Came across this blog post - Klout, Big Data and Opting Out  by Fred McClimans via @gautamghosh and liked this quote, among other things: “There’s nothing in the dark that isn’t there when the lights are on.” Rod Serling.  I tweeted it, and @rajeshlalwani responds:

Rajesh’s quote immediately made me think of Shakespeare and his monologue from As You Like It. How true it is centuries later, for Social Media, and in the context of the raging discussions around privacy and big data! All seven acts and seven ages, as described by Shakespeare collide at such a fast pace on multiple stages. We’re visible to invisible audiences. We’re being edited by invisible algorithms.

And we are exposed.

I’ve tweeted it and facebooked it … but this is still my space, my main lifestream and my first love … and although I haven’t been blogging much, I thought I’d  share my talk on the Future of Insights which I made at the India Social Summit 2012.

Here’s the deck on Slideshare – in fully downloadable format, along with the talk script:

And here’s is a video of my rather rushed presentation at the India Social Summit 2012.

Crossposting from the Convo Blog

Blographies add to the conversation! We’ve been using the term “Blography” to help explain how we capture information for clients on longer ethnographic research projects in a real-time immersive and agile way. As all our team members are using blog it was only natural to consider where they fit in a research program today. For the client (reader) it’s a great and transparent way to see how our field work is progressing. A typical project today combines direct inputs from participants; typically forms (mobile or PC enabled) which result in blog posts and updates to the common database. This creates a number of benefits.

Discussions with the client can become real-time. This is particularly important when doing more longitudinal studies. Our client blog-space remains completely private. Which means we can have an ongoing conversation around everything from transcripts, interview summaries, emerging themes, planning and scheduling, to diary updates, questions of the week for participants etc.

There’s a second aspect. Blographies can save money and get greater depth. We find we are using them more and more to screen participants, target further areas for inquiry. We are also using them to set up and get to know participants before running co-creation workshops with them.

It also means – at the end of the job you also get a repository of information that is accessible, searchable, and readily sorted into new categories or tagged to be looked at in different ways. If required we can even turn it into a “book” for you.

Slides from my talk at Startup Saturday Mumbai today.

And still, it’s Independence Day in India tomorrow. (Today is Pakistan’s Independence Day – reaching out to all those devastated by the Pakistan floods.). Our media is full of the obligatory ‘cliched’ thoughts on freedom – corruption, poor governance, terrorism, naxalism, separatism, communalism, overpopulation, poverty etc et etc – ably supported by commercialization of the weekend, with obese pages of Independence Day retail ads, deals and discounts – each one cashing in on the the ‘liberated consumer’. I’d like to share some interesting reads this Saturday, on the brink of our 64th year of Independence. What I like about this selection of articles is that they are talking about specific notions of freedom – migration and free speech – not very much new content, but nicely written thought and thematic pieces that force me to look outside my urban elitist wired window.

Migration and Freedom:

I began with the Outlook Independence Day issue – The Mobile Republic – which is devoted to the challenges  migrants face, and the  faultlines of migration in India. Underlying this issue is the theme of an unequal India, one that pretends to be inclusive, but the cracks are many. This map reveals how much migration there actually is – making sense of mobility – metadata:

Nandan Nilekani, in his column We, The Innumerable talks of the ‘dual track’ in our development (sometimes I feel we are quite schizophrenic as a country, esp. when I travel to rural areas), and the need for a sense of ‘personhood’:

Nevertheless, growth in India is still, visibly, ‘dual track’, with the rapid transformation of urban India and the income growth of the middle class contrasting sharply with the rural country, where growth still remains an attractive but uncertain promise, and people’s aspirations are often cheek to cheek with their frustrations. Here, among the dust of the village and the faded wheat fields, it is difficult to comprehend the momentum of the Indian city.

The risk of being left behind

In the period when India experienced slow, near-stagnant growth rates, one humorous remark was that in India ‘everything proceeds at the rate of the slowest member’. The challenge today may be the opposite: that India’s breathtaking growth, combined with high rates of inequality, will leave too many behind and make the problem of our ‘slowest members’—lagging sectors and regions—an especially urgent one. In fact, in our rapidly expanding economy, inclusive growth thus becomes an even larger priority—else inequity left unaddressed means that the people left behind find themselves falling further behind every year, as the differences become too significant to overcome.

