I can’t deny the fact that I’m still a student at QUT, even if I am trying to graduate my degree ASAP.

As a student, I was fortunate enough to attend a forum tonight on QUT’s approach to flexible learning. The forum’s goal was to gather qualitative information on the thoughts of Business Faculty students about what flexible learning means to us, and how we see QUT moving forward into a new era of education. While it was an e-mail invite, I got the impression that some pre-selection went on - a lot of the students were in final year, and seemed intelligent enough to have relatively high GPAs.

What I took away from the forum was that QUT was investigating three areas of ‘flexibility’ - flexibility in assessment, in technology use, and in content delivery / engagement.

Technology Cannot Be Ignored

I self-selected and got involved in the technology break off discussion. What really hit home for me was how poorly students from the Business faculty understand the capacity of technology in their learning environment, and both the positive and negative implications of utilising different tech options.

For example, there was a big push by everyone in the session to encourage QUT to record lectures - but their definition of “recording” was an audio track overlayed on top of ’screen captures’ of the slides and overheads being presented.

My opinion on this approach should be obvious (there are better options) - but it’s the fact that this was proposed because it’s what the Law Faculty has done in the past. I brought up a counter-argument on the capacity of ALL students to be able to utilise these recordings: there are students out there who don’t have access to a laptop, who can’t download and store 13 weeks of 100MB audio files per subject due to limited internet access and harddrive space. Should they be disadvantaged because they’re too poor or unable to provide the facilities we all assume they should have? Or does QUT get to follow the 80:20 rule in education?

What About Interactivity?

I floated the idea of interactivity in education, and encouraging students to get involved with each other and with the topics covered by utilising social media and alternative communication channels. It seemed to go over the head of a lot of the attendees. They had a preconceived notion of what “flexible” meant, and what they personally believed was the right approach.

It’s All A Big Misunderstanding

It was confronting to realise that, once again, not everyone understands the capabilities of this digital and social media space. There is an opportunity here for QUT to listen and pay attention to professionals with experience - it’s not a time to stick their heads in the sand and pretend they still live in a silo’d world circa 1962. The education revolution has happened - we are learning differently. I feel like getting on my knees and pleading with the Business Faculty, and with the University at large, to not waste this opportunity to integrate world-changing technology and ideas into the foundation of the university experience.

Image courtesy of Trav and Nan

My friend @psychochicken asked me a few days ago for a quick run down on personal branding. He’s applying for some new work, and wanted to see how he could leverage himself into a better position than other applicants. I had a quick think, and here’s what I came up with.

***

You are trying to make a connection. You have the ability to sell yourself, because you have that internal confidence. You just need to get past the first round of vetting by making the recruiter want to know more.

How do I do that?

By standing out. By doing something different that makes the recruiter sit up and go “Hmm.” And that “Hmm.” moment is all you need to get the foot in the door.

So here are five quick personal branding tips when making a connection, with focus on online.

1. Be Human

You are not a robot, and neither is the person you’re communicating with. Write in your voice. If you use cliched terms in your communications, edit them out. Read what you wrote to yourself. If any of it sounds stupid, hackneyed, or “not you”, cut it.

2. Ask “So What”?

The “So What?” question is important. Does what you’re saying matter? Read everything you’ve said about yourself, and then ask “So What?” If you can’t see why it’s there, explain it. If you can’t explain it, cut it. Have a point.

3. Be Concise

Make the point of the communication as clear as possible. Have a structure - don’t ramble. Show that you value their time.

4. Have a Home Base

You don’t need to rely on just a piece of paper to sell yourself. We live in a digital world - so send the recruiter to a home base. A website, a blog, your LinkedIn profile, your Twitter stream. The resume is just a small part of your entire personal brand - it’s used to gather interest, and make them want to know more. Facilitate that. Extend beyond what everyone else is doing.

5. Offer Value

Consider what value you are offering to the recruiter, and consider it HARD. If you’re not providing a great product, why should I care about your brand in the first place? Why should I care about you? What makes YOU stand out?
It may be something intangible (personality), or it may be something tangible (previous work experience).

