Create, Curate, and Aggregate

Everybody on the planet has the means to be a publisher.

There is so much content being created daily. A lot of it is being re-shared and collected by those who fall into that category of interest. Then others aggregate and curate the re-shares with their own creations and the cycle continues.

Most of us are guilty of recirculating “drive-by” links. We see something our network might like — or we like it regardless of whether anyone else does — so we hit the share button. We want everyone who follows us to know we like the link. When it shows up in the feed, they see that we shared the link, but they don’t really know why. They assume it is because we liked the story, or we might think they like the story — but is that all? What makes this story more special than the next link in the feed?

Aggregation is basically your collection. It’s the drive-by link you throw in the Facebook feed to be read later. Content curation adds meat to those clicks.

Internet Billboards founder Tom George says you can curate to network and start conversations. He offers some tips on how to provide more value to your shares.

Start with re-titling the article or blog. Add some commentary, such as why you were compelled to share this particular story and maybe what you would like the reader to take away from it. Turn it into a real conversation. If it is appropriate, include others to join the commentary by tagging them. But overall, the original author should feel good about you curating that content. You could even tag him or her to lend thanks for their entry.

Tom talks more curation tips in this interview. It streamed live on November 19, 2013.

United Breaks Guitars Is Not A Cautionary Tale

Dave Carroll was riding along his music career when his life turned about on the dime of a song.

Traveling in the United States on a tour with his band Sons of Maxwell, while waiting on the tarmac in Chicago, another passenger saw his $3500 Taylor guitar being thrown about and wrecked by the airline baggage handlers. The airline never denied it happened but put Carroll into a customer service vortex for nine months, where every contact he encountered passed the buck onto the next guy and he was never compensated for the broken guitar.

Carroll promised the final naysayer that he would write and produce three songs about his experience with the company, complete with videos for each tune, and then he would post them on YouTube. Hence, United Breaks Guitars was born.

Over 13 million clicks on YouTube for Song 1 alone, Carroll discovered a niche and created a new business outside of the music industry.

Enter Gripevine, a complaint resolution website that might have made his own life easier when he was fighting his customer service battle with United Airlines.

Now he’s taken the experience one step further and created a way to help companies improve their overall communications with their customers through social media with Lean2Logix.

So United Breaks Guitars meets the power of customer service. He explains these two ventures in more detail in the following interview — and yes, he still makes music.

Dave Carroll, Sons of Maxwell, United Breaks Guitars, streamed live November 22, 2013.

Identity Fraud Lurks Your Every Move

By Debbie Elicksen.

A funny thing happened on the way back to Canada. At the same time I was getting my boarding pass and paying for my extra baggage at Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix, Arizona, some fellow was gassing up his truck in New York. Both transactions came on my credit card. Fortunately, my transaction went through first or the card would have bounced. His gas cost more than my baggage fees, and I was counting quarters to get on that flight.

I was alerted to the out of state charge about a week later when I accessed my account online to make another transaction. The bank put me in touch with the fraud line. They recognized it was physically impossible for me to be in two states at the same time and they graciously reversed the charge with no extra fees.

How did this happen? It could have been a couple of ways.

In Sky Harbor Airport, there could have been someone near me with a scanner that sees through material and purses to gather credit card and banking information. It could have happened anywhere from the moment I came through the doors to when I was on the airplane. Unlikely, though, because the charge went through at the precise moment I was checking in. Or there could have been a scanner at any place at any time during my six-month stay in the city.

After having spent months in West Phoenix, frequenting a certain grocery store, there was an online source that said that some local establishments had their databases compromised. Everyone’s card information goes into the system with every store transaction. My card could have been in that unfortunate list.

When identity fraud happens, it isn’t always something you’ve done, but there are ways to lower the chances.

Enter Dianne Ojar-Ali and her book: Mrs. Fraud and You.

It’s a great little handbook that fits easily in your purse or pocket, chock full of tips on how to recognize and minimize your chances of becoming a victim of fraud: both online, telephone, and in-person fraud. It’s an easy and simple read. You can find issues that personally affect you just by flipping through the book, or the table of contents.

The list of frauds may be a little overwhelming and you may want to stay locked inside the comfort of your home. Regardless if you own a credit card or partake in any online actions via banking, social media sites, or just surfing the web, every corner of every part of your life has put you on a database. There is no escape. It is better to arm yourself with knowledge and take as many preventative measures as possible.

The show below aired September 6, 2013.

Transcription Services May Resemble a Drug-Induced State

Have you ever tried transcription software? It has to be one of the more entertaining texts you can read.

There are numerous programs available, and some people swear by them, but to rely on them completely, well, let’s just say, if you don’t re-read what “you” wrote and fix it, the message will undoubtedly come out like a fluent Italian person pretending to write in Chinese.

A couple years back, I had purchased one of the leading transcription software programs. I took the time to train it to my voice, so that when I recorded my keynotes and workshops, I could just plug the audio into the computer, click a button and the transcription would come out on the other end.

That’s all good in theory. In practice? Even Charlie Sheen and Seth McFarlane couldn’t make those words up. Maybe programs have improved since then, even so.

When you train the program to your voice, you are usually close to the microphone and enunciate the words into the program. But that’s not how you talk in real life.

If you spend much of your time interviewing people, the transcription software won’t recognize anyone else’s voice, especially when it doesn’t understand yours.