Neelabh Mishra talks of the Pardesi’s Perils - in this case, its not about migrating abroad but from state to state within the country:

Land sharks, labour contractors, businesses that need labourers in large numbers, politicians—they all feed the middle-class anxiety such a situation creates to make the migrants even more vulnerable. For instance, in Jaipur and Ajmer, a perverse reduction is being deployed: all migrants are Bengali speakers, all Bengali speakers are in fact illegal Bangladeshi Muslims, all crime and terrorist activity is their work. Whipping up communal frenzy in this way makes it easy both to deliver up slum clusters as real estate to builders and constituencies to politicians of a certain hue. Similar processes—not confined to Jaipur or Ajmer, and which other political parties are certainly not above using—create volatile situations exploited to the hilt by the predators who create them.

There is also another kind of faultline, created when powerful migrants arrive to prey upon weaker locals. The tribals of Jharkhand have long resented the Diku, or the outsider, first British, then Bengali, and later Marwari or Bihari, who exploited them. The tribals of Dantewada and Bastar too have similar terms to express their resentment for migrant communities that have long exploited them. Reduced to a minority in their own land, Jharkhand tribals first sought a separate state; now they are entwined in the Maoist insurgency. In Dantewada, many tribals are fighting a near civil war against the State, again under Maoist leadership.

And there are many other articles on migrants and their stories of success and pain as they strive for different dimensions of freedom in the ‘new’.

Free Speech

On, to Livemint Lounge – an issue dedicated to Free Speech. Well done @priyaramani and team – some great articles there. From Sunil Khilnani’s ‘A case for offence’ (he’s the author of The Idea of India):

All beliefs command a certain political respect—they should be heard. But let’s be equally clear that not all beliefs are equal, nor should they all be shown equal respect in intellectual or moral terms. Some beliefs are correct, others are false; some are better, others are worse. To think that the belief that widows should be burned on their husband’s funeral pyres stands on a par with the belief that all young girls should be educated, is morally repulsive and intellectually stupid.

But how are we to find this out, how do we come to evaluations that lead us to reject some beliefs—even if they are embedded in religious world views—and to embrace others? Such matters are not to be found out by consulting holy books or scriptural authorities; nor by polling the offended sentiments of religious believers.

We like to think of ourselves as argumentative, as debaters welcoming of diverse views and energized by confrontation. In reality though, what passes for argument is melodrama: shouting past one another, whether in Parliament and state assemblies, in TV studios, or at a railway counters; or else a timid refusal to really engage at all, a cowardly deference to “sentiment”.

The truth is, we’re not very good at tolerating views that question, mock or subvert our accepted beliefs—especially if we happen to be able to describe these as our religious beliefs. This collective chippiness—which makes us boastful and seeking the approval of others, but unwilling to take their criticism or questioning—is not a conducive psychological precondition in favour of free speech.

Salil Tripathi’s essay – We are not Free – on how our laws are restricting our freedom:

And today, those laws restrict Indian freedoms. Argumentative Indians? Maybe—so long as the argument is about cricket, or cinema, or perhaps mangoes. As the injunction says in an Irani restaurant in Mumbai, discussion about religion and politics is out of bounds. But you can talk about cutting chai and bun muska, while the owner’s father’s portrait looks over you, deciding what you can speak and think.

Technology and Freedom

I’ve yet to see much written about the intersection of technology and freedom. The articles made me reflect upon the special blend of relationship between technology & migrants, and technology & free speech. Both are complex issues – with many dichotomies. On the one hand, access to mobile phones and computers is known to empower the disadvantaged and the poor – however access issues and cost create a digital divide.  In research studies we have conducted among migrant workers and technology, we’ve found that the cell phone is often the new calling card and gives migrants a sense of ‘personhood’ (to steal Mr. Nilekani’s term). It’s also a device that brings the city (work, play, relationships, entertainment, services) to them – equal opportunities??? – that’s perhaps pushing it too far. But ironically, the same cell phone and the internet can become divisive tools – when used to arouse feelings of hatred and to mobilize crowds to violate their fundamental rights as human beings and citizens of India, as the vile MNS does in Bombay.

