Lisa Padilla on Media and Culture

This week on BlogTalkRadio I had the opportunity to interview John Battelle. You can read up on John or read his blog, Searchblog . He offered a good discussion on information availability, social networks and what he calls "conversational media". Here's where you can listen to our talk . John spoke on the show about how interconnected social groups were becoming. So, from a chapter called The Computer and the Counterculture in the book The Cult of Information by Theodore Roszak, I pulled this quote. I believe it describes a fundamental change in individual isolation which is very powerful as most of us imagine: "Both the quantity and content of available information is set by centralized institutions -- the press, TV, radio, news services, think-tanks, government agencies, schools and universities -- which are controlled by the same interests which control the rest of the economy. By keeping information flowing from the top down, they keep us isolated from each ...

Robert Scoble, famed Microsoft blogger and current media executive of PodTech joins the recently launched Social Media Club talk show on Blogtalkradio, adding his name to the who's who of A-listers (and B, C, D, E etc.-listers) who seem drawn to Blogtalkradio. Why? Because it extends and enriches the freedom of speech and audience connection elements of blogging, making it a live, interactive conversation. Does this beautiful freedom come with some new challenges when letters to the editor become the editorial itself? What about credibility, fact-checking and authority. Who's authority? Exactly the topic of conversation on today's talk show: Listen to: The Social Media Club Show , with guests from north to south and east to west, each of us with a firm opinion about the changing nature of editorial reach and credibility. http://www.blogtalkradio.com/hostpage.aspx?show_id=50791

Very interesting implementation of Twittergram by Adam Green over at feedonomics . Twittergrams are short sound bytes you can point into the world of Twitter, "microbroadcasting" to your social network or community. The idea came from Dave Winer , whose band of vigilante developers continue to push media distribution as far as they can. BlogTalkRadio provides the call-in capability, which records the Twittergram or you can upload pre-recorded mp3s on the Twittergram site. The LAFD is also using BlogTalkRadio for some great civic services. You guys are on fire! ;)

Join me tomorrow at 10 am PST (or download the podcast later) for Evern Williams and Dr. Lynette Cruz, broadcasting with me live on Lisacast.com . Williams is the community media manager at Olelo television in Honolulu, HI and Dr. Cruz is a cultural anthropology professor and public access activist. I have my own ties to this part of the world having lived for a time on Oahu . I first learned about co-located server infrastructures on the first ISP on the islands. The gentleman I worked for, an engineer, taught me about data storage, security and the business of moving information. This was the foundation for my subsequent interest in media management and publishing. and the changes we've seen for more than a decade surrounding our romance with all things digital. I also held other odd but interesting jobs and had the best meal of my life to date, right there in downtown Honolulu. The name of the restaurant is Chef Mavro , by the way.

My boss Alan Levy of BlogTalkRadio and I had a great time talking with Jim Turner and Tris Hussey on their new talk show today, The Mediasphere Show . Their site, http://www.blogonomics.net , discusses social media. Humble and inquisitive, these podcasters gone broadcast are a fine addition to the BlogTalkRadio network -- welcome! You can hear the show in archive here . Our discussion touched on BlogTalkRadio's role in the new media realm which was a good follow-up to the Future of Blogging panel I was on at NBC11 last week with PodTech and BlogHer. Some great questions came from the audience on community policies and supporting blogging within the enterprise. Speaking of new media, user-generated broadcasts and such...NBC11 just launched NBC11HomeTown.com , a local reader-contributed news site. Very cool. Big media steps its toe in the pool of democratized content. A lot more of this is coming as the tools to broadcast, podcast and videocast are made more available to everyday ...

If you're in the Bay Area and you haven't attended a Social Media Club event yet, this might be the one. I'll be on a panel with Elisa Camahort, Tony Bove and Jeremy Owyang discussing the future of blogging. If you missed it you can catch a slightly less than high-quality video Jeremiah took here . Ever wonder how you can use a blog? Whether you're reading them, writing them, or aggregating them, blogs are a powerful communication channel that should be part of your media mix. This panel of 3-4 blog experts looks at blogs from a number of angles. We'll cover: -> Mining the blogosphere for market intelligence -> External enterprise blogs -> Internal enterprise blogs -> Aggregating blogs -> The future of blogs Date Thursday, July 12, 2007 Time 6:00 pm PT - 8:00 pm PT Location NBC11/KNTV 2450 N. First Street San Jose, 95131 Register here if you can make it.

