I presented this weekend at the annual New York State School Boards conference, held at the Sheraton Hotel and Towers in Manhattan. It was a great, receptive group, although (and this happens often) a few faces were quizzical and downright skeptical. Nevertheless, there were many questions from the standing-room-only audience and I truly appreciate the interested many people have in Web 2.0 and social media.
School leaders are always a tough sell, but I’ve noticed a dramatic difference in the way everyone has become a bit more willing to suspend their disbelief about PR tools like Facebook and Twitter.
If you’d like to take a look, my presentation, Communicating in a Web 2.0 World, is available on my Slideshare page.

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Thanks to markhamnolan on YouTube.

Shane Haggerty, a school communications professional from Ohio, recently posted the following list on his blog, Social Avenue. I felt the need to post it here because I feel exactly the same way as he does about social media.  Thanks, Shane!

1. New Connections: More than anything else, social media has opened up a whole new pool of connections, many of whom have become friends. While most of these connections remain on the professional level, the use of tools like Twitter and Facebook and Linkedin have been an excellent way of doing business and getting to know new people. At first, it seemed strange opening up on these tools, but choosing to “follow” like-minded professionals has been great for learning new things that I probably never would have had the chance to know before.
2. Old Connections: Thanks especially to Facebook, Linkedin or other social networking sites (the now-irrelevant MySpace), social media has changed the way we keep in touch and has allowed us to re-connect to old friends. Some may think that’s a bad thing to re-connect with that person who may have driven you crazy in junior high, but for the most part, social media creates a sort-of “at-a-distance” re-kindling of old friendships. This is excellent if you are nosey and want to see what a disaster that person has become who used to torment you in gym class.
3. Lightning Speed: The ability to blast messages and communicate with masses of people is made much, much faster with social media. While email is still popular, full inboxes, Spam and an abundance of e-newsletters have created an opening for social media to take advantage of, which is to send short, quick messages and then make it viral with sharing tools that allow you to pass-it-on with the click of a button.
4. Leveling the Playing Field: Never before has a medium allowed small businesses, entrepreneurs, everyday, common people, non-profits and more market to the masses like social media has. This is one of my favorite things about it. Before, large advertising budgets of the corporate giants could quickly swallow the messages of the rest of us and celebrities controlled our attention anytime they wanted. Now, the mom-and-pop store can easily create a viral sensation on tools like YouTube and any one of us can be a “celebrity” with our own blog or large followings on Twitter and Facebook.
5. Down Fall the Sacred Cows: Finally, I simply love it because it makes the establishment and those who love control and order nervous. Social media, because it is new and viral and real and transparent gives control to anyone, anywhere, anytime. I love anything that shakes things up and takes down existing “sacred cows.” Social media has caused people to change, and change is always a good thing.

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Why? It seriously is the most intuitive digital application I’ve ever been on. There isn’t a day that goes by when I don’t find myself marveling over the fact that Mark Zuckerberg, then a Harvard college student from my neck of the woods, came up with this thing.

Brian Solis, who maintains one of my favorite blogs, PR 2.0, recently put together a list, Everything You Never Knew About Facebook, that just vindicates me in my Facebook Fascination. It’s a list of 20 factoids that are rather mind-blowing, especially when you consider that the popular application didn’t exist until it was incorporated in 2004.

Here’s a sample from the Solis list:

Facebook has more than 250 million users

120 million users log on to Facebook at least once each day

People 35 years old and older comprise the fastest growing demographic

More than 5 billion minutes are spent on Facebook each day worldwide

30 million users update their statuses at least once each day

1 billion (!) photos and 10 million videos are uploaded to the social network each month

2.5 million events are created each month

45 million active user groups exist on Facebook

About 70% of Facebook users are outside the United States

Every month, more than 70% of users engage with applications developed for the Facebook platform

More than 350,000 active applications are currently available on the Facebook Platform

15,000, and counting, websites, devices and applications have implemented Facebook Connect since its launch in December 2008

30 million users currently access Facebook through their mobile devices

There’s a reason my kids love Facebook. Ditto for their Mom.

From the top of Issuu’s “In the Media” page:

Here’s what the media are saying about Issuu. Be sure to check out our testimonials too.