Then there is the whole issue around free speech and censorship. These two polarizations seem to continually blend into each other, amplifying one another, feeding the divisions. Sometimes I feel, the more we change, the more we remain the same .. or even go a few steps back. Doesn’t really make sense, but it would seem that the more we (people) speak and voice our views enabled by technology, (through mainstream media and social media eg. twitter, facebook, sms, BBM, blogs, flickr, youtube etc.), the more the government feels the need to impose on our freedoms and invade our right to privacy, by censoring us and taking away access. First, Blackberry, next Google, Skype?  One may argue that  there is justification with all the terror attacks and threats. Still, these bans only  feed back into us shouting even louder, more viciously and manipulatively and sometimes unreasonably.

None of this is freedom for anyone really.

And it’s not just the government that we incite and who incites us – caste groups, fanatical religious groups, political parties, big corporations and interest lobbies who often hide behind the face of the government, and even just ordinary people like you and me who have different views from ours and feel they have the right to say just about anything to anybody.

So we shout. They try to stifle our voice. We use our social networks and communities to amplify and spread our voice, and our opinions. We shout louder and more viciously for our freedoms, and find ways of attacking back and circumventing bans. One such case was when the Government tried to ban blogs – prompted by some misguided sense of nationalism -inept censorship at its best!  And a few times I’ve been on the other side where I’ve been forced to close or delete comments, invoking my own powers of censorship over my blog.

Sanjukta Sharma writes so aptly, in her introduction to the free speech series:

We celebrate the old and new kinds of free speech in this special issue. It’s a freedom, the lack of which we remember every other day. Our right to freedom of expression in the Constitution has “reasonable restrictions”—the “reasonable” often bordering on the bizarre. Hurt sentiments over calling Billu a barber; outrage over the biography of a national hero; violent attacks on those who commemorate the spirit of a certain fun-loving St Valentine with sweet nothings and oblong-shaped balloons—something irks somebody all the time. If you laugh at Indianness, you are booed. If you have a mind, you are stupid and deserve to be called names.

The free speech issue, not surprisingly, became less about freedom and more about censorship and restriction—in art, movies, erotica and the public sphere.

The question then is, who is really free in all this? Is it possible that the louder we all shout, we stop listening to each other? And when we stop listening, we cannot understand or empathize with the underlying issues and signals beyond all the noise – real issues faced by those who censor and are being censored.

And when we stop listening, we live with fear. Look at the mess the USA is in today – fear seems to have been one of the key operating themes driving many of their decisions in the last decade.

If fear frames our next decade, we will never really be free.

Daily updates on what I’m reading. Links with my notes. I also just tweet links and things that interest me @dina

• A Social Publishing Strategy by @gkjohn at @kanter covers education/publishing. love the skype reading sessions esp. -

“Our strategy has relied upon being part of a larger mission, providing meaningful and valuable content, curating information and content for the community, using a legal framework that allows for a participatory culture and lastly, in time, providing a space for the community to assist in the mission by creating content themselves. The last part, a community publishing platform, is something we are working on with the Connexions Project and a brief video about it is here. It’s still a journey we are on and we’ve had many success till date  - Skype reading sessions across countries, helping us get books to children across the country, audio books created for the blind, iPad apps being made of our content and so much more.  Here’s some details about some of social tactics:

Skype reading sessions: This project started after a few tweets were exchanged between a librarian from Central Manor, Pennsylvania. We started off by people from our organization having Skype reading sessions with a few children and then moved onto having sessions with entire classes. On 20th March, 2009, we managed to hold a Skype storytelling session between kids from Akshara Foundation’s community library and a class from Central Manor.The purpose is to go beyond being just a publisher. Through these activities we are encouraging reading, learning and connecting children from different communities and backgrounds. Channels used: Twitter, Skype, Blog

Inviting people to remix/repurpose our content: As a publisher, we have a lot of content available which we want people to access as easily as possible. In our attempt to do so, we have managed to license some of our books under Creative Commons licenses. Now, if we can’t publish a book in Assamese, but a teacher in Assam wants to do so, she doesn’t have to worry about copyright infringement. We have also put up some of the illustrations of our books so that people can remix or repurpose them. Channels used : Scribd, Blog, Flickr

