Det här inlägget skall du inte läsa – om du inte är beredd på att lägga minst en halvtimme på att fundera. Gärna under en solo-promenad. Sen kan du svara på frågorna jag ställer. Samt bestämma vad du vill göra.

Jag är både stolt och glad över att ha skolan och kommunen som kund. Ni som känner mig vet att mitt hjärta brinner mest för att transformera de sätt som vi (inte) tar hand om barn och ungdomar. Orsakerna är flera. Dels på det personliga planet (jag har ju egna barn), men också från den yrkesmässiga sidan. Som fd universitetslärare tyckte jag vartefter åren gick att de flesta studenterna blev sämre och sämre (innan dom träffade mig ;-). Sämre i betydelse av motivation, insikt och kunskaper (som de förmodades ha). Jag initierade en del projekt kring detta för runt fem år sedan, det mesta dokumenterat på www.skolmarknad.info. I termer av kvalitétsfilosofi valde jag att börja med “skolan”. Det vill säga åtgärda problemen och skapa nya möjligheter där de uppstår, och inte bara lappa hålen på universitetsnivå.

En metod som man kan använda för att peka på vikten av området, är att snacka pengar Jag brukar därför säga saker som att

en tvåbarnsfamilj idag lägger i storleksordningen 600 kronor om dagen på sina barns skoltid.

Det är en trubbig siffra, skapad genom att ta en uppskattad skolpeng om 2 x 60000 kronor/år och dividera det med 200 skoldagar om året. Med all sannolikhet är sedelbunten underskattad. Sen är det en (politisk) parantes att pengarna går via skatter och inte den egna plånboken.

I vilket annat konsumtionsområde lägger en familj 600 kronor om dagen på en tjänst som inte alltid levererar vad den ska – utan att klaga? Folk blev ju vansinniga när tidningen saknas en morgon. Vi vuxna skulle aldrig i livet äta skolmat varje dag (med undantag för dom skolor där maten är suverän). Våra barn kan gärna snällt få sitta i bänken med samma läroböcker som vi hade för decennier sedan. Försök förbjuda mobilen på jobbet.  Och om en dagligvarukedja fifflar lite med köttfärs för 39,90 så blir det värsta mediedrevet i veckor. Dom ansvariga hängs ut och en del huvuden rullar.

Men, det som egentligen fick mig att skriva det här inlägget var förska siffror om den svenska ekonomin. En del bekymras över att bolåneinstitut i USA kraschar. Jag är inte så orolig. Eller förvånad. Så blir det när barnen växer upp och blir vuxna affärsmän – utan den etiska skolning dom enligt lagen borde fått. Värre är att vi fortsätter på den banan. Fast det finns lysande undantag. Just nu är YBC i Nacka min favorit. Mer sånt och mänskligheten kan undvika en krasch.

Läroböcker, tidningsartiklar och soff-TV i all ära. Men det finns bättre grejor. Som att filma presentationer på konferenser och lägga ut dom på webben. TED gör det i serien TED talks. Kolla filmen nedan, Reinventing the school lunch (knappt en kvart) med Ann Cooper.

Förmodligen utgör “skolan” den största ekonomiska sektorn i vårt land.  År 2007 stog förskola och grundskola för nästan hälften av de svenska kommunernas kostnader. Nästan etthundranittio (190) miljarder kronor. (Källa: Skolverket).

• Vad får vi för dom pengarna?
• Vad vill vi göra i stället för dom pengarna?

[Update after the gig]: A jam packed day, with lots of ideas, conversations and inputs. One of the most fun parts, I think, was when we kickstarted the Cover-it-live session. Anyway, here are my presentationa slides (pdf, 12 Mb), a link to the mobile live stream recording at Bambuser, and our photostream at Flickr. I sincerely hope you will start a wiki, and it is up to you how much you will share (I will share a sub set of what I found in a later blog post). Furthermore, some embed code for donations – pleeeze. Meanwhile, here is my guiding point for blogging, wikiing, and more.

One of the results of my gig at FRII before this summer is that I have been invited to Redd Barna in Norway (part of the international Save the Children alliance). Joining us are also fund raising managers from Sweden (Rädda Barnen) and Denmark(Red Barnet). The meeting will take the form of a seminar (where a provide an overview of the social media developments) and a workshop (where we all discuss cases and possibilities). If you have any suggestions for insightsful cases we would all appreciate to know about them.

Somewhat late (blame the temporary loss of my main laptop) I learn that Cision recently launched their new service Cision Wire. In their words it is  ”the leading website for press releases and other news”. Not a very legal statement, as I doubt that claim hardly could be scientifically justified.

Anyway, it is for sure an interesting service. In their About page we can read that the wire uses

”state-of-the-art technology for Search Engine Optimization which together with so called ‘social bookmarking’ increases exposure and visibility in search engines, news aggregators and social media”.

