TED talks reliably provide me with fascinating ideas — they’re about as good an argument for the value of online video as you could hope for. And now they’re even easier to share.
Below is the first TED talk I ever saw. Fascinating animated charts! Cool insights into international development! And a nice call to make publicly paid-for data collections publicly available.
Also very cool that the TED folks releases their content under a CC license.
The context is very different from the one I work in, but I certainly recognize some of the behaviours represented in it. Interesting dramatization of management groupthink and how it’s much easier to say “no” to something new than it is to say “yes.”
I watch this video and I’m thinking about the GoC’s efforts at integrating GCpedia and other social or 2.0 tools into it’s culture. I imagine that the managerial types represented here would have a hard time accepting unstructured, participatory and open collaboration implied by wikis and other social software tools. Weird paradox though, isn’t NASA biguser of such tools? (Not to mention that how this internal video was released to YouTube points to NASA’s at least partial adoption of a 2.0 attitude)
Perhaps the org has reached a certain level of comfort with internal and team collaboration via social software, but judging from this video, the silos between the various parts of the org haven’t been broken down yet.
Perhaps the tools are only used by a small percentage of the workforce.
Perhaps there’s a time lag – the tools are there, people are starting to use them, but the deeper changes haven’t really started happening yet.
I see these things in my own workplace – various teams in the Department I work for have jumped ahead and are using wikis, instant messaging, etc., but only internally. There is a Yammer network that somebody started up, but there’s only a few of us on it (and activity is low.) No officially supported blogs that I am aware of yet.
And when I think of my immediate colleagues — who are generally uninterested in web 2.0 or social media (I often have the feeling that I’m seen as, uh, eccentric, due to these obsessions) — our team is very comfortable informally collaborating, but since we all sit in the same area and talk to each other every day, we hardly need a team wiki or to blog for each other. We’ll just pop into each others’ cubicles or call over the dividers.
Which begs the question — what is the value of these tools used in such a limited capacity? If their use is restricted to within teams already used to working together, they’re never going to have much impact. If we really want to create a Government 2.0, then wider adoption and use is key.
Another GoC org testing the social media waters – the Canada Revenue Agency is holding a video production contest via the YouTube platform. Here’s the teaser:
(I could swear I know that voiceover guy – no wait they all sound the same)
We want you to create a video that shows us, in your words and using your creativity and video ability, why the underground economy is bad for all of us.
The contest was launched on 19 Jan, and the deadline for submissions is the 1st of May. Contest hasn’t even been going for two weeks yet, and there’s already several submissions that have been posted to the CRA’s YouTube channel.
I was wondering what the videos would be used for:
If we like what you come up with, you could win the CRA Independent Video Producer Award and be invited to attend (at our expense, of course) an award reception in Ottawa for the premiere of your video on the CRA Web site.
An all-expenses-paid trip to Ottawa and a reception in your honour—not too shabby! And your video could be seen by millions of Canadians. It may be used in future advertising campaigns and outreach initiatives.
Aah, crowdsourcing creative for promotion and education activities. Very clever!
Succinct introduction to how the social media ecosystem functions, aimed at communicators and marketers. Very nicely done.
The vid explains how creators, distributions and consumers all use and share online content. Words, images, audio and video that are generated, circulated and curated via blogging, social networking, link sharing, etc. It’s a pretty complete high-level look at web/media environment that we are operating in, all in a little more than 3 minutes.
I particularly like how the journalism niche is not given more play than the blogging niche or the aggregating niche. If you’re trying to make the point why your communications efforts need to move beyond its traditional focus on press releases and beat reporters, then this should be helpful.
NB RealWire is a UK public relations firm (formerly webitpr) that I’ve never worked with. But I did like this nice little vid explaining the social media press release from a little while back (complete with sales pitch at the end).
Aside: I came across this video through a comment I left on Mike Kujawski’s Public Sector Marketing 2.0 blog. I then received a tweet from Adam Parker at RealWire pointing me to this vid. The social media ecosystem in action!
Interesting that despite the fact that Radiohead’s sound hasn’t progressed since their Kid A/Amnesiac breakthrough back in the day, the band continues to keep my attention in other ways.
They’ve just released a very cool video that was created using rotating laser scanners, 3D imaging and data visualization techniques — and no film or cameras.
Says the director of the video, James Frost (who’s done videos for the Flaming Lips among others):
In a weird way it’s a direct reflection of where we are in society… that everything is data. Everything around us is data-driven in some shape or form, and we’re so reliant on it now. It seems like our lives are digital, and so in that sense, it definitely felt apt.
Actually, that is as good an explanation for the current data visualization craze as I’ve heard yet.
Aesthetically, “House of Cards” reminds me a little of Tron, crossed with those toy boxes with rows of movable cylindrical metal pins that make a 3D contour when you press your hand or face on them (what the heck are they called?).
And Google is totally getting in on the action – Google Code is also hosting the video, as well as a “making of” clip (where I got the quote from the director above) and assorted other goodies for programmers who want to do remixes/mashups.
It’ll be interesting to see what comes out of making the data and source code available. There’s already 15 videos posted to the official YouTube group. Most focus on fiddling with the image data - this one is neat – but there’s already one that takes a hack at both the visual and auditory channel.
What's a spaghetti test?