You don’t need to get those five perfect. You just need to do it well enough to stand out above other candidates. Consider that most jobs aren’t just about experience - it’s also about personality. Give them a sense of you.

***

I then went on to give a specific how-to for each step, related to formatting of the resume, the type of words to use in relation to the advertisement, and a lot of time spent on the cover letter.

Those five tips are so simple, yet a lot of applicants don’t think of it in those terms. I’m not saying that this is the be all end all, nor that the tips are infallible - there are better personal brand manifestos out there than this, but this is just the beginning. It’s all about baby steps, and creating something powerful.

Could you see yourself utilising these ideas? Have you done it in the past, and not realised what you were doing? I’m interested to know!

Image courtesy of socialisbetter

If you’ve been living in a cave the last few weeks, there has been a great public outcry on the internet. Senator the Hon. Stephen Conroy, Minister for Broadband, Communications, and the Digital Economy has proposed a ‘clean feed’ of the internet to Australian citizens, which if passed will filter content at the ISP level to the average internet user.

The Australian blogosphere has literally exploded with condemnations, open letters, and comparisons to the Great Firewall of China and North Korea in the proposal’s draconian extremism.

I’m not politically active. I have political beliefs, I understand the role of government and our role as citizens, but I don’t actively engage with the political process. Yet I will not let this proposal go anywhere without a fight. As luck would have it, I live in the Federal electorate of Griffith.

Do you know who we elected to represent us?

The Hon. Kevin Rudd, Prime Minister of Australia, and Member for Griffith. Here is the open letter to Mr. Rudd that I sent off today.

***

The Hon. Kevin Rudd MP
Prime Minister of Australia
Member for Griffith
PO Box 476
Morningside QLD 4170

Re: Senator the Hon. Stephen Conroy’s proposed internet filter

Dear Prime Minister,

I am writing to you in your capacity as the Member for my electorate, urging your opposition to Senator Stephen Conroy’s proposed mandatory internet filtering of ISPs. I am heavily involved in the technical side of internet usage, and I have two primary issues with the proposal. First, Senator Conroy is ignoring the technical issues of such a filter. Second, I firmly believe that by enforcing a mandatory filter onto the Australia internet-using population, Senator Conroy is effectively removing the right of all citizens to utilise the internet in a manner in which they so choose.

Firstly, the technical issues involved in creating a nationwide internet filter are astronomical, and demonstrate the gaping holes in the proposal. I understand the Senator’s intention to protect children from harmful content, and it is an admirable goal, but this is not the correct technical way to achieve his desired result. This list of technical hurdles is borrowed from the groundswell support website www.nocleanfeed.com

• Like asking Australia Post to filter out objectionable letters, a filter would require ISPs to examine all web traffic, causing enormous expense and technical headaches.
• A filter will slow Internet access down by up to 80% according to a Government report.
• Even the most accurate software the Government has tested would incorrectly block 10,000 sites in every million.
• The ACMA would be overwhelmed with the task of maintaining a blacklist. Millions of web sites, with the list changing on a daily basis, would need to be monitored by Australian bureaucrats - an impossible task.
• Only illegal material published on web sites could be targeted, completely missing other methods of distribution such as BitTorrent.
• Any determined user - including children - could bypass the filter quickly using an anonymizer service, open proxy, or VPN connection.
• The clean feed would be less customisable and effective than a PC-based filter.

To my second concern, I refer to the right of Australian citizens to free speech and open information practices. I do not relish the thought of the government of the day being able to decide on what content my fellow citizens can and cannot see. There is no limit to what could be defined as ‘objectionable’ , and I am not alone in my fears of a possible Great Firewall of China being created in our country.

A recent survey shows that 51.5% of Australians strongly oppose the proposal, while only 2.9% strongly support it. Senator Conroy’s proposal is a direct slap in the face to the Australian public – the money that will be spent on this highly ineffectual internet filter is better spent on your own party’s education platform. Educated children, fully aware of the pitfalls and ‘dark places’ of the internet, will be far more capable of making the decision for themselves as to whether or not to access content. We cannot protect individuals from themselves, but we can educate them to know the proper rights and wrongs of society.

