Buttermilk & Molasses

Garry Trudeau's Funny Doonesbury Tweets

A few months back, Garry Trudeau penned a detailed transcript of Doonesbury correspondent Roland Hedley's coverage of the early spring meeting of the G-20 in London. (And a follow-up visit to Baghdad.) It ran in the New Yorker. Seemed appropriate to plug it -- or a few of the more amusing tweets -- while the G-20 is hanging out in Pittsburgh.

Idea for iPhone app: You launch it and YOUR GODDAM PLANE DOESN’T HAVE TO DROP 3,000 FEET TO AVOID MIDAIR COLLISION! I’d pay $2.99 for that. 7:31 A.M. Mar 31st

Just for the record, in my storied career, I have touched 16 heads of state, all above the waist, and been detained only once. 6:03 P.M. Apr 2nd

@ Camp Victory w. FLOTUS. Michelle rocking body armor, but no fashion face-off w. Mrs. Maliki, who may not even exist. 9:40 P.M. Apr 7th

FLOTUS rips off Kevlar to show bare arms to 30 startled Iraqi schoolgirls bused in from Syrian refugee camp. 9:43 P.M. Apr 7th

A Classic Come Back

I noticed Simon Owens' re-review of the seminal classic The Cluetrain Manifesto and made a mental note way back in the spring to hunt down the 10-year anniversary edition. While my subconscious was looking for the trademark orange jacket, the local bookstores were stocking the shelves with a new yellow jacketed edition.

It's finally on my desk, waiting for a few spare hours to re-devour it; I gave my first copy to the current COO at my former place of employment way back in 1999 and never got it back.

At any rate, Simon Owens spoke to the three of the book's four authors earlier this year about the staying power of the quasi-manifesto on information and culture. Here's Rick Levine's take on Twitter:

I think what's happening -- what Twitter does is it's forcing you to start a conversation. When there's a company on Twitter, on the other end of that wire there's a person typing 140 characters. They work for a company, but it makes it much harder to have a corporate pre-digested official response. So what we were talking about in Cluetrain was saying there had to be a real person on the other end of the line who is participating in the conversation.

With just a blog, it's still possible to be a corporate shill doing blog postings. And that's not human, no more reflection of a real person's voice than any PR exercise. So it's possible to masquerade in a blog and have some lip service to corporate PR. It's much harder with Twitter because it is a real conversation, it's happening more in real time, and the good news is that it's forcing companies to have a human voice in the conversation.

Today: Live Blogging Social Media B2B Discussion

Later this morning, I'll be live blogging Sonali Shetty's presentation on digital branding at the Virginia International Business Council meeting -- she'll be speaking on digital branding and social media, especially as it relates to B2B. You can follow along starting at 11:40 at Compleo's live blog page here.

Tobacco Avenue Eviscerated By NBC12

As part of an ongoing video series of local blogs, NBC12's Phil Riggan turns his sights on Jeff Kelley of Tobacco Avenue today.

In what can only be described as a set-up, Riggan's film crew captures lascivious footage of Kelley's ankle as he feigns blogging during a recent interview. The unsuspecting Kelley was apparently none the wiser.

Adding insult to injury, Riggan caps the scathing profile piece with commentary by NBC12's senior newsman, Gene Cox. Often a victim of Kelley's satirical antics on Tobacco Avenue, Cox turns his trademark razor tongue on the young whippersnapper at the end of the segment.

Otherwise, a fine piece celebrating one of Richmond's smartest bloggers. Go watch, or read.

Live Blogging Social Media B2B Discussion

This Wednesday, September 23, I'll be hanging out with the cool kids at the Virginia International Business Council (VAIBC). (You and George might remember it as the Import-Export Club.)

Sonali Shetty of Compleo will be speaking to the group about how digital branding and social media can be effective tools for businesses who traditionally operate in the business-to-business space, as opposed to the retail, commercial and public marketing space that has been so commonly associated with social media platforms.

Shetty will deliver her presentation, entitled, "Digital Branding Today: Make Social Media Work for You," with popular writer and business stragist John Sarvay, of Floricane (http://www.floricane.com), live-blogging the event. “In today’s highly interconnected global business environment, information and actionable insights will determine international commercial success,” explains Shetty. She explains that this reality is fully comprehended by the Virginia International Business Council (VAIBC - formerly Richmond Export-Import Club). As such, the VAIBC is positioned as the foremost provider of “impactful” international intelligence with respect to market opportunities, sourcing possibilities, environmental realities and the strategies and tactics related to global business success in Virginia.

Details on the live blogging can be found at Compleo's website, or by following @sarvay on Twitter the day of the event.

Goodbye, Facebook, Victim of the Postmodern Experiment

While I found myself moderately intrigued by Virginia Heffernan's NYTimes Magazine article, "Facebook Exodus," and even found myself nodding with agreement, I have to admit that it wasn't until she referenced Jürgen Habermas at the very end that I was hooked.

Habermas was among a handful of postmodern social, political and communication theorists -- along with the likes of Jacques Derrida, Jean-Francois Lyotard and (oddly enough) Neil Postman -- who consumed the last few years of my "modern European and Middle Eastern cultural studies" program at VCU. I pretended that I understood half of what they wrote, and spent a semester digging into Lyotard's hyper-complex The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge.

And so Heffernan brought me back to Lyotard, strangely enough, and her column about Facebook suddenly made sense.