NYC I went to New York this week for the first time. It is a big, beautiful city filled with constant examples of the blur between consumers and businesses. This morning I interviewed Rafe Needleman of CNET's Webware on Lisacast, my weekly BlogTalkRadio talk show. I asked his views about the convergence of consumer software applications to those used in the work place. You can listen here . You can also listen to Hilary Leewong's 15-minutes of Fame show, where she interviewed me about Lisacast.

Mark Frauenfelder has a captive print and online audience most journalists would envy. But he’s not stopping there. He joins thousands of hosts and hundreds of thousands of listeners who have discovered BlogTalkRadio’s free talk show service when he appears tonight on The Alan Levy Show to discuss his upcoming book release. Levy is the founder and CEO of BlogTalkRadio . To call in to the show and speak with Alan or Mark, dial +1 (347) 677-0649. Listen live at 9 pm EST tonight or download the show from the archive after it airs. This marks a turning point in broadcast media. Blogtalkradio is empowering citizens worldwide to reach a greater audience and engage a two-way conversation – live. Frauenfelder is founder and co-editor of the Internet's most popular blog BoingBoing ( www.boingboing.net ) which boasts 350,000 readers each month and 1 million subscribers. Frauenfelder is also editor-in-chief of MAKE ( www.makezine.com ) and contributing editor to Wired.com, Madprofessor.n...

Last night I met with one of my favorite people in the industry, humble ex-physicist David Nordfors, now running the Innovation Journalism department at Stanford University. Next week marks his 4th conference on journalism here in the Bay Area. Keynoted first by Doug Engelbart, who I saw many years ago at Parc, and is speaking here about the societal collective intelligence of society, will be moderated by John Markoff. Next, by Curtis Carlson, on the discipline of innovation (insert whip sound here). Mr Carlson is the president of SRI International. Check out the rest of the speakers here , you'll even find some familiar locals. Mr. Nordfors, a best practice communication advocate aiming consistently for a program which will allow us to get more out of the event, is changing the format of this years conference slightly by extending the length of breaks and lunches. This way people can connect, which is the whole idea in the first place. As David left our meeting last night to see ...

At Netscape in 1999, I recall entering into the office one morning and being approached by reporters asking if I knew about the email scandal between the company and its competitor Microsoft. Having been briefed by a diligent human resources group, I had no comment but was well aware of its happening and the wave of damage control, present and future, it created through our organization. I think I can say that, generally speaking, can't I? Perhaps more important than the legislation which followed that event was a lesson far greater. The Web offers vast opportunities, really, it's quite fantastic. But it's rapid growth and non-standardized services are more akin to a pool of pirahnas than the relatively slow-moving frontiers we previously conquered in print, radio or TV. Regulations are enforced by priority of the greatest threat, not based on wrongdoing. The whole Internet is a unsupervised free-for-all, where the bullies and the thiefs experience virtual nirvana. There ar...

Many years ago I worked for a small multimedia company and one of our clients was Macromedia. We wrote documentation for Director 1.0, built interactive help and held trainings around the Bay Area. In my spare time, I used the software to put together a multimedia story for a family member celebrated an 80th birthday, splicing together music, pictures and narration. Sixty people gathered in a local restaurant and watched, it was very sweet. Today, most podcasters, videobloggers, journalists turned new media (and vice versa) are keen on organizations that are supporting participatory media even though there seems to be a good deal of negative press scrutinizing the business model, quality and even safety. But that's not stopping people who have to tell stories, news to share, and feelings and creativity to express. Here are three examples of people putting in the time, helping to make media higher quality and even getting paid. 1) Dan Gillmor, who I wrote about in my last post, and ...

That is how Dan Gillmor charactizes the state of Citizen Media tonight at the Mid-Peninsula Community Media Center . The long-time blogger and ex-columnist for the San Jose Mercury News now runs the Center for Citizen Media . Dan touched on the history of the newspaper industry as an example of the changing landscape of journalism and said that for the past 40 years it has been dependent on monopolization. "It was previously bad business to annoy half of your audience." But the traditional journalism business models are quickly eroding. The product is no longer printed on presses that cost $50-75 million. The competition that previously existed in journalism is much less significant today than the present race for ad dollars. We are struggling to encourage local coverage, which is playing a very important role in the value of community knowledge. Investigative and in-depth reporting sites and those adding value to content like newassignment.net , Witness.org , and dotSUB.co...