Prime Minister, I cannot stress enough how strongly I feel about this draconic proposal by Senator Conroy. I implore you to consider all aspects of the proposed filter, from the technical through to the moral. We cannot rely on a ‘quick fix’ such as this filter to protect children from the Internet – protection must come from education, and from instilling in our children the moral values that we aspire for them to demonstrate.

I would greatly appreciate a response to this letter, either from yourself or from a representative, outlining your position regarding the Senator’s proposal, and whether the public outcry to this issue is being heard in the higher levels of our government. I seek reassurance that this proposal will not go any further than just whispers in the wind.

Thank you for your time, and I look forward to your response.

Regards,

Adam Corney

***

In closing, I wrote another monologue that was posted to Julian Cole’s website today. The man is a fan of The West Wing (aren’t we all?) and asked for comments in character, assuming the characters were supporting Malcom Turnbull currently. Here’s mine.

***

From Toby, the voice of the people - online space or no, the man would argue for an individual’s right to choose!

“Sir, you have got to consider the possibility that practically every man and his dog out there are against the Senator’s proposal. You’re an educated man, you’re a business man, but the one thing you cannot claim to be is an average man. And the average men and women of this country deserve a voice, and they deserve to be heard when they speak up. It doesn’t happen often enough, and it always happens for the wrong reasons. But this is for the RIGHT reason.

Josh won’t shut up about the conversations happening on Twitter, and as much as it hurts me to agree with him, he has a point. The people are being vocal, sir, and we cannot ignore them. Government should never be somewhere that above average men rule the rest - government should be a place where people come together, and nobody gets left behind. Nobody.

Listen to the people, sir. They’re crying out for your moral leadership. Don’t let this one, rare chance to stand up for what’s RIGHT go by. I don’t want to have to explain to my kids that daddy was there when the law got passed that turned their internet usage into something resembling North Korea…and that I didn’t fight it with everything I had.

Let the Twittersphere, and the average men and women of this country, know where we stand. Where we draw the line on their liberties. And then ask them if they agree. Because that’s what we can do in this online space - we can give government back to the people.”

***

If you say nothing for the rest of your life, take action and say something about this.

Time will never stop, and never wait.

That’s something to think about when we consider our digital footprint in the next ten years. Your digital footprint is basically the impression you are leaving on the internet, especially when someone searches your name. Google Adam Corney, and you’ll come up with my Facebook and LinkedIn profiles, and a variety of links to another person called Adam Corney who is apparently a marine biologist in South West England. One day I’m gonna buy that man a beer.

In ten years time, if you searched for me again, you’d definitely find more. My social media profile is growing, so my name will gain recognition on larger and more searchable websites. Content that I create in the next decade will also be associated with me: videos, photos, blog posts, and comments. I’m fully aware that the activity I do now will still be visible in 2018, and plan for that - but what about everyone else?

• 71% of Australian households are connected to the internet
  • 90% of those people register as medium to heavy users
• 44% of users actively update their social media profiles
• 25% of users post pictures or photographs
• 16% of Australian users identify as bloggers.

In a snapshot, this tells me that not everyone is on the internet, and not everyone is posting content. But in ten years when barriers to entry are reduced, access to the internet is more prolific via mobile and free wifi, better and cheaper broadband is available, and the digital children of today become the adults of tomorrow, I believe that it’s going to be second nature to be permanently online in some capacity.

Right now…

Compared to that future, content on the internet at the moment is relatively clear. I can have this blog, my Facebook and LinkedIn profiles, and a domain in my own name, and I would come up on the first page in a Google search. But in ten years, everything I do will have cluttered up the internet. And I’m one person. Imagine 14 million Australians, excluding any new entries, cluttering it up. Then tack that onto the worldwide internet population.

Once that many people are posting photos, starting blogs, owning domains, making blog comments - will what we do in the future be lost in the digital clutter of what we did in the past? Yes. Our footprint will stretch across our entire lives, cached, recorded, saved, and stored.

When does it matter?