On other words a clear direction towards the social media sphere. My first impression is that many stakholders, including those that emit information and we who share and converse, will benefit from the Cision’s new range of services. Notably tags are promoted heavily. Of course, I regognize a few glitches (that’s me :-). The ”Share This” functionality is geared towards the US, for example Digg is included, but not the Swedish equivalent Pusha. Whereas there is an abundance (in a positive sense) of RSS feeds, they are not listed (but availble two clicks away) on the individual release pages (e.g. this one from Autoliv). Cision Wire offers firms and organizations to ”connect with your audience”, but in a web 1.0 fasion. As far as I can tell ”connect” implies one way. There are no options for conversation, for example by commenting the releases. In sum, it Cision Wire seems far away from the emerging development termed New Media Release. And their thinking has not reached the re-prefix.

Newsdesk, a young old-time player in the Swedish field of news relesases, have for a long time supplied more than Cision Wire currently offers. This includes video and slideshare options (in Swedish: about video and a co-founders comment to Cisions launch).

The good news for all of us is that we now have more options to outsource, as a supplement to proprietary Social Media Newsrooms.

[Update 2008-09-19: Via jangles I learn that Cision also has a ”blog”. It’s first post (Aug 20) includes: ”Right now, it’s a collection of resources, information the practices here at Cision think you might find useful or interesting. But we hope this is just the beginning”. Clearly a more humble approach there. But, the most recent post is from today, and interestingly enough – not a word about Cision Wire. Internal communication is a challenge, eh :-]

[Updated with some corrections, see overstrikes and end of post].

Imagine you are doing a gig for professional AV-producers. You notice that there is a big white Sony truck parked outside the conference venue. On stage, during your perfomance, you see two huge video cameras operated by seemingly skilled professionals. The country’s president sits in the front row, less than 10  meters away. You think: "Ah, there will be a nice video from this event". And you hope the arrangers will publish it on the Web afterwords. Which they did…three weeks later (I publised a couple of video streams live).

So what? A good video can wait a few weeks. Things always comes in between (you might notice that this post is published over a month later than later). But my sad state of mind stems from how the production house have published their result. In short. The video, with a couple of exceptions, does not contain my illustrations (slides and videos). Furthermore it is published in a fashion that makes it extremely hard to find and almost impossible to share. Goodmood has (on purpose?) made it virtually impossible to rip their videos. Which means I can not re-publish it myself. Less download it and play it on my mobile players (Nokia, HTC, iPhone, etc). You can, with some effort, find it through one of my video pages. On top of that the video does not contain any information about its context and where one might find more (i.e. a link to the conference web site). In sum, there is no viral value to be found. Time and money virtually thrown in the drain,

As far as I can judge, the video in question was produced and published by Goodmood. Their vision is to be "the leading European software company specialising in the development and delivery of applications and services that enable easy publishing, management and delivery of online video". Sorry guys, but you have a long way to go. Compare my post on Video sharing considerations that I published about a year ago.

I am in a bad mood for two reasons. The first is ego, we did not get a super professional video from one of my gigs. The second is experience, I recognize this case as yet another illustration of the state of the art in many established firms. On the personal side exactly the same thing happened to me close to two years ago, when World Television filmed another of my gigs. More on that  occasion in Swedish, and as translated by Google. In that case I ripped their video and re-published it on Viddler in order to support further sharing.

Hopefully this post may help those of you that arrange meetings to further understand some of the important aspects of video publishing in a social media environment. If not, please let us know.

[Update 23:30] One of the incumbents have asked me via e-mail to correct "a few factual errors" (they also add other insights which I may not share). The video was published two (2) weeks after the conference, then it took another week until I got the message. There is also a video production/editing firm and web sponsor involved, and they most likely contribute to the end result. All parties had decided not to include slides in the video this year. In sum, my impression from the new information I got is that the customer is not always right, it seems to be difficult to make everything right, and one should not always trust your supplier.

[Updated after the gig:] A fascinating afternoon – thank you! Here are my slides (pdf, 4,7 Mb), a link to the Bambuser live video. So far (15:55) no one (except me) has mobilized any images to energy@weconverse.com, but you still have some time to get them into the tagged stream. Of course your wiki is a good option for conversation, but hopefully there are things you want to share with the rest of the world. Perhaps by commenting here?

Vattenfall is producing a full day internal seminar on PR for their Nordic staff who are directly enganged in media relations. I have been asked to spice the event with inspirations from the latest developments in social media. For the moment I am not sure what to cover, but think mikroblogging, novel forms of video services, mobility, and apps will have a given place. And of course the issues around the concept of ”social media release”. Other speakers and consultants will reinforce with practical details on cases, including social media monitoring.