Philip Sheldrake

Month: February 2012 (page 1 of 1)

18 February 2012 / 1 Comment

The complexity of influence is a challenge – and an opportunity

[Originally written for The Guardian Media Network.]

Guardian Media Network

If media is interesting because it facilitates communication, whether that communication is mediated or disintermediated, then communication is most interesting when it facilitates influence.

You have been influenced when you think something you wouldn't otherwise have thought, or do something you wouldn't otherwise have done. Simple as, although you wouldn't think it now that influence is the hot word.

The capacity to change hearts, minds and deeds is considered the mark of the great communicator, the compelling personality, the charismatic politician, and ultimately no one wants to communicate without influence; that wouldn't be a good use of the communicator's time and energy, or indeed that of those on the receiving end.

The focus on making sure you're influenced back is vital too. Individuals (and organisations) that best absorb the zeitgeist are heuristically more able to respond in ways their audiences (stakeholders) might well appreciate.

Influence is complex, and I mean that in the full "complexity science" sense of the word. Complexity is the phenomena that emerge from a collection of interacting objects. The interacting objects could be molecules of air and the phenomenon the weather. It could be vehicles and the phenomenon the traffic. Read more

17 February 2012 / 1 Comment

Social Media Week – something missing

[Originally written for the CIPR Friday Roundup.]

This week has been Social Media Week with events taking place in over twenty cities around the world. No-one can hope to take it all in, but I've done my best to keep abreast of the themes, big and small.

But there was one thing I was keenly looking out for yet did not see. If you did, please let me know. Machined media – or at least that's my term for it.

I define machined media as content that's automatically discovered, presented and published by machines for humans, and I introduced it at last year's CIPR Social Media conference.

Machined media has had a fairly ignominious start in life. Anyone online will have stumbled across it. You will have seen some weird looking text in spam emails, and spam websites just looking for any and all traffic they can entice a search engine to send their way. The text has been generated automatically to try to by-pass spam filters, and then to encourage you to click so the spammers make money. The content hasn't had to aspire to Shakespearean fluency because one click in a million will do just fine thank you very much.

But semi-machined media has entered prime time, and pure machined media is on the cusp. Read more

15 February 2012 / 1 Comment

UK businesses will have to pay a UK media license – Copyright Tribunal implications

Yes, you read the title to this post right. Are you in business? In the UK? Online or use email? Then you apparently owe the Newspaper Licensing Agency some money.

I first expressed my interest in an increasingly aggressive Newspaper Licensing Agency in a 2007 blog post suggesting a more appropriate title for the body – Newspaper Licensing Anachronism. Please note that I have nothing against the monetization of copyright content (hey I'm an author!), I just think the way the NLA conducts its business is all rather 20th Century. And this week, we’ve had a Copyright Tribunal Interim Decision. [The square brackets below reference this decision.]

The NLA’s relevance in the 21st Century has been tested, as far as the law is open to interpretation, by the innovative media monitoring company, Meltwater. Actually, the description the Copyright Tribunal uses to describe Meltwater, or rather Meltwater’s witness, is “unnecessarily combative” [35]. Well, talking of combat, the latest battle in this war concluded yesterday.

JP GlittenbergThe result is a mixed affair, with neither the NLA or Meltwater coming out on top. I’ve just recorded an interesting conversation with Meltwater’s JP Glittenberg about this week’s decision... do take a listen, particularly if you work in media, PR or copyright.

[audio:https://philipsheldrake.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Meltwater-interview-15Feb2012.mp3|titles=Meltwater interview 15th Feb 2012]

Now the Tribunal is quite restricted: by law; by precedent; by previous adjudgements in this ongoing case; by its own terms of reference. Generally, on reading the entire 60-page decision, I find the Tribunal to be most diligent, but given my background, I get a bit uptight every time I read something that indicates a lack of technical understanding of the Internet and the World Wide Web (yes, they are different things!)

Despite some stumbles however, they get somewhere interesting in the end. In fact, they end up showing up UK copyright law for the shambles it is. Read more

3 February 2012 / 0 Comments

The PR agency is dead. Long live the PR consultancy.

[Originally written for the CIPR Friday Roundup.]

I delivered the inaugural CIPR Strategic Management Series presentation this week on the Influence Scorecard. We explored the future developments of social media, related information technologies and business strategy development and execution, all three of which are massively transformed in the past decade and a half, and continue to change rapidly.

And we discussed what's encompassed exactly by the increasingly heard phrase, "socializing the enterprise".

The following question, asked during the Q&A part of the evening, is perfectly formed to offer up a slice through the future as I see it: "What does all this mean for PR agencies?". Let's set the scene... Read more