ICTlogy

iCities is a Conference about Blogs, e-Government and Digital Participation.
Here come my notes for session IX

Debate: The Handbook of the blog in the enterprise.
Chairs: César Ramos

Genís Roca

We should focus on what is an enterprise and not on blogs. Do we agree on what do we understand by “enterprise”? An enterprise is:

• the acknowledged and legal way to have a personal adventure.
• A temporal union of people around an interest
• An interest group
• An institution: a big telecom is like a ministry, and a ministry like an enterprise.

There are many enterprises: working for your own or employed, with or without employees, with or without workmates, with or without leadership, with or without partners, etc.

Blogging in the enterprise is easy when you’re alone (e.g. freelance) or part of a network and with small decision-taking capacity. If you’re a big decision-taker in a big institution, blogging is more difficult.

The problem is that most GDP and employment is generated at big institutions. So, blogs and GDP and employment do not (so far) go hand in hand. And more, while freelances are 2.0 and explain how do they do things, and the others explain what they did achieve and their version is the number of the inflation rate, which is the number that counts.

Real value of blogs: do they affect the ROI? EBITDA? power quota? value of shares? brand? customer satisfaction? …really?

Enterprises need to improve performance. If blogs play this game, great. If not, forget about them.

The bigger the enterprise, the deafer it is to customer “noise”.

Alberto Ortiz de Zárate Tercero

So, what’s a blog?

• A tool
• A communication medium
• A lifestyle
• A participative social action
• A part of a biggest thing: the blogosphere
• A selling platform?
• An advertising platform?

A blog is a way to listen and talk with the network (not to the network)

The blog can be used to listen and know about your:

• Customer habits
• Campaigns
• Branding
• Reputation
• Notoriety
• Competence
• Ways to innovate and improve
• Authority
• Ways to listen inside the enterprise

The conversation is ubiquitous.

Once you’ve listened, now it’s time to speak and share: listen, reflect, link. Some uses:

• Viral campaings
• Microniches
• Public Relationships
• Communication medium
• Show authority
• Leverage notority
• Create communities
• Team building
• Innovate with the user
• …but not intended for selling

The keys to success… in a World that’s changed:

• Be connected
• Openness to the World
• Weave networks
• Become an attractive place
• Control is not relevant
• Having is not important, but linking

My reflections

I don’t think the size is that important in the reason behind having or not a blog (to impact the ROI, etc.), but:

• Their dependence on the customer’s opinion
• Their degree of competition within the sector
• Their dependence on innovation for survival

Two examples: IBM and Dell are increasingly becoming more 2.0. They are big, but depend on the customer, on innovation and the market is really competitive. On the other hand, big banks, big oil enterprises or the Administration, are almost monopolies (or oligopolies), do not depend on the customer and do not depend on innovation.

Antoni Gutierrez-Rubi adds to my arguments another reason: dependence on brand and reputation.

Genís Roca adds that this might be more a cultural issue (i.e. we are native digitals and think openness as a natural and a necessary thing) than a business valid argument. Maybe, if decision-takers happen to know and learn and perceive this cultural change and see how it really affects their firm, maybe then they’ll shift towards 2.0, but…

iCities is a Conference about Blogs, e-Government and Digital Participation.
Here come my notes for session VIII.

Round Table: Eager Citizens. Entrepreneurs.
Chairs: Oscar Espiritusanto

Lorena Fernández

In the “web 2.0 gold rush”, are we constantly looking for gold? And what happens when one finds gold in a bed? How many Youtube clones? How profitable those clones?

But… what’s profit? Money? Only an entrepreneur if wins money? What about the benefits of linkonomics (link and being linked)?

The engine of the Net is people, not money.

What’s an entrepreneur? Is an entrepreneur someone that starts up an enterprise… to be sold to Google?

The (typical) Entrepreneur — builds an enterprise for… — vs. the Social Entrepreneur — builds an enterprise with… — (Mak).

If people and data are the wealth of the network… why not be a social entrepreneur that builds an enterprise with these people?

Let’s not forget about Freeconomics: people won’t pay for what they can get for free. How to pay your bills?

• Ads
• Sponsorships
• Donations

Though it is true that a virtual entrepreneur has less costs: no physical headquarters, most software is free, a contributing community (e.g. translations), standards, etc.

Not the strongest survive, but the ones that better adapt to the changing situation (though the latter are afterwards bought by the former).

Edu William

How can we apply the Web 2.0 to tourism? How to customize at the individual level tourism services?

It should be possible to generate networks of tourists that can exchange experiences, impressions and information about their trips. But also networks between tour operators: not only demand will be generated as a network, but also supply will be generated in a distributed way, in a network.

Open tourism: collaboration between all stakeholders.