Facilitators/connecting organisations and people: @Anorakmagazine found us on Twitter and asked if they could send us some back issues of their magazines to share with kids in India. Once the books arrived, they were sent to the community libraries run by Akshara Foundation. We also helped coordinate a drawing project that Anorak Magazine wanted to involve the children with. Now, some of the kids have their work published in an international children’s magazine.Channels used: Twitter

Audio books for the National Association of Blind : This project started off because of another blog post (on the Helen Keller Talking Library project) that got automatically updated to our Twitter account. @owos then messaged us to tell us about a similar intiative Radio Mirchi had started. Then another tweep (@barkhad) told us that she had registered with Radio Mirchi but they didn’t get back to her. So, we got in touch with Radio Mirchi to talk about a blog post and while we were talking, she asked if we would be interested in having our books recorded by Radio Mirchi for the National Association of the Blind. We also requested if @barkhad could record one of our books and they agreed. So, our Twitter friend went offline and recorded a book in their Delhi studio! Channels used: Blog, Twitter

Passing it on – the book edition: We read about about a bunch of kids in Kolkata who went around with a van full of books to reach kids who didn’t have access to books and even went on to teach the kids how to read. After reading about this initiative, one of our trustees volunteered to sponsor some Bengali books if we could find these kids. We mailed the news bureau which published the article, but were unable to get a response. So, we decided to see if the Twitter community could help us. Within half an hour of sending out a tweet, we had a volunteer who said he would get us the information and by the next day we had an address and contact number. Within a few days, Bengali books were sent by us to these kids.From this story, we decided to start an initiative which would allow our online community to participate…to help these kids as well as other kids. Channels used: Twitter, Blog, Facebook

What we’ve found is that honestly, transparency and accountability are the three most important elements of any social media strategy.   A longer case study that we had written up is available on the IndiaSocial site.

• iSay, you say, we all say, to Nokia – neat post by @rashmibansal who’s got herself an iPhone – Rashmi Bansal shares why she will never go back to a Nokia phone, and gives Nokia some good advice!!

CLIPs: “Nokia is still a market leader in the lower end handsets. But there too companies like Micromax are coming in aggressively with high end features at very competitive rates.” It’s time for Nokia to go back into the laboratory and come up with something that make you want to chuck what you have and buy a new one. Imagine a stunningly good-looking girl with an IQ of 180 – but in the form of a phone.”

“… Just a few crazy ideas. I am sure there are designers and engineers out there can come up with much better. Because product lifecycles are getting shorter and shorter. If you’re not dreaming ‘what next’, ‘what more’, your brand is one step closer to the grave. Nokia still enjoys tremendous goodwill, and marketshare. But it needs some stardust to sprinkle on consumers. To work its magic spell, to mesmerise us into saying “lena to Nokia hi hai, question is ‘which model’!”

This is a post that’s long overdue, since the time the film was released! I was spurred to write it this morning, as I’m quite excited to be on a panel discussion at the screening of Tactical Tech’s film called 10 Tactics – Turning Information into Action.

The screening is at the Conference Room of National College, Bandra today and is being hosted by Point of View.  I’m often asked what Info-Activism is, and this film is a must-see for all those who are curious about, interested in and work in the area. I’m also often asked whether I’m a rights activist or a digital activist – and I say no, I’m an ethnographer and researcher who is sometimes an accidental information activist. I’d also broaden the scope of the relevance of these 10 Tactics to those who are working in the social media area, and to those in the corporate world, who’s focus of work is in developing products, services and strategies in a world where customers, users, consumers are already exchanging information, having conversations, and learning often much faster than organizations are. Or simply, it’s for those who care and already use these tools – how can you get more involved in making a difference?

From the 10 Tactics website:

What is 10 Tactics?

10 tactics provides original and artful ways for rights advocates to capture attention and communicate a cause. It includes a 50-minute film documenting inspiring info-activism stories from around the world and a set of cards; with tools tips and advice, for you to work through as you plan your own info-activism

The film features 35 info-activism stories told from the point of view of advocates in 24 different countries including Lebanon, India, Tunisia, Egypt, Kenya, Indonesia, South Africa and the UK.