Essentially, what Heffernan has discovered about Facebook is what a growing number of media and technology prognosticators are weaving into their designs, strategies and new products -- and what Lyotard in particular postulated 30 years ago in The Postmodern Condition.

Essentially, Lyotard suggested that the grand narratives (or cultural, political and social stories) that defined Western culture for centuries had unraveled. We didn't believe them anymore, and -- in fact -- the complexity and diversity and pace of our lives made these large stories hard to embrace. In addition to speaking of micro-narratives as being the hook upon which more and more people will hang their hats.

Which is why Facebook and Google and Twitter and the New York Times all feel like sand castles, fighting back the slowly encroaching waves. It's not that any of these platforms are destined to collapse or fail, but that there is no single platform that can contain (consciously, at least) the multitude of expectations and experiences of a world of users, consumers and contributors.

Here's Heffernan:

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold. Facebook, the online social grid, could not command loyalty forever. If you ask around, as I did, you’ll find quitters. One person shut down her account because she disliked how nosy it made her. Another thought the scene had turned desperate. A third feared stalkers. A fourth believed his privacy was compromised. A fifth disappeared without a word.

The exodus is not evident from the site’s overall numbers. According to comScore, Facebook attracted 87.7 million unique visitors in the United States in July. But while people are still joining Facebook and compulsively visiting the site, a small but noticeable group are fleeing — some of them ostentatiously.

There's a whole new conversation I could have with myself here about why microblogging and community sites are a significant slice of the future of communication. And why an increasing number of people will work to fall of the very grid any of us embrace. And why I agree with Lyotard that postmodernism was more about recreating the failed promises of modernism, a reset and return to something -- not the fracturing so many have suspected.

Of course, if I understood half of what these postmodernists, theorists and deconstructionists wrote when I was 23, I probably understand 10% today...

Bloggers of the World, Compete

If you happen to blog in your spare time -- between work and the kids and your Facebook updates and sleeping -- you might be interested in submitting a post or two to Creative Nonfiction's narrative blog post competition/search.

Creative Nonfiction is seeking narrative blog posts to reprint in an upcoming issue of CNF.

We’re looking for: Vibrant new voices with interesting, true stories to tell. Narrative, narrative, narrative. Posts that can stand alone, 2000 words max, from 2009. Something from your own blog, from a friend’s blog, from a stranger’s blog.

The small print: We will contact individual bloggers before publication and pay a flat fee for one-time reprint rights. Deadline for nominations: August 31.

You have one day. Act fast.

Richmond's Twestival Lands First Sponsors

The September 11 Twestival is beginning to take some shape. It will be held at The Camel, and tickets are already selling like veritable hotcakes. Proceeds will go to support Tricycle Gardens and their dynamic efforts to reform Richmond's ecology. And some great sponsors have gotten behind the event. Find out more at the Richmond Twestival page.

By the way, if you're not already following RVATwestival, get on it!

Is Media General/TD Regaining Traction?

The Times-Dispatch and Media General were pretty easy targets for most of 2007 and 2008, especially for those of us in the free agent land of blogging and social media. Crappy page design, ineffective attempts at blogging, fumbled hyper-local news sites -- for a while, it felt like everything "old media" touched was turning to dust.

It didn't help that all of these fumbles were happening against the backdrop of a recession, and what felt like the evisceration of local news talent.

It seems like they're starting to pull it together. Or at least the meltdown has slowed.

The latest positive sign is the appointment of a former news guy to the terribly named role of "chief connector" for Richmond.com. (Apparently, they hired the same firm that coined "CenterStage" to develop job titles.)

Rick Thornton officially introduced himself to Richmond.com's readers today:

As you know, Richmond.com is the online home for fun things to do in the Richmond area: entertainment, events, shopping, night clubs, restaurants. We are committed to making that a cornerstone of what we do.

But we’re also embarking on a mission to better connect the community.

That means reaching out to some of the area’s distinctive neighborhoods and organizations. It means connecting shoppers with merchants and service providers. It means providing information relevant to the area’s diverse population. And it means tying the information seeker to the information source.

How that happens remains to be seen. The fact that someone realizes that it needs to happen is a sign of light downtown.

It's Twestival Time (in Richmond)

Now that social media has consumed a certain segment of Richmond's sassy professional class, expect a growing number of Twitter, Facebook and other assorted social media themed events to be hitting the calendar -- professional, social and otherwise.

The massive turnouts for the three Social Media Club of Richmond events have been counterbalanced by the street-savvy hashbrownnetworking ("Like Twitter, but in person and with fried potatoes," says The Checkout Girl). Last night, the Virginia Community College System held a roundtable discussion captured on Twitter, video and websites -- not via the traditional press conference.

Get ready for something new -- Richmond Twestival 2009, coming this September to The Camel on West Broad Street. In a sign that Richmond is turning a corner, Richmond's Twestival is being held a mere one year after the very first Twestival (held in London in 2008).

Right now, organizers are looking for sponsors and working to identify a cause for the Richmond Twestival. Because Twestivals apparently are about making real world connections, and doing something meaningful:

A Twestival or Twitter-Festival is a global series of events organized by volunteers around the world under short timescales via Twitter, which bring people offline for a great cause.  Twestival is run 100% by volunteers and independently from any not-for-profit; although the organizing teams do work closely to outline an achievable and measurable fundraising target.  Twestival also sets out to identify key skills of volunteers and match these with the needs of the cause; particularly communications strategy, tech integration and social media training.