September 14th, 2009 by mhjones

Hello if you’re visiting us after listening to Peter Switzer’s Talking Business show on Qantas Radio.

I don’t have an audio version handy, but you can read the transcript in PDF format here. Peter invited me on the show to talk about social media, particularly from a corporate perspective.

And surprisingly enough he also asked me to talk about my own business, something that I’ve not done much of lately! I’ll blame a combination of too much project work activity, and much of my social media attention directed to my twitter feed. Having said all that, I’ve got more content & changes planned for this site coming soon, so stick around and subscribe to the RSS feed.

Tagged: Media
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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 »

Tagged: Media, Online, Social media
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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.

Tagged: Media, New media, Television
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June 16th, 2008 by mhjones

We’ve got some exciting news to announce today.

Heather Jones, an awesomely talented communications exec who just happens to be my wife, has started her own corporate communications and social investments consultancy - Filtered Communications.

As Media Connect wrote today (subscribers-only, full copy below), the opportunity came about as a result of a redundancy package. It was good timing - this business idea has been in the works for some time.

The big picture story is that we’re setting up an new entity called Filtered Media Group. I remain director of Filtered Media, our digital media services division. Heather is director of Filtered Communications, a practice focused on corporate communications, social investments and corporate social responsibility.

The idea behind this structure is that it will allow us to focus on our different areas of expertise (and different client bases), while taking advantage of complimentary skills.

It’s early days, so I’ll write more about what we are doing soon. But until then, you can email heather [at] filteredmedia.com.au  and read the Media Connect story below (republished with Media Connect’s kind permission):

Jones takes redundancy, launches business

Tiffany Blatchford, IT Journo / Media Connect

Heather Jones, Lenovo’s former communications director for Australia and New Zealand, will launch her own Corporate Communications and Social Investments consultancy practice, Filtered Communications, following her redundancy earlier this month from the PC maker.

Filtered Communications will operate as a division of Filtered Media, a digital media and social networking consultancy, founded in 2007 by Jones’ husband, technology and business journalist, Mark Jones. The new Filtered Communications arm will “focus on corporate communications and values-based leadership coaching, as well as social investments consulting, for medium to large Australian companies and their internal management teams,” Jones said.

Describing her redundancy from Lenovo as being “of mutual advantage to both parties”, Jones explained she had been keen to pursue new opportunities anyway, and was looking forward to seeing if she could make a go of running her own business.

“I’m very excited about the leadership coaching aspect of my new business. I’ll be helping managers and senior executives identify what makes them personally successful in their leadership roles, and what makes the company successful, then marrying the two together,” said Jones.

Jones also expressed a lot of enthusiasm for social investment consulting because this is “a real moment in time”, when companies are becoming more aware of their corporate social responsibilities.

“Companies are beginning to understand that they have a responsibility to society and the environment, without always knowing how to manage that,” said Jones. “Social investment coaching is about helping companies develop successful corporate social responsibility strategies. I believe passionately in the power of strategic CSR to help build a brand, attract new staff, particularly gen Y’s, who are passionate about social justice issues, while importantly, positively impacting the communities and people the brand serves.”

According to Jones, during the course of her 14-year PR career and personal interests, she has developed firm connections to various NGO’s and philanthropic associations, as well as Australian business leaders, and these contacts will allow her to assist companies to develop their corporate brands, and better understand the charity landscape. She will be “industry-agnostic”, believing corporate communications and CSR skills reach across any industry, but acknowledges technology as her homeland.

When asked what she is most looking forward to about embarking on her new business venture, Jones said it would be the flexibility and autonomy, and being able to apply her skills to focus more intentionally on things she’s most passionate about.

Prior to her comms director role with Lenovo, Jones was the Asia Pacific communications manager for IBM’s PC division, and was instrumental in the management of the acquisition locally of the division by Lenovo back in 2005. She is proud of the progress the company has made in establishing its own presence and identity in the Australian and New Zealand market since that time, and her role in that process.

Jones was one of a number of redundancies made by Lenovo earlier this month. While not willing to give specifics regarding the round of redundancies, a Lenovo spokesperson said: “In an intensely competitive market such as this, Lenovo is focused on fine-tuning operational efficiency in order to keep bringing superior value to our customers. As part of a recent set of initiatives to make the organisation more competitive, some roles in the company have, unfortunately, needed to be phased out.”

