Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

I really don’t mind wearing a suit and tie. When you’re walking around, they’re perfect.

When you’re sitting down, in a meeting, they’re less perfect. I find that jacket always bunches up, and since most meeting rooms are at a temperature for shirt sleeves, I find that the extra thick layer of suit jacket always leaves me feeling a little bit warm.

However, you can’t just loosen your tie, undo the top button of your shirt, take your jacket off, and roll your sleeves up in the first few minutes of a meeting.

In fact, I’m not even sure you can do any of those things in most meetings.

This normally leaves me with an internal dialogue as I sit across the table in a discussion: “Okay, we’ve been talking for fifteen minutes… Can I take my jacket off now? Or do I have to wait until someone more senior does so first? Or do I have to wait for a break in the conversation? Or should I wait until there is a break, and then just come back without my jacket, like nothing happened?”

Tired of this endless internal debate, I threw the question to Twitter and got some good responses.

Brad Buset and Greg”Blazer” Blazina both agreed that if you’re the client, you can take your jacket off.

Buset also adds that if it is an internal meeting, and the senior colleagues their jacket off first, then it is appropriate.

I still feel like this leaves a lot of times when I’m going to be left sitting down with a suit jacket on.

Any other ways to justify taking it off in a meeting?

Suit-related etiquette tips also appreciated.

-Parker

Over the course of the last two weeks I conducted a couple of interviews for my Ph.D. dealing with the was the perception of digital games differs in Germany and Australia. By talking to just a couple of people you can tell how the cultural history of a country also influences the way modern media is dealt with.

The first person I spoke to was Malte Behrmann, attorney, secretary general of the European Games Developer Federation as well chairperson of the German developers association, GAME. Malte is also responsible for digital games getting officially accepted as Kulturby the German Kulturrat, the umbrella organization of the German cultural associations. This push always reminded me of the strategy of the early German Autorenfilm.

In an attempt to conform to bourgeois cultural norms and thus demonstrate cinemas’ cultural and social relevance, the Autorenfilm (films based on the works of famous contemporary authors or written by them directly for the screen) mobilized national literary and cultural traditions against the Schundfilm (‘trash film’) by serving as an incentive to ‘respectable’ artists from the ‘legitimate’ stage and literature to lend their prestige to the new medium. It was basically an elevation of the medium to adhere to bourgeois tastes and therefore broaden its social basis.

Asked if he saw any parallels between these two instances, Malte Behrman answered that he wouldn’t sit in his office like a spin doctor and think about how a game could be made more socially acceptable by means of “nobilitation”. A statement I thought was quite remarkable as it shows how on a subconscious level Germany’s long high-culture traditions and its specific socio-cultural influences still assert themselves – in a way that is decidedly different to Australia where, due to the country’s different history, I never encountered a similar attitude. Here digital games – and non-hierarchical entertainment in general – never needed any form of cultural legitimation.

German ad for Commodore VC20 - it lands you on Jupiter and the next class

Moreover, Germany’s cultural background allegedly influenced the way games were designed: They were regarded as overly complicated, complex and not very accessible (think complicated simulations, strategy games and management games [Parker's note: only Germans would be into "management games"]). When I was talking about this with Philipp from Yager he made the point that this might have something to do with the fact that for a very long time German developers mainly created games for the PC.

In contrast to consoles the PC was an open platform everyone could develop for without having to obtain licenses and development kids – and Germany has a very strong history of home computing. I suppose this is because the purchase of a home computer was easier to justify as it allowed its user to go beyond the mere pleasures of play. As the classical ad above puts it: “How do you land safely on Jupiter and in the next class?” With the most successful computer of the world of course! The VC20, not only does it allow you to land on Jupiter as part of a game, it also plays chess and connects people in play. Well, that but it also teaches math, physics and biology… So much for the theory, but then again this probably had more appeal to Germany’s cultural history of a country defining itself in terms of Kultur and education.

