• Hashtags - hashtags
  I have been wondering how to track certain events — such as Adelaide traffic for speed cams or something. This may be the service… Not sure how it will work out, but there is definitely a service needed in Adelaide that bypasses the 8 radio stations we
  (tags: twitter speedcamera road traffic adelaide adelaide_hills adelaidehills police)

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Three naked women were sitting in a sauna, two were in their mid-twenties, one was in her forties.

Suddenly there was a beeping sound. One young woman pressed her forearm and the beep stopped.

The others looked at her questioningly.

“That was my pager” she said. “I have a microchip under the skin of my arm”

A few minutes later a phone rang.

The second young woman lifted her palm to her ear. When she finished she explained, “That was my mobile phone. I have a microchip in my hand.”

The older woman felt very low-tech, but not to be outdone she decided she had to do something equally as impressive.

She stepped out of the sauna and went to the bathroom.

She returned with a piece of toilet paper hanging from her derriere.

The others quite naturally raised their eyebrows and stared at her.

“Well, will you look at that!” the older woman exclaimed. “I’m getting a fax!”

———-

Tip of the Akubra to my dear friend Judy Walsh

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Courtesy of StumbleUpon comes video proof that Hillary Clinton came under fire whilst visiting Bosnia.

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Good news for modern man has seeped out from Psychology Today — a man’s mid-life crisis is all his wife’s fault.

Phew! That’s a relief.

“Many middle-aged men do go through midlife crises, but it’s not because they are middle-aged. It’s because their wives are.

From the evolutionary psychological perspective, a man’s midlife crisis is precipitated by his wife’s imminent menopause and end of her reproductive career, and thus his renewed need to attract younger women.

Accordingly, a 50-year-old man married to a 25-year-old woman would not go through a midlife crisis, while a 25-year-old man married to a 50-year-old woman would, just like a more typical 50-year-old man married to a 50-year-old woman.

It’s not his midlife that matters; it’s hers. When he buys a shiny-red sports car, he’s not trying to regain his youth; he’s trying to attract young women to replace his menopausal wife by trumpeting his flash and cash.”

Any overly attractive 25 year old women looking to hook up with a balding, slightly overweight, not overly attractive almost-50 year old business communicator, please apply within.

(and before I get an avalanche of emails from BL, Andrea W and Kami, inter alia, it’s a joke, girls!)

Oh, and in case you think I’m making all this up, here’s more about the article:

Ten Politically Incorrect Truths About Human Nature
Why most suicide bombers are Muslim, beautiful people have more daughters, humans are naturally polygamous, sexual harassment isn’t sexist, and blonds are more attractive.
By: Alan S. Miller Ph.D., Satoshi Kanazawa Ph.D

Article subheads:

• Men like blond bombshells (and women want to look like them)
• Humans are naturally polygamous
• Most women benefit from polygyny, while most men benefit from monogamy
• Most suicide bombers are Muslim
• Having sons reduces the likelihood of divorce
• Beautiful people have more daughters
• What Bill Gates and Paul McCartney have in common with criminals
• The midlife crisis is a myth—sort of [the 'jumping-off point' for this post]
• It’s natural for politicians to risk everything for an affair (but only if they’re male)
• Men sexually harass women because they are not sexist

Go on, I know you want to read more! [grin]

——————-
Images courtesy of the following flickr and sxc.hu contributors:
leira, cvgale, zeppelin5, amirhd, idman, cyan, khairilfz, cosmica, solilos, shawna9, jrab, OnyxRose08, DavidCowie, chriscosco and {KateC.} — many thanks!

Currently listening to: The Monkees - Randy Scouse Git

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Guardian angel Jon Hoel from the PR Junction podcast has pointed out that a really horrible security breach is doing the rounds of WordPress blogs.

Says Jon,

Hi Lee,
The PR agencies may not have come around yet, but the spammers are certainly giving blogs plenty of attention.

Site hack issue as discussed:  HTML appears in your blog posts - invisible on your blog, but shows up on RSS reader and email distribution.

Even the latest versions of WordPress (Version 2.3.3) are vulnerable: http://wordpress.org/support/topic/162092

To ‘harden’ your WordPress blogs, you might want to check out these links as well:
http://codex.wordpress.org/Hardening_WordPress

Thanks, Jon — I’ve installed the AskApache Password Protect plugin across many of the various blogs of mine and my clients, but there are some hassles with some of the hosts who have bizarre hosting arrangements (finger pointed at Melbourne IT in particular - on the one hand they have superb bandwidth allowances, on the other their blog hosting completely and utterly sucks).

