Uncategorized | Social Media University, Global (SMUG)

Macaca Moments

YouTube made its mark in political campaigns in 2006 with then-Sen. George Allen’s “macaca” comment, which contributed to the Virginia Republican’s eventual defeat.

The widely dispersed ability to record audio or video and post it to the web may have a powerful effect this year, too. And having cited the most famous Republican example, here for your bipartisan edification are a couple of instances from the Democratic side.

The Democratic nomination contest may have been extended by reaction to audio captured at a San Francisco fundraiser, in which Sen. Barack Obama explains Pennsylvanians’ affinity for guns and religion as the fruit of bitterness about job losses. (Scroll to the bottom to hear the audio on the Huffington Post.) The resulting controversy undoubtedly slowed Sen. Obama’s momentum and likely had something to do with Sen. Clinton’s winning streak in the later primaries. Who knows whether it might make a difference in battleground states like Pennsylvania and Ohio?

Most recently, former Democratic National Committee Chair Don Fowler was captured on tape as he was returning from his party’s convention in Denver. Fowler was seen expressing delight that Hurricane Gustav was going to hit during the Republican convention, interpreting it as a sign of Divine approval of the Democrats.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrBus8ORR78]

Here’s his “I’m sorry if I offended anyone” apology.

The lesson for politicians — and for all of us — is that a “private conversation” is an exceedingly rare event…particularly on a commercial airline.

Contrary to George Orwell’s prediction in 1984, in 2008 the threat to privacy is not a “Big Brother” government (or Bush administration wiretaps.)

Tens of millions of cell phones with video capabilities, as well as easy-to-use video cameras like the Flip, mean that almost anything you say or do could be captured and made available on the Web. But don’t blame a nefarious government plot; it will most likely be an ordinary citizen recording and uploading it.

Who has another example? Where have you seen embarrassing audio and video captured and posted to the Web?

Share your examples in the comments, and I’ll update this post with other “Macaca Moments.”

Social Media 202: Screencasting

Screencasting is a way of letting other people see what is on your computer screen. It lets you capture either the whole screen or a particular portion and create a movie file that you can upload to a video sharing service like YouTube or Facebook.

The benefits of a screencast are obvious, particularly for SMUG. Instead of a slideshow of a sequence of static screen shots uploaded to Slideshare.net and synched to a sound file (pretty good alliteration, huh?), we can now show and tell with full motion, so you can see exactly how to do things. Pictures are extremely helpful, but movies should make the teaching clearer and the learning easier.

But how do you (or I) turn my computer screen into a movie?

For Mac OSX, Ambrosia’s Snapz Pro X is an excellent screencast software choice. It’s easy to use, and I was most pleased that it not only delivers great movies of my Mac screen, but also my Windows XP partition. You can see that example in this post on social sharing with WordPress.com. Unlike most of what you see in SMUG, Snapz Pro X isn’t free: it costs $69. But I think it’s worth it for the power it gives you.

Just to show how far you can go with this, I decided to do a demo screencast using Flip video of me addressing my fellow SMUGgles from the front porch of Old Main:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvJepnorgdY]

Steps involved in this were:

Shoot the video of me talking using a Flip on a tripod.
Transfer the file to my Mac and open in QuickTime
Play the video at half-size, while capturing the surrounding 640 x 480 window using Spapz Pro X screencast software, and then saving to a QuickTime movie file.
Open that file and repeat the cycle, creating another QuickTime file that could again be played at half size.
After repeating a couple of more times to create the “hall of mirrors” effect, edit the pieces together using iMovie or Final Cut.

The point, besides having some fun showing a movie of a movie of a movie, was to show that through screencasting you can do show-and-tell training demonstrating anything on your computer screen.

Ironically, the only thing I can’t screencast using Snapz Pro X is a step-by-step introduction to using Snapz Pro X!

I still like Slideshare and will use it to some extent (particularly for the Snapz Pro X course), but I think a screencast can be a much more effective way to teach.

If you’re a Windows user, this list from Mashable has some screencast software alternatives.

What do you think? How could you use screencasting for your training programs?

Transplant Games: Meet Mayo Clinic Transplant Center Staff

Kay Kosberg and Kristin Eggebraaten are two representatives from the Mayo Clinic Transplant Center who are staffing the Mayo Clinic booth this weekend at the U.S. Transplant Games in Pittsburgh.

Here’s a bit from Kay telling why she’s excited about the Transplant Games:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hR9ekE3zk6E]

And here’s a brief interview I did with Kristin:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6xk7ySUhgI]

Here’s a photo of the Pittsburgh skyline they took yesterday when they arrived, and we uploaded it to the Mayo Clinic Flickr account.

Update: Here’s a photo of the three of us staffing the booth, taken just before I left last night (they’re on the medal stand, and I’m on the floor). Kay and Kristin are taking care of the booth today. I’m sorry I won’t get to see the opening ceremonies.

Michael Davis’ General Mills Presentation

Michael Davis from General Mills is giving a presentation this morning to our Mayo Clinic Public Affairs meeting. General Mills is the only other Minnesota-based company (besides Mayo Clinic) that is in the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For. Michael is the Senior Vice President for Global Human Resources.

Michael talked about how General Mills tries to strike the balance between a high-performance culture and a family-friendly environment. The company also has a legacy of community involvement, with 80 percent of its employees volunteering in the community, and the company gave over $80 million charitably last year.

The company mission is Nourishing Lives. They want to both nourish the communities they are in, as well as the people.

Located on the banks of the Mississippi, General Mills had a significant disaster in 1878 when its mill exploded. Mayo Clinic also had a disaster in its origins, with the Rochester tornado of 1883.

General Mills is working sustainability, having set goals of reducing energy usage, greenhouse gas, solid wast and water usage by 5 percent to 15 percent between 2005 and 2010.

For employee amenities, they have put an auto service station on their parking lot. They have a summer hours program that lets people work 45 minutes longer M-F and then quit 3 hours early on Fridays.

Mike says Commitment has been the only factor proven to correlate with high performance, so they have reverse engineered the factors involved in creating commitment.

Forbes just named General Mills to its list of World’s Most Respected Companies. This led to a highly favorable story on WCCO TV. The story also mentions Terri Gruca’s reporter blog, which has a post on other highly ranked Minnesota employers, including…Mayo Clinic.