“We’re big fans of Issuu.”
- TechCrunch

“What a breath of fresh air! Digital publishing done right.”
- Issuu reviewed on The Future of Publishing

“The first word that comes to mind with Issuu is ‘awesome.’”
- Dallas Marketing Services

“Issuu is the IKEA of documents.”
- Technology and Opiniated News

“Downloading a PDF and reading it in Adobe Preview is sooooo 2008.”
- Quickrelease.tv

“This is an awesome app that I intend to use frequently.”
- School Communications 2.0

I appreciate the mention and definitely appreciate the link. Thanks, Issuu.

Speaking of which, I used Issuu as an example in my presentation, “Using Web 2.0 and Social Media to Reach Your Audience,” at last week’s National School Public Relations Association conference in San Francisco. People seemed to love the application. “And it’s free?” they kept asking me. I’m always a bit floored by the fact that people still think there’s a catch to Web 2.0. But hey, we’re school folk and we’re jaded.

Here I am in beautiful San Francisco, where humidity has been banished forever, or so it seems, and cable cars are passing by my hotel window.

Oh yes, and this is a business trip — the annual National School Public Relations Association Conference. I will be presenting tomorrow morning on a topic near and dear to my heart — “Using Web 2.0 and Social Media to Reach Your Audience.” I’m hoping to persuade school PR people to jump on the Web 2.0 train before it’s too late!

Here’s a link to the presentation, which is now available on SlideShare: http://www.slideshare.net/evelynmccormack.

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85 Comedians to Follow on Twitter
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If you’re a sucker for lists, like me, then you might want to check these out. Here’s just a sampling of some of the Twitterers on the lists:

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This country is a remix, it’s what we do. What did Jefferson and Paine and Adams do but mashup history, take a little from the Magna Carta, a little from John Locke, and a whole lot of rebellion. Now, thanks to the web and digital technology, everyone can join in. This is a unique moment in our history — We can rediscover the promise of the Declaration of Independence next to the music of Louis Armstrong next to the beats of the Beastie Boys and clips of our candidates talking about “Changes.” Every one of us can own our best expressions of liberty, democracy and freedom, remix them as they see fit, and share them with the world.

RemixAmerica.org is a multi-partisan, non-profit website that uses digital technology to give everyone the chance to own the words, the music, the images and sounds of America in digital form; to remix those expressions and ideas with their own; and to send the products of our community’s creativity out to the world… where others will come back to us and start it all over again…

Basically, Remix America, the brainchild of producer/philanthropist Norman Lear, wants to “change the National conversation” by offering a long list of historical videos, “America Then,” with a long list of more current videos, “America Now,” and offers anyone with the skills to use bits and pieces of those videos to create their own mashups that say something about this good country of ours. This is a must for classrooms, professors, teachers and technology directors. There’s a lesson around every corner on this website. Here’s just a sample, a remix from member WreckandSalvage. It’s a mashup of two months’ worth of Good Morning America snippets that somehow is an interesting take in the state or our country, the media and more:

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Lo and behold — a recent post showed Joan’s Twitter Mosaic and I decided to try it out for myself. Twitter Mosaic simply asks for your Twitter ID, then quickly provides you with a code that you copy and paste onto your blog to view your own mosaic — a look at the faces of your followers. How cool to see it all in one place. BTW: It’s the longest code ever, so keep that in mind. And the more users you have, the longer the code.

So here’s mine. (I’m not sure how Sarah Palin got in there, but I’m sure I’m not following her.)

Get your twitter mosaic here.

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OK, so maybe I shouldn’t be sacriligious about this.

But you have to admit, it’s pretty Web 2.0-cool when the Vatican launches its own YouTube channel, and that’s exactly what happened on Friday. Pope Benedict XVI joined President Barack Obama and Queen Elizabeth II in launching his own channel, the latest effort by the folks in Rome to reach out to the digital generation. (It probably won’t work on my college-age kids, however.)

At a Vatican news conference, an executive of Google Inc., parent company of YouTube, joined with the Catholic clergy to announce that the Vatican had posted its first 12 videos on the pope’s new YouTube channel. The Church hopes to publish three new videos each day.

“This is in particular directed towards the young, but not exclusively,” said Father Federico Lombardi, director of the press office of the Holy See. “This is a step toward better communication. The pope encouraged us to adopt new ways of communication in order to reach out to the people who are interested in the pope’s message.”

Initially, the new YouTube channel will post videos in four languages — Italian, English, German and Spanish — and more languages will be added later.

Way to go, Ben!

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