It matters now, before the clutter gets worse, while we are still able to be found and everything we do is noticeable and tracked. This matters for your personal brand, and if you haven’t thought about your personal brand yet, you should. It’s going to be a major part of your professional life - who you are, what you represent, and how you are represented on the internet. You want to give the best impression to prospective friends, business associates, and employers. Simply ignoring that the internet is a source of information about you is asking for trouble.

Image by Ben Crowse

My good friend Julia is over in the UK, and she’s picked up on a campaign by Wieden + Kennedy for Nokia’s 7610 handsets called Somebody Else’s Phone.

It’s an integrated campaign across traditional media (print, TV, OOH, radio), but the cornerstone is the website. The idea behind the campaign recognises that we’re all gossip-obsessed people - we love the voyeuristic aspect of watching other people’s lives. Viewers are driven to the website by the traditional media. The site is updated 24/7 over the next 6 weeks, and we get to live vicariously through the phones of three individuals - Anna, Luca, and Jade.

It’s all artificial, but it’s an interesting integrated approach to an experiential campaign utilising social media aspects. The characters have Facebook pages, and viewers are encouraged to share aspects of the site via social bookmarking and RSS feeds to their social media profiles.

What’s also interesting about this campaign is the commentary that it’s making on the impact our increasingly mobile lives are having on our interactions with other people and the world at large.

The content itself is a mixture of text messages, MMS, video, and ‘live chat’ phone calls. It’s a way of providing personality to a brand and humanising it. It’s a simple blueprint for a campaign across multiple touchpoints, utilising an uncommon creative concept. This blueprint, at it’s basic level, could easily be transposed onto another brand and another campaign.

Could this fit in with the purpose-idea? Absolutely.

If a brand, say Kleenex, are about providing emotional support to their consumers, then the dialogue via the mobile device could be about a young woman (or, to play around with stereotypes, a young man) who is struggling with some heavy emotional issues, such as the death of a close friend. You’d need a damn fine copywriter to be able to pull it off, but it’s Human Condition issues like that which will create an affective relationship with the viewer.

In the end, Nokia are aiming for a closer association with the target market for it’s 7610 model. I’d be interested to find out how the campaign is spread, but more importantly I’d like to see them swallow their own pill - provide SMS/MMS updates to registered users via the website. Not only are you capturing consumer data, but you’re also communicating with the target market through the medium of your message. You want people to get sucked into the lives of these three characters? Then suck them in completely. I’m sure that Nokia and W+K could have found a mobile broadcaster willing to partner with them and provide cheap broadcast rates!

Courtesy of @alegrya, I took a couple of minutes this morning to partake in a Flickr meme, just to see what would happen.

Go to http://www.bighugelabs.com/flickr and create a mosaic using the answers from these questions. Take your answer to Flickr and search for it.. Pick an image from the first page of search results, put it into the mosaic maker and post your results!

from alison-young.com

1. What is your first name? Adam
2. What is your favorite food? Roast Lamb
3. What high school did you go to? Grammar School
4. What is your favorite color? Blue
5. Who is your celebrity crush? Kelly Clarkson (it’s the nose ring)
6. Favorite drink? Manhattan Cocktail
7. Dream vacation? Bora Bora
8. Favorite dessert? Creme Brulee
9. What do you want to be when you grow up? A writer
10. What do you love most in life? Experience
11. One Word to describe you? Thoughtful
12. Look up my flickr name and find something someone dedicated to me - Nothing was dedicated to me, so that’s what I found!

It’s an entertaining visual representation of your typical ‘about me’ survey, and could easily lead to some interesting discussions (such as why did I pick the image of the puppet to represent my name?). Give it a shot yourself, post your results!

Original author attribution:
1. Ansel Adams, 2. Roast Lamb, 3. Bristol Grammar School, 4. true blue baby I love you.., 5. Kelly Clarkson, 6. Manhattan. Perfect., 7. Paradise - Bora Bora, Tahiti, 8. Vanilla Bean Crème Brûlée, 9. the writer and the sea, 10. Think, Create, Experience, 11. Thoughtful Baby, 12. Hey! Nothing

After reading Hugh McLeod’s 10 Questions for Mark Earls, I started thinking about the “purpose-idea”. Hugh’s been speaking about it for a while, but I didn’t pay attention. It didn’t hit home for me then, but it does now.