The film is shared at the website as 10 Tactics, along with Tactics cards that cover a case study, a video story, suggestions and tips, and a featured tool. The 10 Tactics are:

1. Mobilizing people
2. Witness and record
3. Visualize your message
4. Amplify personal stories
5. Just add humour
6. Manage your contacts
7. How to use complex data
8. Use collective intelligence
9. Let people ask the questions
10. Investigate and expose

(I’m featured in Tactic 8 – Use Collective Intelligence – here’s the gist of what I said – “We have communities that we have developed over time in several spaces on the web – on blogs, Facebook, Twitter. What these tools allow you to do is network with all of your online communities, to operate as hubs of connected people. So when something happens and you need to respond, it’s about the spontaneous mobilisation of a community that already exists online, through the multiple nodes and hubs that you have created as you leave your footprints on the web.”

Tactic 8 – Use collective intelligence from Tactical Technology Collective on Vimeo.)

The project came about at the Info-Activism camp held in February 2009, which I was very privileged to have attended.

We’ve also used collective intelligence and swarming way back in 2004 when the Tsunamis had devastated parts of Asia and then again in 2005 during Hurricane Katrina – each of these on a different scale, and using other technologies like blogs and wikis and Skype.

If you’re interested in this area, make sure you view the whole film, all 10 tactics! And there are screenings all over the world, so do go for them, and participate in the discussions.

I was asked this question at the Anthrodesign group, in the context of a conversation around getting into the swing of a project and developing some working momentum . I shared there, how I often find myself turning to my blog and twitter communities for helping me with my thinking on qualitative and ethnographic research projects. I was then asked these questions: Could you elaborate a bit more on how you tap into your twitter community? with the limited character set, do you drive them to answer in more detail on your blog? How effective have you found twitter in generating meaningful conversations and resources?

Sharing my response here with a few modifications – there are many many ways I use Twitter, apart from keeping in touch with people, the world, and sharing warm fuzzy feelings or rants. I’ll try and describe some of these:

• If I’m looking for advice (from a community I trust) on say which phone to buy next, or where to find macbook chargers, or how to solve a particular problem I find I can really rely on my twitter community.  During the Mumbai 26/11 terror attacks Twitter was what kept many of us feeling ‘safe’ (in the way of experiencing it together) and connected to the outside world, as we were stuck in our homes. We also used it to try and reach out to people who were affected – eg. sourced and published lists of victims from hospitals (and directed people to those lists via links on twitter). I’ve often also used Twitter to help mobilize action around immediate causes like someone needing blood of a certain group in a specific hospital. But these are all very specific short term needs being addressed by quick responses.

• I often use Twitter (and my blog – they’re linked BTW) to have meaningful conversations, tease out some areas, ask for help on resources, opinions, suss out experts, or participants for studies. Obviously, with no mention of the actual client or specific subject of research. A recent example – a client is looking to understand Durability as a driver for purchase in her category, and I  broadened the issue and asked a question on Twitter  - the thought to actually blog this series started off with this tweet – and responses to it - looking for evidence that ‘durability’ as a brand proposition isn’t a big purchase driver for youth today. egs, links anecdotes welcome!”.  Sometimes its linked back to my blog, or to something someone else has published and I’m always amazed at both the depth and width in the sharing of perspectives that it evokes.

• And I use it increasingly to share links around what I’m reading or find interesting. The way I do it, is bookmark the link on Delicious and I’ve automated it to show both at my blog, and on Twitter. Often, these are starting points for meaningful conversations among several tweeters who share similar interests. And as importantly, if not more, I get to see all their marvelous links too!

• Or to live-tweet an event I’m at, as I did with TEDIndia last year and then just aggregated my tweets at my blog, and TedXMumbai more recently. The interesting thing about such tweets is you actually have people responding back in real-time, you feel your community is ‘present’ too, and often their questions and comments are shared back at the conferences. These could be conferences around my areas of work too.

• To amplify interesting thoughts, ideas, requirements, needs of others I follow on twitter thru RTs.

• Every post I make on my blog, every bookmark I link to at Delicious – is tweeted. As a result, it helps me broadcast my thoughts, and encourages people to come in and add to the conversation. It really doesn’t bother me where they do this – as today it’s possible to weave much of this into a lifestream of sorts. (I know this might be annoying to those who follow my blog, my twitter profile, and facebook as there can be much repetition – I need to find a way to sort this one out!)

So to answer the question more directly … I find I’m using Twitter increasingly both as a quick-byte sort of space – in and out, and as a gateway or pipe through which information and conversations flow!

