Social Media policy in the gov 2.0 space December 4, 2009

I never thought I’d be the policy person. I’ve always been the person who laughs and policy and just gets on with the job. However, someone out there thought I was a grown up and now I’m creating policy.

The fact is that to convince many companies and departments to become more engaged, we need to make them feel safe. Policy does that. To be honest, there’s a lot of very good sense in creating intelligent guidelines around social media

One myth in this space is that you can just copy someone else’s policy. That may be true for some, but for many of us in the Gov 2.0 space, it’s about creating your own and referencing others. We end up talking to each other and sharing our suggestions and challenges.

One of my key contacts is Craig Thomler who’s currently working on the YourHealth taskforce at the Health Department. His excellent blog http://egovau.blogspot.com/ is a great reference tool for those of us working in this space. He lists this website as a good starting point for social media policy http://socialmediagovernance.com/policies.php

photos from Frocomm New Media Summit, Sydney 2009 March 4, 2009

Sydney Harbour…what a great location for a conference!

The joy of third party applications November 17, 2008

I get a bit embarassed in this space because I don’t know everything. I’d like to know everything. It would give me a nice warm rosy glow as I handed down wisdom from the mount. Instead, I’m learning as I go. It’s like I’m a multimedia explorer. Now I just need a pith helmet and binoculars! To be fair, we’re all exploring this space and we’re all at different levels. We’ve explored the physical world, so now we’ve turned our attention to the online world.

Anyway, I’ve been given a very real lesson in third party applications. I was having real problems getting all my music off my old ipod. I just couldn’t unlock it.

Basically, Apple is trying its hardest to stop us easily transferring music, in a bid to stop piracy. I understand that, but I want my music!

So, I did what any explorer does. I Googled. I read various mac user sites. In the end, I downloaded (and paid for) Copy Trans (www.copytrans.net). It cost about $25 and was well worth it, just to see my music effortlessly download onto my computer. You can download 100 tracks for free and then pay for the rest.

I did try some freeware, but found it frustrating, bug ridden and complicated.

I guess the lesson I learnt is that the iPhone and iPod do have problems, and this is an ode to the creators of the solutions. Without them, I just would have tried cracking my ipod with an icepick in a bid to get the tracks out.

I must add, the gaps in the iPhone and iPod are bloody frustrating and counter intuitive. But that’s a conversation for another day.

iPhone fever! October 12, 2008

Anyone who says the iPhone is just a glorified phone has no sense of fun or adventure! I’m writing this post from my iPhone using the wordpress application. I’ve been showing friends my new gadget all weekend and the unanimous reaction has been laughter. I distracted my son for ages this morning with the carling iBeer app. I haven’t read about this on any parenting magazine though. I even used the phone to take photos at my son’s best friend’s transformers birthday party.

Multimedia in the brave new financial world October 10, 2008

Is there a future for multimedia in this uncertain economic environment? Will it just be seen as an expensive novelty? IT financial expert Angus Matheson and I were invited to speak to the Sydney chapter of the International Association of Business Communicators this week.

We basically agreed that financial institutions ignore ‘new’ media at their peril. There has never been a more important time for them to communicate truthfully and effectively. This is not the time for spin or obfuscation. Clear, smart, non patronising communication is vital.

And why concentrate on conventional media when it only represents about a quarter of the communication equation.

We both felt the audience was very responsive to this message and it was good to see such a switched on group. It will certainly be very interesting to see how the financial world uses multimedia to communicate with an increasingly concerned audience…

it’s not a box…it’s deliberately vintage October 5, 2008

My name is shimmmergirl and I’m a Marantzaholic. I’ve been podcasting for two years now. And I’m yet to find a recording device I love as much as the Marantz PMD660 solid state recorder http://www.d-mpro.com/users/folder.asp?FolderID=3629

There are tinier, funkier models out there, but they drive me crazy. I was using a client’s Edirol recently, and we just there for hours trying to figure out the jog wheel, the audio levels and the inputs. 

Now, I’m as shallow as the next girl, and I must confess I love the way the Zoom and the Edirol look. They’re like tiny plastic silver coloured sputniks. Lots of bling, lots of mesh, lots of tiny, tiny buttons.

In comparison, the Marantz PMD660 is a big clunker. It’s a black box. No way around it. But it is so easy to use. It works like an old fashioned tape recorder. You remember those? Play. Stop. Record.  It records onto a flash card which downloads onto your computer in perfect wav or mp3 format. Done. Is it heavy? Well if you can carry a small lunch box, you can cope with the Marantz. It’s surprisingly light for its size.

For my money, it’s the only journalistic recorder. It has a three pronged microphone jack at the back, which allows you to plug into splitter boxes at press conferences. Most of the others don’t have this, which poses all kinds of problems at high level media conferences.

A word of caution though. Do read the manual. You need to get your input settings right. I swear I had everything on internal microphone for about a year. Actually, the internal mic is great, but it’s worth getting a good Rode microphone or something similar.

I’ve got a lot of clients who are being advised badly about recording audio. They’re buying second rate equipment and getting third rate sound.

The Marantz is selling for under $1,000 at the moment. It’s worth the investment.

I know these are fighting words. My friend and multimedia guru, Ross Monaghan http://www.themediapod.net/swears by the Edirol. But Ross, I would point out it ran out of battery power half way through a panel discussion I was part of at Frocomm’s New Media Summit in Melbourne last month http://www.frocomm.com.au/prnm2008_melb/program.php.

And now it’s time to put my money where my mouth is. I have been missing my Marantz. It actually wasn’t mine, it belonged to my previous employer, CSIRO. And now it’s time for my own.