I heard a story recently of someone traveling to a poverty-stricken area of the world who said "they didn't have shoes, but they had mobile phones." As pervasive ownership is becoming evident, a question is begged. How will devices like cell phones can change the way we think? When Justin Oberman of Rave Wireless and MoPocket.com calls himself a mobile evangelist, a humorous picture of a man dancing in a mobile phone costume in the mall comes to mind. But Mr. Oberman has some serious views on the use of the ever-growing platform. Here's Justin (and thank you kindly for the interview ) with Jeff Schwartz of Disruptive Strategies at Stanford University’s Mobile Persuasion last month. Stanford University has begun to examine a field of study, called "captology", in their Persuasive Technology Lab, to identify positive persuasive technologies in the areas of health, business safety and education. From the Stanford University Web site, here is a captology dia...

Click to view this 4-minute video Roberto Spiezio, citizen journalst from Italy, is interviewed about his entry into the world of journalism. After my interview with Mr. Spiezio in South Korea, we corresponded by email and he was kind enough to offer more information about politics and media in his home country of Italy. LP: Thank you in advance for your perspectives on life in Italy, Roberto. First, let me ask, how does Italy view immigration? RS: This is a really sensitive issue and one of the usual battlefields for the political parties. The left wing has a policy of aperture about immigration, because of ideological matters and because immigrants are a good source of political consensus. At the moment the government (left wing) has given many immigrants a resident status, as long as they have a regular job. In the past few years the right wing government had cracked down on immigration, by making the entrance and the staying in Italy a lot more difficult. As example, a...

The Tech Policy Summit in Silicon Valley begins today examining the individual, corporate and government influence and responsibility in establishing policies online. Walt Mossberg currently interviewing James Cicconi asks "Why does the United States suck at bandwidth?" This question, taking a look at the availability, variety and quality of connectivity. Cicconi responds that some of the problem will be helped when competition increases speed. When asked by a member of the audience whether AT&T might charge those in densely populated area more, in order to support connectivity into rural areas, Cicconi said that "Regulators frown upon this". I would like to know why. Is it because they (we, as consumers, and subsequently carriers) fear customer attrition? Where does the responsibility fall, to the individual, the carriers, the FCC or legislators in Washington DC (who, mentioned this morning by U.S. House of Representatives Congressman Howard Berman, are still c...

Dr. Robert Sinclair was honored with a symposium at Stanford University last week, to celebrate thirty years in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the university. The list of symposium speakers, comprised mainly of former students, demonstrates the impact that Professor Sinclair has had on the field of electron microscopy: James Wittig – Vanderbilt University Gary Michal – Case Western Reserve Mary Kay Hibbs-Brenner – VIXAR Fernando Ponce – Arizona State University Alan Pelton – NDCUS Velimir Radmilovic – National Center for Electron Microscopy Martha Mecartney – University of California Irvine Edward Goo – University of Southern California Tom Yamashita – Komag Alan Schwartzman – Massachusetts Institute of Technology Warren MoberlyChan – Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Thomas Nolan – Seagate Technology Gerardo Bertero – Komag Toyohiko Konno – Tohoku University Subhash Shinde – Sandia National Laboratory Brian Morfitt – Frazier Heath Care Katherine Walker – ...

From the RSA Conference in San Francisco, CA, Chief Security Executive, Greg Hughes , discusses how fraudulent criminals go about stealing your identity and the value of Corillian’s products. Coincidentally, just after the interview I learned that Corillian was purchased by CheckFree for $254M. From the press release, today: "Corillian and CheckFree have the potential to accelerate the delivery of future generations of online banking technologies for the industry," said Alex Hart, Corillian President and Chief Executive Officer. "Our organizations and cultures are similar in our mutual commitment to deliver high-value solutions that are flexible, scalable and secure to enhance the financial services websites for our customers and their end users." Corillian supports more than 30 of the top 100 U.S. banks and 21 of the top 100 U.S. credit unions with its online financial services strategy. CheckFree processes more than one billion transactions annually and distribute...

In December 2006, the International Telecommunications Union held its conference in bustling Hong Kong, China . Jeff Schwartz of Disruptive Strategies sat down with long-time organizers of the event, Neustar Managing Director Reza Jafari and CTO Mark Foster , to learn about the event and its purpose.