This eventually also might have had an influence on the design of German games: most of them went beyond mere play but offered an ‘added value’ by, e.g. teaching about complex economic correlations and challenging the player accordingly. I remember people at school telling me how they refused to play Doom because they thought it was too primitive. As Jens from Ascaron put it in the interview I conducted with him: “Germans liked to play with animated Excel charts”.

German Atari 400 ad - good for games AND school!

Obviously this was a competitive disadvantage: These games, on account of their design, hardly sold outside of Germany, probably another sign of their cultural specificity. Just like the (mainstream) American market did not appreciate the Autorenfilm with its intellectualized themes of broken identities, alienation and magic, history repeated itself 80 years later when it refused to play overly complex German games.

Of course this changed in the last couple of years, last not least because of a transition to console gaming. The Wii and especially the DS were godsend gifts – cheap and easy to develop for and… well cynics might point out that Nintendo isn’t very strict when it comes to shovelware. Also German developers are amongst the leading ones in the field of mobile and browser games. But eventually it is quite difficult to rid oneself off one’s cultural background. I suppose that’s what Philipp meant when he said that even though you can have lived in the US for three years you’re not quite ‘there’ yet in terms of an American (uncomplicated, commercially orientated) mindset.

My next interviews will be about support mechanisms. I wonder if the influences I just described also have an impact on how local game developers are supported by the state run institutions. What are the rules and regulations? And do they get applied eventually? Which games will be funded which won’t? Would something violent yet potentially successful receive support? I already got a taste of what to expect when I informally talked to someone about these things on a party and was told that ’serious games’ apparently play an important role when it comes to funding in Berlin. Not only because they demonstrate potential ‘transfer-effects’ (locally developed engines used for something… well, beyond play) but also because they function as a mental guide for the people giving out the finds: As a cultural/ technology-beyond-play token that helps to set everything in motion, the ‘ox that draws the cart’ so to speak.

-Jens

Not only can Tetris apparently cure trauma but videogames can also enhance empathy in children.

A new book by psychiatrist and gamer Dr. Kourosh Dini, desribed as the “definitive assessment of video games’ impact on children, including on their physical and emotional health, and educational and social development” explains that

Games have lots of benefits, which unfortunately, parents aren’t always aware of when the only games they’re exposed to are the controversial violent ones targeted to more mature players. Age appropriate multi-player video games can allow children to learn how other people think – a key aspect of empathy. Games can also help a child become more comfortable with new and ever progressing technology (…)

To be sure, there are those who play problematically. Learning how to tell the difference can be critical toward promoting healthy development.

Two things must be taken into consideration here: The games should be age appropriate and they should be multi-player titles as these allow interaction with other, real people. Observing their teammates’ play style and reactions under gaming circumstances can help children to grasp an idea of what goes on in their friends’ minds.

Basically it’s like other play situations, which, as we all might remember, constitute deadly serious affairs for kids and are vital to the healthy development of several skills. It seems that in the case of videogames, these situations are now digitally supplied. A virtual version of cops and robbers, if you will.

Via: Gamepolitics

-Jens

Hey there BlogCampaigning fans – Jens and I hope you had a good holiday season, and we’re going to start posting a little bit more regularly now that we are both back from vacation.

We’re also working on a new design for the blog, and we expect to have some great guest posts in the next few months.

Thanks for reading in ‘08 – we’ll try and bring the same quality stuff to ‘09!

-Parker Mason

South Australian Attorney General Michael Atkinson, the person holding back any progess on the introduction of an R18+ for digital games in Australia, labeled a report commisioned by the Interactive Entertainment Association of Australia “absolutely bogus polling” and “trash”. The report, which found 91 per cent of Australians support the introduction of an R18+ rating, was conducted by Bond University on behalf of the publisher’s lobby group.

Its author defended the research pointing out that the it was done impartially by international firm Nielsen and the statistical analysis was performed “following the highest standard of research ethics”:

Dr Jeffrey Brand, Associate Professor at the Bond University Centre for New Media Research and Education, told Screen Play today that “the research team for Interactive Australia 2009 would be interested in hearing specific criticisms from Mr. Atkinson with respect to particular flaws he sees in our research methodology”.