Ildefonso Mayorgas

The idea can be good, but most probably it is not original: it is the good entrepreneur that makes the idea really good and drives it towards success.

Flexibility and capacity of adaptation are key, more important that a mint business plan.

iCities is a Conference about Blogs, e-Government and Digital Participation.
Here come my notes for session VII.

Round Table: Networked Citizens. Blogs, Where to?
Chairs: Pau Llop

Víctor Ruiz

Blogs come from the participative sites that flourished after the Slashdot experience, both technically and conceptually.

Blogs have been an evolution of forums, but only at the usability level, but the general idea has not really changed that much.

And like forums, they are of short reach. Only 6% of the population read political blogs… but we keep telling politicians that they have to be on the Net and have their own blog. Does this make any sense at all? When everyone has a blog (if that ever happens), will we at last make of them an influential tool?

Fernando Tricas

Some questions about the state of blogging

• Whose are my data?
• Who’s the master?
• What’s true?
• Near? Far?
• How do I see it? Where from?
• Who are you? Who am I?

Forecast

• Normalization of the blog phenomenon
• Tools will be improved: they are not that easy to use…

A challenge: threats to sites/blogs related with intellectual property rights, privacy, etc.

Jaime Estévez

There is an increasing trend in Internet users reducing their amount of time watching TV. Besides other browsing, they can now reach TV content on the Internet, especially videos.

Investment in Internet grows at a 50% rate, while in general broadcasting media grows below the inflation rate (which means that actually decreases). As an example, investment in blogs duplicated last year, investment in videos was multiplied by four, etc.

• El Patio de Atrás

Citizen journalism:

Blogs are the only way to avoid the (total) commercialization/commoditization of the Internet.

José Luis Prieto

Personal blogs (i.e. blogs about personal stuff) are majority. Politicized, reflection, journalist-like blogs are minority. Influence of the latter?

They might not be influent individually, but in aggregate terms, they at least generate some buzz and can raise awareness and generate some reactions… not on the citizenry at large, but on firms and lobbies that see their brands or interests menaced.

The upsetting answer to this has been legal threats that sometimes end well and sometimes don’t.

iCities is a Conference about Blogs, e-Government and Digital Participation.
Here come my notes for session VI.

Round Table: Round Table: Journalism on the Net
Chairs: Julio Rodríguez de la Plata

Are we creating/entering the Global Village?

Fernando Jáuregui

(New) Social Networks challenge the traditional way people is informed. Journals (and media in general) have to shape their discourse to this new reality. Hence, digital journalism is not geek stuff, but a “legal revolution”, a habits revolution, etc. to cope with this new civilization. We have to “naturalize” the new information needs and the solutions to meet these needs.

Requisites for the mainstreaming of digital journalism:

• End of anonymity: opinion has to be signed by real people.
• Interactivity.
• End of piracy and non-attribution of content, from both sides: mainstream journals have to cite citizen journalists, and citizen journalists have to cite their mainstream sources.
• Not everything is information, not everything is news: impact, for the sake of it, is not good. And the way (real) information is published also matters.
• Ads are not confidential information: this is misleading the reader.

Blogs are journalism, but are not media. Media require some infrastructure behind, some resources. Media are professionals and earn their living this way, these two issues do make a difference.

Ignacio Escolar

It is an error not thinking of digital journalism as the journalism of the future… as it is an error not realizing that paper journalism is the journalism of the present.

Liability on the comments published in a digital journal is neither “letters to the director” not “something I’ve nothing to do with it”. We have to learn how to deal with these comments… especially when they’re anonymous.

The quest for economic sustainability determines some behaviors of some digital papers. And, somehow, the democratization of media makes them less profitable.

Competition in the digital arena is way bigger than competition in the paper arena: the digital reader can choose from within (literally) billions of websites. Paper journals do not face this landscape.

Manuel M. Almeida

There is a lot of people that want to turn communication into journalism in opposition to traditional or mainstream journalism (this could be called Communication 3.0). But communication is not necessarily journalism. We’re maybe talking about citizen communication, not citizen journalism.

Interaction between citizen communication and mainstream journalism is a must. Hence, it is somehow a necessary but sometimes absurd debate the fight between both positions, one against the other.

iCities is a Conference about Blogs, e-Government and Digital Participation.
Here come my notes for session V.

Round Table: Connected Citizens. Cyberactivism.
Chairs: Rosa Jiménez Cano

Alana Moceri, president Democrats Abroad Spain

First time that primary elections can be done on-line. This means increasing the number of countries where voting is possible from 34 up to 161.

Online, everyone can contribute: absolutely everyone can upload videos to YouTube, photos to Flickr or text to any blog. Pro: democratization. Con: loss of control over your campaing.