Currently listening to: Moby - Hotel - Temptation

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The drought has temporarily broken in Adelaide. After an interminably long time, we finally have had a few drops of rain here in this city perched on the edge of a desert, located in the driest state in the driest continent on earth.

I can now safely divulge the reason why we received the rain: an angel was sent down from above (Chicago, Northern Hemisphere)and has settled down here (at least temporarily) in Adelaide.

For those who wish to pay homage and lay flowers, Bollinger or gifts of money at her feet, I am at liberty to reveal her name:

Dena Vassallo.

Find her on Facebook and marvel at the back-story created for her. Anyone would think that she comes with an impressive history of working at the very highest levels of Marcomms. And she has. She is ‘one smart cookie’ as our Northern American colleagues would say. But she has an additional talent.

No, not hamster juggling, that’s Trevor Cook’s speciality. It is her ’secret’ identity as an Angel of Rain.

We are in her debt. (I secretly think she is the reason why Premier Brumby caved in and signed up to the National Water Plan — somehow she got into his mind and he was powerless to resist).

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Up at Adtech I finally got to meet the legendary Cameron Reilly.

Who he, you ask?

Cam (he probably hates being called that, but using his own style, “bugger it”) is the owner of the very large brains behind The Podcast Network, Australia’s largest independent media company. His own podcast, one of the many on the network, is “G’day World” and was Australia’s first podcast. The man is clearly “no fule”, as my childhood hero Nigel Molesworth would say.

Over a table discussion after the Digital PR session I took part in, he turned to Trevor Cook (knowing that I am not a PR person and have always taken great pains to point this out) and asked,

“It’s 2008, for f#$ks sake! How come PR companies here STILL don’t get it!?!?”

A very good question.

As he pointed out, we’ve had blogs as a part of our media landscape for at least 5 years, mainstream media are falling over themselves trying to ‘out 2.0′ each other, we’ve had podcasts for a few years, we’ve had YouTube for what seems like forever…

So how come Australian PR companies still play ‘hide head in sand and pretend it will all go away’ games?

Lloyd Grosse and the PRIA in NSW are doing their best to educate the PR community, but (I’m afraid) even the Social Media Strategy workshop I wrote and ran for them needed to focus heavily on a ‘101′ component to bring some of the workshop attendees ‘up to scratch’ before they could even begin contemplating strategic issues.

I know that Mark Jones is tired of seeing only ‘Social Media 101′ workshops advertised, and is eager to find a higher-level course (I’m going to run a Strategy workshop for Melcrum later in the year, Mark, and the PRIA want me back mid-year to do the ‘101‘ and ‘Strategy’ workshops again), but my own experience of Aussie business and PR-types is that in the majority they are clueless.

Really? Oh yes! Reflect on the results of the survey question asked by us in our Digital PR ad:tech session:

Do you have a digital PR Strategy?

Yes - 32%
No - 68%

Seven out of ten in the room had no social media strategy. Egads!

Who was in the room? Please note that not all attendees used the handsets by which they could vote, so these numbers are estimated:

Brand Advertiser - 26% / 19

Agency Executive - 32% / 23

Direct Marketer - 25% / 18

Publisher/Media Owner - 15%/ 11

Technology Vendor - 2% / 1

Jennie Beattie from freshchat and DigitalMinistry.com.au rightly holds her head and weeps:

“More disturbing from my perspective was that there seemed to be no recognition, let alone understanding, of communication theory. Social media in fact lends itself to the two way/ symmetrical communication model (James Grunig Four Models of Public Relations) which puts the consumer at the centre of the communication rather than simply as a receiver rather than the traditional advertising model (one way comms).

So are pr agencies ready to take a lead in this area and meet the needs that marketers clearly have? From what I could see at the conference no.