So after a couple of tries, I decided that transcribing is best done by personal hand-ear-keyboard. But don’t take my word for it.

The following is a snippet of a transcript of a Virtual Newsmakers hangout with Daniel Newman. See if you can get the gist of the conversation from the transcript by YouTube. It’s a fun read, actually, but I’ll stick to the video.

               0:16

               and today

0:17

their name and code has said the alexander

0:20

are proud to be featuring danielle newman

0:25

and and then entered a cm a little bit hide and harriet value a doing today

0:31

careened

0:33

uh…

0:34

mag production assistant

0:36

is roaming around so she may join us briefly as well

0:42

uh… anyway

0:44

uh… dan this is into a million men is uh… leak of founder and see

0:49

gyro at ec three which is a clown iced tea

0:52

he and communications provider

0:55

and outlet man briefly in the social media round but

1:00

through writing for twelve most which is a multi

1:04

prime contributor

1:06

uh… that you found it cracked year yesterday

1:11

myself and a shaman guinness friend of mine burned-out sort of a social

1:15

experiment about uh… two years ago connected again

1:19

and there are a lot of people that their client and boil you have people like

1:23

that bit that were are connected to you

2:20

multi readership into was everybody lifeless posts and even though they’re

2:25

not always the best written contact whatever reason the neighboring things

2:29

are born in order people upset we started as i just kind of as a as a fun

7:51

citizens are not doing a series ee capital raise raising money read about

7:55

in that makes it doing that i read about it in instructional or marijuana sorta

8:00

you’ve got star

8:02

knowing that you’re in the ward criminal

13:15

i don’t know maybe even disbanded bash and alarming right

13:20

uh… one intense for america kalman filter nomic fear of nine uteach and

13:28

immobile

The interview with Dan Newman below was streamed May 24, 2013.

Building a Music Career Without Leaving the House

At college age, Heather Fay considered herself a late bloomer to start a music career. She just picked up a guitar and strung with it.

Still, you could have called her a closet musician. She really didn’t put any music out there until much later. Why? It’s personal.

Many authors can relate. An artist feels naked and vulnerable at the thought of releasing their work. It’s terrifying.

Heather tried the traditional audience, but it comes to the point where you have to tour in order to reach a larger audience. With a two-year-old at home, leaving home, in her mind, was not an option.

Enter Google Hangouts on Air, where you can broadcast to the world without leaving the house — without sacrificing motherhood. Here, she met other musicians, developed a following and loyal fan base, and even used one of her Google peeps to help create her latest CD cover.

Heather Fay successfully took her music career from traditional to digital. Plus, like any other creator, she has used crowdfunding to raise money to produce her CD.

She is so grateful for the people who supported her, she created a series of heart-felt thank you videos, that other creatives and business people could mirror.

One may think that a YouTube musician wouldn’t have the opportunity to network or catch the eye of the A-list music community.

Think again.

She received communication from Bono’s ONE.org to participate in the Agit8 campaign — a movement to bring back the spirit of the protest song. She performs the Bruce Hornsby song: The Way It Is. She will also be a part of ONE.org’s Ultimate Protest Song Spotify album, appearing with the likes of U2, Bruce Springsteen, Muse, Elvis Costello, Green Day and more.

Learn more about Heather and her career from a Virtual Newsmakers Hangout. It streamed live on October 18, 2013.

Ebooks On Steroids

What happens when two creative minds get together: one with an art and television background, the other who works in FX and builds robots? The answer: machinima.

Netdreamer Publications is a digital storyteller that is very much a combination of the creative minds of publisher, producer, and editor Chantal Harvey and the late film director and writer Tony Dyson. Together they saw machinima as the future of book publishing.

Machinima is real-time animation that takes books to a whole new level. With an entire generation growing up with ebooks and apps, it makes sense that kids would want more from their books. Machinima is a city they can enter virtually and experience gaming elements. Clouds, sun, cities, and other backgrounds can be manipulated to suit the creator. It’s the perfect platform for film.

Second Life is the platform to which Netdreamer develops its products, such as the Bobbekins, 25 snippets of film that you watch on an iPad, with narration, basic text, music, and graphics.

Chantal and Tony discovered they could put the interactive in books into a virtual world and create ebooks on steroids. They've already launched Bobbekins in a physical book and plan much more for other platforms.

The interactive book brings an exciting flavor to publishing and opens the doors to unlimited creative opportunities. The following interview provides much more detail about this exciting adventure and how it began. It was streamed live on December 6, 2013.

What Happens in Vegas Stays on YouTube by Erik Qualman

What do you want your legacy to be? Erik Qualman’s goal is to be a digital Dale Carnegie, by helping others lead their best life, leadership, and legacy, God and family first.

Once you can answer the legacy question for yourself, that becomes your digital compass. Then you can move forward and decide which of the tools will work best for you to make it happen.

Not participating on the web isn’t an option for businesses today. Even if you ignore the Internet, your customer is there, and so is your enemy. You need to jump into the platform and control your own message, rather than let the Internet dictate what your digital legacy will be.

There are rules. Operating outside of them will not get you what you want.

Qualman’s latest book: What Happens in Vegas, Stays on YouTube is the guidebook for your Internet journey.

But if you want to be connected and relevant, you can’t have privacy. If you listen, interact, act, and share — what you can have are tools that work for you rather than against you or have you working for the tools.

For more tips and insight, watch this interview from Virtual Newsmakers.