Fundrising is key and is a good proxy to test the health of a political campaign.

Obama’s discourse is really 2.0: you can, empowerment, engagement. MyBarackObama.com is a good example of it, where you can even earn points as a reward for your implication and helping recruit other people. This really builds up a formidable base of activists.

Marshall Ganz: It’s values, not only interests, what drives people to take part in civic movements.

Sebastián Lorenzo

Fundación Generación Libre: how voters connect to social networks in Argentina. Not centralized, not decentralized, not distributed, but complex networks. They best way to boost complex networks is to build software that enhances the connection between peripheral nodes to the central ones (leaders).

Cyberactivism: activities to help bridge the digital world with the off-line world, with impact in the “real” world.
Cybermilitant: someone commited in the long-run with “someting beyond” cyberactivism. We’ve yet to find out what this really means.

Noticias LA: a distributed network of volunteers, living in all coutries of Latin America and Spain, selecting local news and feeding them to the site, acting as a news agency 2.0.

César Calderón

Social mediators are no more the protagonists in the Administration-Citizenry interaction: it’s the citizen the one that has to lead the approach towards their Government.

We are used to long run political campaigns, this is why, how and what for political parties were created for. But now people gather around more ephemeral and ad hoc actions. And, indeed, the top-down way of designing engagement has given place to a more bottom-up way of participating. Horizontal replaces vertical.

Antoni Gutierrez-Rubi

Goals of activism: have to be possible to reach and well planned. Assessment is a must and often overridden because of the speed of times and lack of time to reflect.

Proposals: agitation is good, but also reflection. A choral voice (i.e. making the same proposal from different places and points of view, but the same one) might be desirable now and then. Continuity and orientation of the discourse would help in the long-run engagement of our target.

Arguments: less opinion, more arguments. Ideas are good as long as they are “well packed” and backed with arguments.

Leadership: hyperleadership is good to avoid fragmentation, but has to leave room for shared leadership. Of course, leadership to achieve changes and goals. The ROI on leadership has to be positive and as big as possible. What matters is not getting there alone and early, but with everyone and on time (León Felipe).

Activists: they have to feel comfortable working without parties and organizations. But linked to the causes by following some basic rules. ARTivists: someone to be taken into account to help in the “packaging” of our ideas and arguments.

Plurality: are we in a networked world without boundaries… or sheltered in our trenches? Open minds.

Influences: credible, proximate, creating opinion. We have to impact “reality 1.0”, not think from and for the minority.

iCities is a Conference about Blogs, e-Government and Digital Participation.
Here come my notes for session IV.

Round Table: mGovernment. The Mobile Phone and its integration in e-Government
Chairs: Nacho Campos

What is a mobile phone

• Mobile
• A device you use every day
• 110% of penetration
• Many features

Tomy Ahonen: the mobile phone is the 7th medium:

• Personal
• Always on
• Always with us
• Integrated paying method
• Immediate tool

mGovernment: how the Administration adapts itself to the nomadic style of the citizen (The Economist)

Goal: from m-murmur to m-chat to m-conversation (unidirectional, bidirectional, multidirectional).

Barriers:

• Lack of leadership, political and technical
• Infrastructures
• Resistance to change of public servants
• Telecommunication Operators
• Lack of communication plans
• Digital Divide

Mario Moreno Sánchez: Mobile Marketing expert

The advertising market is absolutely saturated: the customer can no more get a bigger amount of ads.

The key of m-development is multistakeholder partnerships between the Administration, Banking and Telecoms. An appropriate legal framework is a must.

MMS is likely to be the next multimedia revolution… maybe more than SMS, because, among other things, it’s really multimedia.

Virginia Moreno: CIO Leganés City Council.

Why mobile communication between the Administration and the citizen?>/p>

• Highest penetration
• New communication channel with the citizen
• Integrated with other channels
• Secure systems

Almudena de la Fuente: Vodafone Government and Public Services Director

How do you sign? With a pen or with a mobile phone?

Multistakeholder partnership: service provider, the Administration, the certifier of the digital signature.

Very simple for the user: just change the SIM (keeping the telephone number) and pay (!) the registration to the service.

Víctor Solla: CIO Avilés City Council

First things first: organizational change before the application of new communication channels.

Technically, it’s everything already done: penetration is (almost) total in the user’s part, and knowledge/data digital management in the Administration part is (or should be) already a reality. It’s “just” a matter of making it happen.

Thus, sometimes the only problem is cost, but not developing cost, but the cost of leadership and organizational change.

The Administration should watch over the existence of an appropriate connectivity so its services can be properly reached. Otherwise, it should foster the establishment of the needed infrastructures, supplied directly or through partnerships with the private sector.