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The Scoop wins a Lizzie

April 29th, 2009 by mhjones

Way back in 2007 I had this idea for a business podcast. A technology podcast that brought together the best minds in the technology business to uncover a few pearls of wisdom for CIOs and technology leaders. I called it “The Scoop.”

mj-awardFormer publisher of The Australian Financial Review’s MIS Magazine, Matt Rigney, backed the idea and helped sell it to editorial and management at Fairfax Business Media. And FBM has backed me ever since.

Fast forward to April 2009 and  I received a huge thumbs up from my tech journalism and media colleagues when The Scoop received a Lizzie Award for Best Audio Program.  Obviously I’m stoked by the win, particularly given that The Scoop returns next week after a long summer hiatus. I’ll write more about that soon.

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ad:tech Sydney’s marketing “love-in”

March 11th, 2009 by mhjones

I read someone on Twitter describe this week’s ad:tech Sydney conference as a “love-in for marketers and ad agencies.” (Read ad:tech twitterings here.) It’s an interesting description that betrays an obvious slant towards the “other camp” which I heard one ad agency exec describe with a hint of derision as “all these social media consultants.”logo_adtech_sydney

As an aside, we’ve also got the “tech” part of this whole “ad:tech” meme. But that’s been conveniently sidelined in the battle of marketing ideologies. Maybe we just take technology (ie. the one giant computer called the internet) for granted now, since it’s use-case scenarios that matter.

So all this got me thinking. What is it about the mindset of agency-types, and the mindset of social media consultant-types (I tend to fall into the latter), that causes mild friction at events like ad:tech? Read the rest of this entry »

Life as a digital media speaker, workshop host

February 21st, 2009 by mhjones

Mark Jones keynote at FPA ConferenceA few people have asked me what I’m doing these days so I thought it’s about time I wrote an update!

Many of you already know I’ve been a technology journalist for more than a decade, and I’ve continued to work as a freelance contributor for The Australian Financial Review, producing video interviews and The Scoop (which is on an extended summer break). But what you might not know is I’m also a keynote speaker and workshop host focussed on, you guessed it, digital media and internet trends (btw, you can book me direct, or via agencies like Saxton and ICMI). Why? I’ve always made career decisions based on a simple premise. If the idea sounds scary, I do it! Life is more fun that way.

So last November I found myself on a big stage at the Financial Planners Association Conference on the Gold Coast speaking about social media in front of a few hundred people. It was one of a dozen or so keynotes and workshops I have delivered over the past 6 months or so.  The folk at the FPA were kind enough to send me some photos of yours truly on stage, pictured here. Read the rest of this entry »

Life, mashed up

February 13th, 2009 by mhjones

I live for moments of clarity, when all those passing thoughts and observations suddenly collide and create something new. And this time it was during a chance encounter on ustream.tv, the free video channel community.james-valentine

One of my twitter buddies had linked to a test broadcast by ABC personality James Valentine. He was in a radio studio with an engineer (off air) and trying to figure out how to possible weave a live video feed into his radio show.

And here we were, some 92 people who had caught wind of the experiment and buzzed by to see what the fuss was about. James was engaging directly with the assembled onlookers. He wanted to get the sound working. Technical stuff. As an aside, it was fun to discover one of the ustream participants was an old friend who I’d not seen for years – the online equivalent of bumping into someone in the street.

Meanwhile, I had other stuff happening while ustream’s live comments unfolded. I was glancing at my twitter stream (you can find me here, btw), reading email, doing some online research ahead of a social media workshop I was to host the following day, synching my ipod and smartphone. Just your regular Joe with an digital attention deficit disorder. Read the rest of this entry »

Social media simplicity

October 12th, 2008 by mhjones

Amid all the economic commentary, there’s a quiet murmur among digital media and social networking people. Will the bad times hit the marketing and tech industry’s brightest light and snuff it out?

What’s clear to me is that the return to economic fundamentals will rub off on everything else. In tech, media and marketing circles, that means a flight to quality companies, quality products, and the radical pursuit of simplicity.

So it’s incumbent on the digital media industry to clearly articulate the social media value proposition. I think we need less talk about social media theory, less industry obsession with jargon and the wow factor, and more focus on real results achieved by companies using social media. Read the rest of this entry »

Tagged: Marketing, Social media
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Twitter-nomics

July 25th, 2008 by mhjones

As I wrote previously, I’ve spent time exploring the Twitterverse over recent weeks. Micro-blogging is an art form, I’ve decided, but more on that idea another time.

Today’s uh-huh moment comes from Twittercounter, a service that give you statistics on anyone’s twitter subscribers. Yours truly still hasn’t hit the big-time because unlike many of my peers, I maintain a tight, select, or if you like elite list of followers. So we’re talking hundreds, not thousands of fans following our every thought.

But yesterday’s technical glitch meant Twitter wiped more than a hundred of my subscribers away. Today, they’re apparently back and the list keeps growing. Here’s what’s interesting - Twitter is now in the business of predicting subscriber growth. I’m growing at an average rate of three people per day as this chart illustrates. Read the rest of this entry »

Tagged: Twitter, Weblogs
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The good media story

July 22nd, 2008 by mhjones

Ok, let’s be honest. Would you rather read a good story or a bad story? Do you like happy endings (non-Hollywood style), or the dramatic melancholy of an unresolved dissonance?

If you think about the new media meta-narrative, it strikes me that we’ve become fixated on the drama that’s affecting incumbent media. You’re familiar with the story: mainstream newspapers and TV are “losing” while new media like consumer-generated content and social networking is “winning.”

Just about every media debate I can think of – blogging vs. journalism, the future of advertising, digital rights management, mobile content – fits into this paradigm. Every conference, panel discussion or private meeting I’ve enjoyed over the past two years has roughly echoed this story. And it’s a fascinating story, even if it sometimes seems overplayed. It’s fascinating because it echoes other big underdog stories that capture our attention: David vs. Goliath, Vietnam vs. the United States, Maxine McKew vs. John Howard. Read the rest of this entry »

Attention divided, Twittered

July 7th, 2008 by mhjones

If you’re one of my select, loyal readers you might have noticed that I’m tending not to write as frequently on this blog as times past.

My interest in the convergence of media, technology and marketing hasn’t changed. If anything, it’s deepened. What has changed is that my attention is increasingly divided between different forms of social media. And most of my social media time is currently soaked up by Twitter. If you want to follow my twitter musings, check me out at twitter.com/markhjones.

Video interview with Sony Pictures’ Jack Ford

June 26th, 2008 by mhjones

The digital media revolution has arguably hit the entertainment industry harder than those of us in the journalism business. But the technologies and content delivery strategies in question are common to both sectors. And with many non-media companies pursuing various forms of online content delivery, there’s now a lot of people now asking the same questions that media and entertainment folks have been asking for decades.

I sat down with Sony Pictures Television executive VP Jack Ford in Sydney at the VentureOne/AIMIA Commercialising Video conference to talk about digital media convergence.

Watch it here on AFR TV. And kudos to producer Marc Tewksbury for the slick editing.

Pubcamp: The Social Capital Revolution

June 25th, 2008 by mhjones

On Monday I spoke at Jed White & iTechne’s Pubcamp conference in Melbourne on the subject of social capital. I spoke for 10 minutes about what I called “social capital transfer” - the notion that individuals build social capital inside web communities, which in turn builds or depletes the social capital ascribed to their employer.

And when a net-citizen moves jobs, there is social capital transfer that takes place. Understand how this works, and you understand the digital economy.

Below, the controversial “old vs. new media panel” facilitated by yours truly, pic shot on Ben Barren’s b’berry.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Tagged: Social media
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