In 2002, Mark wrote a book titled “Welcome to the Creative Age”, where he claimed that brands and branding are dead, to be replaced by the ‘purpose-idea’. From my understanding, his reasoning was that marketing and advertising have not taken a step forward in the last 60 years - we’ve done nothing new. As an aspect of business, we are stagnating.

The purpose-idea is exactly that: what is the purpose of your product/company/activity, and what’s the core idea behind it? To illustrate, I’ll use Hugh’s example of Microsoft.

Microsoft is a software company. They produce programs and products for the world to use.

But that’s not their purpose, and that’s not their idea. Behind everything that Microsoft does, there is one thing that gets their employee’s out of bed in the morning and into work. “Change the world or go home.” That’s their point: Microsoft aren’t out to piss around. They are going to change the world, and they already have.

I’ve been reading Mark’s book, and what’s really hitting me is how close his thoughts in 2002 mirror mine in 2008. I’m not saying there’s a right and a wrong way to approach marketing and advertising - I’m saying that I think there’s a better way, and Australia hasn’t started it yet. Whenever I read Julian Cole from The Population in Sydney, I feel like we have the potential - but we’re not there yet. For whatever reason, it’s just out of reach.

That goal, and that direction, is to change the way we do marketing. I think of agencies and I think they’re old, they’re outdated, they’re slow to change and even slower to WANT to change. They’re focused on profits, not on best practice for their clients. I’ve seen agencies charge ten thousand dollars (!) for a website that a 14 year old kid in Korea would have done for under two thousand. We’re in a global world, with global resources - so why are we sticking to the traditional framework that has been around since the 1920s? Do we really need to ONLY source our creative work from a department down in Sydney or Melbourne that, by and large, could never compete against that 13 year old kid on price? They’d be quicker on quality, maybe, but even if we get the kid to iterate it three times until he gets it right, he’s STILL cheaper than the one iteration from the internal department.

So what I’m asking is this: What is the purpose-idea of an advertising agency? If it’s as I believe, and it’s something along the lines of engaging and building a community of like-minded individuals that identify with our client’s own purpose-idea…then where in all that does it say we must follow traditional models?

I may be idealistic, and I may be wrong, but you can’t deny that the system is broken. There are opportunities out there to do something more, and to do it better.

Edit 11/11/08: Hugh has gone on to explain Microsoft’s Blue Monster in more detail. I had a feeling the idea came from something like this.

You can visit Mark Earls’ website or follow him on Twitter.

I get two to three friend requests per week on Facebook. I get a handful of requests to follow me on Twitter every month or so. My MSN contact list has finally stopped growing, after 150 or so contacts. I hardly get any Skype or LinkedIn requests (yet).

Out of those requests, I grant maybe one. Maybe.

Here’s a hint: if you’re going to add someone as a ‘friend’ or a link in a social media community - make damn sure they know who you are, and what the benefit is in adding you.

Example: Facebook has the option of writing a personalised message when you click “Add as Friend”. So why do people blatantly ignore it? Do they assume that I’m going to know who they are, and even if I do know who they are, that I’ll care enough to add them?

Take two seconds out of your obviously hectic and busy day to write me a note. Feel free to cut and paste this template.

“Hi <new friend!> It’s <insert your name> from <where we know each other>. I <haven’t spoken to you in a while / recently moved back to the country / just got on Facebook / saw you and thought it’d be good to catch up>. I’ve just <insert interesting story we can talk about in the first interaction>. Would love to hear what you’ve been up to!”

You are one thousand times more likely to be added as a friend or link if you actually prove that you’re interested in me as a person, are an interesting person yourself, and aren’t just trying to grow your network for the sake of it.

So the next time you click “Add as Friend” in Facebook, do yourself and your potential new friend a favour - be human, write them a quick note, and treat them with respect. They’ll remember you for it, and the relationship will be off to a much better start.

I’m not happy with how my blog is turning out.