There was very little presence from pr agencies at the Conference, and just the one panel session on Digital PR moderated by Lee Hopkins one of Australia’s most respected social media experts. The panel included a large pr company Digital Executive [Steven Noble from Hill & Knowlton -- Lee], [Marnie McDonald from] The Wool Corporation (their client) and media blogger Trevor Cook. While Lee tried his best to evoke meaningful discussion the session delivered ‘beginner’ tips further indicating that the level of maturity about digital or online PR in the room was quite low. “

In an off-the-cuff comment I heard Brendan Yell from shopfree say that marketers are now ‘trying on for size’ the language and words that comes naturally to PR-types: “engagement, conversation, relationship”. An environment that is beautifully but unconsciously built for intelligent PR activity (but NOT, I repeat NOT NOT NOT ’spin’ or any form of manipulation!) is now being usurped by heavy-handed, clumsy and sales-focused marketers. They, as Brendan so exquisitely put it, are desperately trying to have a “One Night Brand Stand.”

Clearly, there ARE large aussie agencies that ‘get it’, Text100 being the most blindingly obvious candidate, as well as Hill & Knowlton. I know that Burson-Marsteller are also working behind the scenes to get things rolling in Australia.

More are obviously keen to find out about it and get in front of their clients with some sort of knowledge (which is great and how I put my youngest stepdaughter through private school and pay for my fountain pen fetish), but I am still melancholic about the state of Australian understanding at a business level about Social Media.

It is still the individual entrepreneur who is doing the most interesting stuff in this space; just today I came across other Adelaidians who also ‘get this stuff’ but who have been banging their heads until they are black, blue and bloody against the corporate brickwall [and if one more company comes back at me with the "what's the ROI?" question I will vomit over their boardroom table -- the answer is at the bottom of this post].

Today I am melancholic. Very melancholic. I listen as I type this to an interview that Shel Holtz recently conducted with Melanie Kurzak from CNW in the US, talking about a news-specific XML (aka ‘news-ml’). They totally ‘get it’ in the Northern Hemisphere, it seems.

Meanwhile I beat my head against the wall trying to help companies understand, against their own detestation, that the ‘game’ of communication has changed. Fundamentally changed.

But hey — the readers of this blog already know that, hey? I am preaching to the converted and being beaten up and crushed by the masses who don’t.

Although, having said that we Social Media luminaries in Australia are all in agreeance, Laurel Papworth and I agreed to disagree over a point when we finally met face-to-face at ad:tech. I hold to the line that the conversation is outside of the firewall (and a point over which we agree) and that therefore the conversation should never again be considered ‘controllable’, to which Laurel then vehemently disagreed.

In a great post today, Laurel spells out in more detail what she turned up her nose at with me — the need to control conversations to at least some degree if the conversation is happening on your own space. The way she puts it in her post, I find myself agreeing with her. Me, agreeing with Laurel Papworth. It must be time for some more of those funny tablets my psychiatrist insists I take…

Sorry for my tone — not a good day. Tomorrow will be better, I promise.

————–

The answer to the ROI question: We all know that taking our key clients out golfing is good for business. So how many CFOs, clipboard and calculator in hand, stand outside the CEO’s office when they get back from a day’s golfing and ask them, “So what’s the ROI on today, then?” As Mark Jones replies when asked the same question, “How much value do you place on being able to engage in a genuine conversation with your customers?”

Next time someone trots out the ‘ROI’ question, ask them to give you the ROI on a golfing umbrella.

—————–

Currently listening to: David Sylvian - Everything and Nothing - Let the Happiness In

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Mark Jones is, of course, the former AFR IT journo who is now helping them out with web strategy and stuff.

We met at the recent ad:tech conference and both of us said to each other, “we must catch up” whilst neither of us could figure out why we’d said that. Mark knew who I was and initiated the “we must skype” offer; I didn’t have a clue who he was but smiled knowingly and said, “Yes, we must!” as I gave him one of my shiny new business cards (he’d run out of his).

I later Googled his name and realised just WHO Mark Jones is — and nearly fell over backwards.

Blimey! He made me feel like blogger royalty at ad:tech, whereas it should have been I who was bowing low and tugging my forelock.

Anyway, we caught up today over Skype and for a fantastic hour bounced off each other over Social Media, Australian corporate reticence, Web2.0 ROI, religious experiences and the ethics of journalism, over which we both laughed.

Methinks he has a book in him about his journalistic escapades both here and over in Silicon Valley…

It was great to catch up today, Mark. Thanks for your time, humour and the ‘connection of shared minds’ that you offered. Very much appreciated.

And if anyone hasn’t caught up with Mark’s Social Media efforts — the Scoop podcast and Mark’s own blog — then might I suggest you do? A damn fine collection of intelligence and insight.

Currently listening to: David Sylvian - Everything and Nothing - Heartbeat (Tainai Kaiki II)

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