Tagged: IT business, Marketing, Media, PR & Comms
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March 11th, 2008 by mhjones

Today’s “duh, who knew?!” newsflash comes to us from this yarn in the NYT which reminds us that Internet companies like Yahoo!, Google, Facebook, MySpace etc collect copious amounts of personal data.

This idea has of course already surfaced before in the form of different ideas, such as the attention economy and the attention trust. The point is that all of us implicitly or explicitly make an exchange when we use the Internet. We get access to oceans of content and data, and some of the service providers collect tolls along the way - in this case the search engines and digital media companies that store, mix and exploit personal data. And that data is valuable. There’s no great socialist conspiracy here (to the best of my knowledge) - it’s simply the way the ‘net works.

But food for thought raised here is that there’s been a shift in the balance of power away from traditional media. In times past, media companies drew their strength from understanding and knowing reader behaviour. An editor is at his or her best when decisions about editorial and the media business are heavily influenced by reader behaviour.

Now, that situation hasn’t changed. Editors still understand their readers and publications. But the vast computing power being deployed by Internet giants continues to change the game regardless. Here’s a quote from the NYT piece:

The rich troves of data at the fingertips of the biggest Internet companies are also creating a new kind of digital divide within the industry. Traditional media companies, which collect far less data about visitors to their sites, are increasingly at a disadvantage when they compete for ad dollars.

The major television networks and magazine and newspaper companies “aren’t even in the same league,” said Linda Abraham, an executive vice president at comScore. “They can’t really play in this sandbox.”

During the Internet’s short life, most people have used a yardstick from traditional media to measure success: audience size. Like magazines and newspapers, Web sites are most often ranked based on how many people visit them and how long they are there.

But on the Internet, advertisers are increasingly choosing where to place their ads based on how much sites know about Web surfers.

So where does this leave big media? Do you rush out and buy sophisticated web analytics services or software? Wait for the consumer privacy outrage to swing the pendulum back in your favour? It would be foolish and simplistic to say there was one easy answer.

But for me, an interesting subtext to this piece is that what counts more than ever is the opinion of advertisers and marketers when it comes to online spending expectations. In Australia, we’ve got some really savvy online marketers, and plenty of others who sadly think digital media still equals a flashing web banner.

Reminds me of a video that I helped Foad Fadaghi produce for BRW (bottom right side of the page) for his Digital Generation report. If advertisers want accountability and metrics, and you’re in the media game, then now would be a really good time to evaluate or re-evaluate online measurement tools.

Tagged: Marketing, Media, New media
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November 19th, 2007 by mhjones

Steve Jobs’ famous Reality Distortion Field apparently struggles to include his lieutenants and PR people, according to this blog post by Fortune.

The post includes a video (below) that offers a telling insight into the way Apple’s PR troops handle the media. Ask the wrong question, and sorry folks, the interview’s over!

Of course, these sorts of situations have been happening for years. My own experience dealing with Apple has nearly always been positive, but it’s no secret that their PR people really live by the company’s “think different” motto. I recall the weeks it took to negotiate a series of exclusive interviews around the launch of Apple’s Xseries server boxes circa 2002 when I was at InfoWorld. In order to get the exclusive, questions had to be submitted in advance, our schedule was tightly controlled, they made their own recordings of what was said, we had to be careful of what we spoke about, and so on.

Here in Australia the PR distortion field includes various rules like “thou shalt not quote an Australian Apple executive” (my paraphrase). The PR folks themselves are good people and typically explain their perspective well, and on rare occasions will even give the media a sound bite from a “spokesperson.” The simple reality is they’re acting under orders from On High - and it’s a question of whether you want to keep your job.

What’s changed now, however, is that these backroom/off-record conversations can now easily be digested by everyone thanks to the wonders of social media like blogs and YouTube. And that, as the PR people are now all too aware, is a game-changer.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44w-RYurbN4&rel=1]

(Fortune link, perhaps ironically, is courtesy of PR agency Dateline Media’s e-newsletter)

Tagged: Apple, Media, New media
Comments: 6 Comments »

May 30th, 2007 by mhjones

Gordon Bell doesn’t define himself as a lifeblogger, he’s an engineer. A famous engineer at that - check out his bio and MyLifeBits project. He was one of the guys who figured out computer networking and helped kick-start the Internet. That kind of famous.