To illustrate, this is a little image that I created at Wordle. Wordle analyses the text from the RSS feed of a blog, and creates a “most used words” tag cloud.

When I look at that image, I see a lack of direction and a very distinct lack of narrative. The size of the words indicates the amount they appear. So I talk about people and brands a lot, but the biggest word there is “something”.

And that represents the issue: TGFB has no defining story - there is no underlying theme. I never created one, nor did I ever have one in mind when I started.

But this isn’t Seinfeld - a blog shouldn’t be a page about nothing. On the internet, to be remarkable you need to stand for something, be completely transparent, and give others something to talk about. You need to be passionate about your content, or you’re going to lose your audience and drift back into the digital clutter.

Yet it’s not enough to be passionate about something - passion needs direction. Anyone who corners me after a few beers will know how much I care about my friends and the direction of my life. I want everything I do to have meaning, to other people and to myself. I’ve decided that instead of hiding that, I want everyone to know. It’s who I am.

To have meaning, you need a goal. You need to know where you want to be, and you must to be able to measure that progress. Anything less is arbitrary and subjective.

To have a goal, you need direction. You need to know how you’re going to reach that goal. Passion is nothing without direction.

I’m not proud of TGFB. It’s fun to write, but it’s not something I want to share with anyone outside of my close circle of friends. It represents only a part of my personality and interests. That’s not enough - I want it to have meaning. I want it to represent me online.

So, I’m doing up a marketing model for TGFB. It’s going to change. It has to. The way content is delivered will change. The content itself will change. The theme will be altered. What won’t change is my writing style, my range of topical interests, and the opinions I hold. Working my personality into TGFB has been a joy, and that isn’t going anywhere.

TGFB is going to be more than just a blog. It’s going to become the backbone of my personal brand, and my social media outposts like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube will all drive the audience back here. TGFB will become more.

The goal is for TGFB to become focused, stand out from the clutter, and become something I’m proud to share.

Remarkable teams and individuals stand out from the pack - sometimes they can stand so far above us that they become modern legends. Aspirational fan worship should be encouraged, since it can lead us to want to better ourselves. But it can quickly twist into A Bad Thing when the fans become fanatics, and stop listening to their own intelligence.

Like a sporting arena, politics isn’t immune from it’s share of fanatics. Politics is the intellectual’s playing field, where otherwise brilliant people can turn into rabid fanatics at the faintest whiff of a debated topic. Reason goes out the window, and signs are shown of temporary insanity. Within that context, I believe that this worldwide Barack Obama fan worship is becoming A Bad Thing.

He appeals to the masses, he’s an engaging speaker, he symbolises “change” and “hope” and “a better world”. He is more than just a man – Senator Obama is fast becoming a symbol for people to rally around, and a social object that they can discuss in any environment and feel smugly superior for knowing something about politics.*

The problem is that he’s American.

The world is viewing Senator Obama through rose-coloured glasses, and you’ll find more than a few Labour supporters in Oz wishing the man was our Prime Minister. Common people and intellectuals alike are being swept up in his wake, and are becoming more engaged with the upcoming American Presidential elections than they are with their own political processes.

Barack Obama will not fix Australia’s economic woes. He will not reform our tax system, he will not make us a Republic, he will not solve our Healthcare issues, he will not save the Murray Darling Basin from its worsening water crisis, he will not stop Japanese whaling ships, he will not reduce the unemployment rate, he will not build a world-class fibreoptic broadband network across the country, he will not solve the complete cockup of our treatment of Indigenous Australians, and he will not reduce the price of gas at the pump.

When a country focuses attention away from itself, the population gains a sense of place and belonging in the world. The trade off is that we lose sight of what’s important to our country that the rest of the world doesn’t care about. We need to pay serious attention to ourselves, instead of on an overseas election that we have no influence in.
* If you don’t believe me that he’s now a symbol and a social object, how many of you mentally corrected my two “Senator Obama” references to just “Obama”? Obama is no longer just his name - it stands for that intangible something that he represents.

Art by Kasio
Edit: Kudos to Nick for pointing out I’m an idiot and didn’t follow titling conventions.