Would love to hear your views – How do you use twitter or your blog in generating meaningful conversations and resources around what you do?

Not new, but a good reminder through a neat collation of tips on how to deal with a digital business crisis. It is meant for marketers and social media agencies operating in the Enterprise 2.0 space, either for marketing their brands, services or for managing corporate reputation.

Introduction to the Presentation: This is a practical guide for using social media for crisis management. We developed this at Ogilvy within the 360 Digital Influence and Public Afairs teams. It offers 5 trends, a framework to follow and 5 keys to managing a crisis. This was delivered as a live session across Asia in partnership with the Wall Street Journal and support from GoToWebinar

I was chatting with a friend today who’s not a Twitter user, and trying to explain why I like it, and why so many people do too. I found myself turning to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and his Theory of Human Motivations to try and explain this. I discovered this blog post titled The Hierarchy of Tweets at the Innovation Diaries, with this clever diagram based on Maslow’s model. The author makes an interesting connection between what motivates people and how these needs are expressed in 140 characters:

Click to Enlarge

I also discovered this neat little blog post by students of new media at the University of Amsterdam, where the question discussed is whether Twitter is in fact a tool that nourishes our social needs or is it in fact, increasing our needs to keep track of our friends every minute of the day? Here’s a clip:

Humans are social beings with social needs. We need each other to grow as well. Rom Harré describes in his book ‘Social Being’ that we exist as persons for ourselves and other people. We exist solely by the virtue of networks of relations in which we stand to other human beings of our kind. We are partially created by other people and our actions and interactions are jointed actions [3]. Twitter in this case would be a platform on which network of relations are enhanced. Networks are created and the followers you have and you follow are people you have shared interest with; they are ‘humans beings of our kind.’ Aristotle on the other hand speaks of how achieving the good life. We all have social needs and to have a good, successful and happy life we need to socialize with others. And because humans are by nature social beings it is good to live in a society in which the social life is mostly based on a community. Social life in a community is a necessity for a human’s complete flourishing as a human being. Another aspect that Aristotle addresses is friendship. This mutual admiration between two human beings is a necessity. This moral admiration for one and another is essential in friendships and taking advantage of these friendships can make a person fully human. [4]. The Maslow’s hierarchy of needs also addresses this fact. After physical and safety needs we all have our social needs. According to Maslow these social needs involve emotionally based relationships such as friendship and intimacy.

And how can one forget this piece – Understanding the Psychology of Twitter – at Moses Ma’s The Tao of Innovation Blog, written in March 2009.

All this research took me back to 2007, when I had talked about Social Media Strategies – Let’s Remember Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. I had then said:

Click to Enlarge - Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

Web 2.0 companies have shown the way – their products are in perpetual beta, their architecture and marketing is decentralized, they encourage communities of users to self-organize around them. Recently, in an email to Rob, I wrote …. I think one of the most difficult things for people to do is give up control and relinquish ‘power’ to the many unless they see tangible ‘cost-per-click’ sort of gains. It’s the single largest barrier to accepting and adopting a process that is different to one we have been so conditioned to. Sadly, what few realise the act of giving up that power itself can be so empowering for them – why is WordPress gaining popularity – why is Flickr so popular – why are del.icio.us and Skype and so many others gaining traction today? They weren’t built in a day and pushed onto us as a final product or service – they are being built by and around the community that breathes them. The folks behind them had the guts and vision to say – let’s see how our customers ‘play’ – how they self-organize into networks (developers for instance) – embrace the criticisms with the accolades – and build around what they build. Chaos ….. and creativity. So powerful.

and

I’m not one of those academics who is framework-crazy or model-crazy, still it is good to pause sometimes, and reflect on their relevance and application, especially those that deepen our understanding of basic human motivations , which directly affect how we work, play and even ‘consume’. Triggered by the link I discovered today, I’m amazed at how relevant some of these models are, in our understanding and appreciation of the work we are doing in the social media strategy space. So much of our own social media usage that goes to form what Ton refers to as our distributed self, is driven by these needs – del.icio.us, furl, facebook, blogging, flickr, youtube, twitter, plazes, skype, last.fm – the list is never-ending! As I think about each, I see each one fulfilling a different need, and yet coming together to form a lifestream that is driven by the ‘gestalt’, often sub-conscious, of my own needs.

