are planning to refrain from […]
Its been quiet here too long ……. the result of many many shifts. A new home, getting things to work smoothly, much travelling, transferring from a PC to a Mac, not being able to figure out how to get my Radio blog easily onto a Mac (Paolo has very graciously offered to help after I left a comment at his blog)….
And mosoci β
Mosoci is more than an idea - it is a beta platform, an emergent plan. It is jazz, bricolage and serious play. It lets us play a little music where chaos, creativity, diversity and complexity are all welcome. It fulfils our desires and needs which are driven by the fundamental experiences of our souls, to live and work in an emergent, globally connected community.
What it is not, is a formal traditional organization. We hope the lifestream we have built at the Mosoci blog demonstrates this. We want it to be more than just the two of us. Stuart spells this thought out really well:
“We
know we would not be doing this without everyone that has read our
blogs over the last few years. Social Media built the platform for our
collaboration and the sense that our network and community would
support, participate with us and help us grow. Now it is beyond an idea
and yet it is still being formulated. We certainly don’t want to end up
as just the two of us. Today though we are happy to feel like we are in
a constant state of beta. That’s the zone where it is a real rush.
Thank
you for your support, praise and interest. Our blogs and blogging will
evolve just like our other social media activities are. For example we
are really enjoying bringing our bookmarking
into the feed. For now our tweets are there too. That may be
overwhelming. Then it may also be helpful. We’ll let the readers tell
us.
It is born out of our curiosity, passion and deep belief in the strength of social technologies to make a real difference, our willingness and drive to share, learn and grow allowed us to experiment with and use those very technologies to communicate and collaborate on several projects over the years. More details from Stuart:
“Much happens today by chance. Things also emerge and we find ways to
jump on them and adapt. Over the years Dina and I have enjoyed telling
parts of our story. We first met in an online forum. I set her up
blogging “Conversations with Dina” with install instructions over an IM chat session, long before voice and video connections were possible. Skype
also helped to revolutionize our collaboration and connectivity. Open
channels between India and the US made collaboration around Learning
Journeys, research, and just links and interests possible. Working in
India for most of the last year, attending some conferences together
around the world and we knew we were at the point where where 1+1 makes
more than two.
Mosoci is the platform of our collaboratory around the interests we
love, are passionate about and to reinforce the direction and learning
we need to go in. We won’t be successful without our network and our
community and the power of social media. Blogs, wikis, forums, twitter,
bookmarking have enabled who we are today.”
You may ask, what does Mosoci do? Simply put, a) we immerse ourselves in research and deep dives, b) we facilitate change and help re-frame value for organizations. The time and opportunity to conduct and deliver research and strategies in new ways is here. We constantly push the boundaries with emerging
social tools (blogs, wikis, SMS, RSS, social networks, beta
communities), with clients when and as appropriate. We want to take this practice, this method of working, along with others who are doing some excellent work in this field, to the whole world.
Let’s create that map together, in the hope that the map will bring forth the features of the territory. We want your comments, perspectives, and just plain old honest
help and advice to make this a success. We are open to suggestion and
really don’t want to stop at just a few of us.
It would be great if you would jump in on the conversation at Mosoci and add Mosoci Feed to your reader. We’d love your feedback and suggestions.
I will be in the US from July 18th to 27th - am attending meetings in Cambridge MA on the 19th and 23rd. Have some free time over the weekend July 21-22nd. Am meeting up with Yazad who touched base with me on Facebook when I mentioned I was going - and looking forward to meeting him on Sunday. Would love to meet up with bloggers and other folks in the Boston area who are interested in the social media scene or in qualitative research and ethnography or just want to hangout and yak!
I will also be in London for a few days on my way back - July 29-31st where I am going to hangout with friends. Again, would love to meet anyone who’s free on those days.
Do drop in a comment here or send me email to dina(dot)mehta(at)gmail(dot)com if you’d like to meet up.
Had an interesting interaction with an FMCG Client for whom we are setting up some presentations and workshops around how they can take their brands into the social media realm. I sent a client a detailed note on what we could provide, and she forwarded it to one of the marketing guys who felt it is exciting, but perhaps too focussed on blogging and not enough on youtube!
I dashed off a response to the person who is leading this effort that she must frame this workshop for her organization, only then can she get buy-in. It is one thing for us as consultants to deliver on the content, but because it is such a new field here, and because of the tremendous hype and buzz around it, there are many misconceptions; the most salient one being that blogs are individual personal spaces.
My response to her:
Please frame the workshop when you send it out internally - some thoughts on that … assure them we will talk about youtube and many many many more such
services like flickr, twitter, podcasting, facebook etc. All these
are microblogging applications. And we will do a whole session on
facebook - which is the latest ‘hottie’ and is a platform where users
are encouraged not only to create their ‘user-generated’ content, but
also build new applications bottom-up.
I think there is a mismatch here in what your team
understands about what blogging is - and what it actually is. Most
non-bloggers seem to refer to blogging as merely writing a diary. But
that’s not complete, nor does it do blogging any justice. Blogging is the act of publishing content online
in a space that is yours - usually chronologically ordered. It could be
videos, audio, short text messages, photos - all forms of multimedia.
It could be in your own space where usually you use a text-driven
blogging platform, and to which you can add plugins for a multimedia
experience, or it could be within a social network space - like
youtube, twitter, etc
So, in the presentation unless they understand what blogging
really is - and what influence bloggers have, I think we will be doing
the social media space no justice at all. Moreover, it is bloggers
that are the early adopters, analysts and consultants in this space —
unless they had built it, it would not exist. Much the same in the
potential for products and brands. They are the new influentials - and
they have the potential to really evangelize or rant big time.
This is not just an international phenomenon - a recent study
in India revealed that 85% of active internet users claimed to read
blogs regularly! This is their growing influence. Today most news
channels in India have a list of bloggers they call
upon on general stories they are covering - to get the buzz on what’s
going around on the web. When Sunita Williams and her safe return to earth was the big thing on TV, I was asked by a TV Channel to participate in a show on it - I turned it down, as it was not really relevant to either blogging or my areas of interest - but that’s a different issue. A lot of civic and political action is now
being mobilized through mobile phones and online. Many of these use
blogging platforms for their causes, and build large communities around
them by taking them into Orkut and Facebook.
Global Voices Online has announced the first five citizen media outreach projects to receive Rising Voices microgrants.
Congratulations to all those receiving the grant - I really believe this is a huge step for blogging outreach programmes!
| "Conversation. What is it? A Mystery! It's the art of never seeming bored, of touching everything with interest, of pleasing with trifles, of being fascinating with nothing at all. How do we define this lively darting about with words, of hitting them back and forth, this sort of brief smile of ideas which should be conversation?" Guy de Maupassant |  |
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