I caught up with Gordon for a conversation and interview today at his apartment in downtown Sydney that features a spectacular view over the Botanic Gardens and Sydney Harbour. We’ve met once before when I wrote about him for The Australian Financial Review. This time it was for the same publishing company, but a different project that I can’t yet announce.

We spent time talking about what it means to go completely digital and eradicate paper from your life. We’ve talked about this idea for years in the IT industry, but Gordon’s been doing it for almost a decade - with the help of research colleagues at Microsoft, mind you.

We also talked about lifeblogging, a term that describes a person’s decision to use off-the-shelf consumer technologies to digitally capture as much information about their life as possible. It occurred to me that Twitter is one technology that reflects part of what Gordon is doing. The mindset of a Twitter user is such that you’re capturing a stream of consciousness and sharing it with the world. The big difference here is that Gordon isn’t sharing volumes of data with us on the web. But he and his team are working on understanding the implications of making every personal email, voice call, video, picture, and document searchable. We talked about some of the big problems inherent in the mass consumption of digital technologies in that context - how will we protect this information and make it universally accessible in years to come if/when .jpeg or .avi is replaced by a different file type?

Another cool thing we talked about was VizzVox, a startup in Sydney and the US that Gordon has personally invested in. It’s a web-based photo and video publishing and editing tool that lets you, for example, upload your images and then record a narration using the mic on your notebook. Think ye-olde slide show for the web 2.0 age. It looks impressive and I plan on checking it out further.

Meanwhile, stay tuned for the publication of our interview in a non-paper format in the near future.

Tagged: Media, New media, The Australian Financial Review
Comments: 1 Comment »

March 29th, 2007 by mhjones

Check out this Wired yarn on what happens when Microsoft’s PR company accidentally sends a journalist who’s writing a story about Microsoft the in-depth file used to track his every move. Just spectacular.

It’s no secret that PR’s keep files on journos - they use it to justify billing rates and as part of broader strategies to massage the message. What’s amazing about this is the level of detail, including internal Microsoft emails which give you an insight into what their hoards of PR people do all day long. And people wonder why we journos are cynical…

Tagged: Media
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February 20th, 2007 by mhjones

First, a confession. I found myself watching "So you think you can dance" the other night. I usually have a 2 second attention span when it comes to talent/reality shows of any description. My only (lame) excuse is that my wife and sister were watching the show with the sort of passion you expect from fans of this TV genre.

Anyway, the moment I happened to walk past and tune in was when the blonde legged host was telling us about how the show had become a global phenomenon. They showed clips from the show as it was broadcast in nations like Turkey, Israel, the US, UK and so on. Yes, people can dance badly regardless of their background…

Then it hit me — television has co-opted the social networking trend on a massive scale. Think about how many people a show like this can impact in each country - you’ve got thousands of people who all try out to get on the show. Each person has lots of friends and family they bring along for the ride, telling them to watch the show on a certain date etc. Then you’ve got all the people who attend the actual filming, and the wider population who just can’t get enough of reality TV where non-TV professionals are the stars.

That sounds a lot like broadcast TV’s take on social networking to me. Throw in SMS voting and various web-related feedback mechanisms and it’s an interactive, ongoing live event. Sure, American Idol and others have already been down this track. But it’s another reminder that traditional media are not afraid to steal good ideas from the web and turning them into lots of cash. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but as much as it pains me to say this, it seems to work.

Tagged: Media
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July 6th, 2006 by mhjones

News that Enron Boss Ken Lay wouldn’t be turning up for court sparked something of an update frenzy on Wikipedia, oddly enough. This Reuters yarn recounts the minute-by-minute updates to Lay’s entry as the news morphed from an apparent suicide death to heart attack brought on by the stress of the trial.

Makes you wonder what Wikipedia this thinking regarding the future of its Current Events section, and Wikinews, both of which I’ve bookmarked and subscribed to in Bloglines for daily reference.

Tagged: Media
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