Moreover, the ability for brands and organisations to be in beta, and to listen and engage in Social Media – those that can take that leap, will be fulfilling some of the higher-order needs in the classic pyramid model, and in Jennifer’s circle, forming and providing ecosytems to their customers that enable the fulfillment of these needs. Ultimately, good marketing and PR is always one that delivers on meeting customer needs.

Something marketers, consultants, techies and geeks, and PR folks who are working in the area of Blogger Relations, Social Media and Web 2.0 should well keep in mind when they design their projects, processes, products or services and strategies!

An article titled Social Networking plagues India Inc which is based on a survey conducted by Assocham just goes to show that they’re really sleeping or threatened, while their world’s moving forward!

A recent national survey conducted by the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India’s (Assocham) Social Development Foundation revealed that 84% of Indian employees who have access to the world wide web are showing symptoms of internet addiction. They spend more than the “normal’’ amount of time online, and show signs of irritability when they are interrupted from surfing, concludes the study.

With 93% of youngsters saying they were aware of social networking sites, and most averaging an hour a day on MySpace, LinkedIn, Orkut, et al, employers are looking at a productivity loss of nearly 12.5% every day. “The growing use of browsing sites can be dangerous for overall productivity. IT companies have already installed software to restrict use,” said Assocham secretary general D S Rawat said”.

And this, from a psychiatrist and HRD trainer:

“On the other hand, being constantly logged online and indulging in ‘faceless’ communication is detrimental to one’s health,’’ he said. Dr Rajendra Barve, psychiatrist and HRD trainer concurred “This mindset is making people a slave to machines,’’ he said.

India Inc, and Dr. Barve, you must be kidding!!  Build firewalls, and people will find ways across them. Kill their access on their computers, and they will turn to their mobile phones as your study has shown.  How will you block that? They will never stop, because the internet is a way of life, with its own ecology, culture and social behaviours that more often than not, enhance our world. It is a part of my world, and yours, and theirs. It is not a fad that will pass and it’s definitely not about “faceless communication”, nor is it a drug you get addicted to.

You must learn how to embrace it, and use the flows to your advantage in this emerging knowledge economy. Here‘s a start. [picture credit: Gaping Void].

Update: Bonus Link – Can an organization not be ready for Enterprise 2.0? [via @dhinchcliffe]

I asked this question on Twitter this morning and have had fabulous responses from a very alert and vibrant community there. Thought I’d share:

My question – need egs of advertising anchored in rites of passage – rituals assocd w transitional points – eg. grad’n, wedding, baby… help pls!!!

The answers:

Thank you all!  I love Twitter – naah the people who make up Twitter!!!

Digital Strangelove …. the Intention Economy … or WTF Social Media?  David Gillespie,  Account Director at Maclaren McCann, Toronto shares a great presentation (263 slides). There’s a lot that speaks to the fact that all media is social, it is about people not technology, paid vs free, attention vs intention, the need to listen and not just ‘speak’ etc etc – things we’ve been hearing about for years.  I particularly like how he frames it as a new age requiring new stories and new storytellers, where digital is not a ‘thing’ anymore! Take that in a brand context or a journalism context and having observed how social media is being used, I can’t help feeling WTF – this presentation only reinforces the feeling that practitioners of and experts in traditional media are in fact novices in this space, if they are trying to control user-generated content, as many do!  Love this quote he uses from Ralph Waldo Emerson too:

“As to methods there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble.”

Description form the author – “This is a collection of thoughts around where we are right now in the history of the Internet. I believe we’re getting ahead of ourselves, confusing the growth of the Internet with it growing up, but I also believe we’re doing some amazing things, and can draw a few lines in the sand, making some solid guesses on where we are going.I hope you enjoy”

This one’s especially for my more recent readers and newer members of my community here, on Facebook and on Twitter.  I was interviewed by BlogAdda. It was interesting to be able to reflect a bit upon my early days of blogging from 2003, and introspect on how blogging has changed me and my world!  I’ve stayed away from mentioning all my early blogging buddies – you know who you are – but focussed on how we shared, learned and grew together. It was also nice to touch briefly upon my research and ethnography experiences, more on which you can find here.

Some snippets “stolen” from the interview:

Click below to read it in full. Enjoy!