Lisa Padilla on Media and Culture

Social media was made for me. I have always favored personal bonds among colleagues and more often than not found it to strengthen the work created together. I have accounts at over 30 social networking sites. I Twitter , Pownce , Jaiku , Flickr and Blip . I chat on over half a dozen instant messaging clients. I write 4 blogs and echo each of those in excerpt or comment on many other web sites. I have several feed readers and foster relationships with influencers I respect to keep up with anything I might have missed. My attention touches a lot of things and I like it that way. Some people feel that there is no intellect in the village, especially if the village is filled with idiots, but I disagree. We can learn much from this knowledge, about the variety of individual beliefs and collective views and about problem solving. So I'm a big fan, you can tell. But I want to raise a problem with social networking yet unsolved. What's missing is the ability to socially "(un)boo...

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.