“All research must be funded and idle claims about the impact of funding influence on research outcomes are less useful than thoughtful considerations of how methodology impacts outcomes,” says Dr Brand.

Mr. Atkinson made the assumption that “he who pays the piper calls the tune”, but Dr Brand says he approached the IEAA with the proposal for the research in 2004 and was “not seeking to be paid for my views”.
“I have sought to bring quality national polling research to the table to facilitate discussion about the place of computer games in our society with the one funding source that would be willing to support the research.

“We make no profit from this research. The IEAA simply covers the cost of the research – not even my time is paid for, instead funding pays for Nielsen to field the study and for postgraduate students to help with analyses, build graphs and write up the report.”

Damn you inconvenient reality! This outright refusal to take the vast majority of the people seriously really shines a light on Atkinson’s understanding of democracy.

I recently wrote a post on this blog introducing you to Jan Chipchase’s Future Perfect blog in an attempt to introduce people to some blogs that might be outside their usual reading scope. Continuing with this series is a post about SEOMoz and why you should be reading it.

A concept that has been around for a long time in the web industry but only recently seems to be gaining steam amongst communications professionals is that of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). According to Wikipedia, this is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site via natural or “organic” search results. Basically, the more optimized your website is, the better traffic you’ll get to it.

For some reason, many of the people that I have spoken to in the past few months seem to think that there is some sort of alchemical magic or technological wizardry that optimizes a site for search engines.

Put aside those thoughts and start reading the SEOMoz blog, written by some of the world’s leading SEO experts. Some of their posts are directed at newcomers to the world of SEO and can offer a great introduction. Others are a little more complicated and technical, and the balance of the two types of posts lets you pick up anywhere and start learning or applying what you already know.

If you’re more of a visual learner, they also have a series of posts called Whiteboard Fridays where one of their team members will create a short, casual video explaining some SEO concepts.

One of my favorite posts on SEOMoz is about the Three Cornerstones of SEO. Even though it was published back in mid-September, I’m constantly referring to the great diagram they have that makes it easy to explain the basic concepts of Search Engine Optimization.

So head on over to SEOMoz and find out why can proudly say they’ve got more than 30,000 subscribers to their RSS feed.

-Parker

PS: Related is a great post from Ed Lee about why your site sucks in search engine rankings. As I commented there:

“I also think that too many people complicate SEO, particularly in our industry. They think that it is some kind of alchemical magic, when it really comes down to the three simple “pillars” that you mention. I’ve always heard that if you design a site that is easy to navigate by humans, the search engine bots/spiders will also be able to crawl it easily and find your content. If you’re creating relevant content and writing naturally using words that people are likely to search for rather than jargon, people will be able to find your site and are more likely to get something out of it, and subsequently link to it.”

(note: this is a belated followup to the post I wrote almost a month ago about Twitter)

A few weeks ago, I told my roommate about the magic of RSS feeds. I also told him about how he could go about subscribing to these feeds using an RSS reader like Google Reader.

Last week, I couldn’t help but feel pride when I walked into his room and saw him with Google Reader open, scrolling down through a number of posts.

“This is great, man,” he told me. “I’m getting all these updates from sites I like, but I don’t have to go back to them to check for new stuff.”

With that statement, I knew that he understood the value of RSS. Even though his reading list of Ultimate Fighting news sites probably isn’t the same as the list of sites that you check on a regular basis, what matters it that he is able to easily get the information he wants. As Seth Godin recently wrote about the topic of subscribing to information via RSS:

“If you subscribe to a blog, any blog, congratulations. Not only have you figured out how to keep up, for free, with huge amounts of information, you’ve done it in an elegant and efficient way. While it may be fun to try to remember which blogs you read and then go visit them in some sort of order, RSS and other subscription tools are way smarter.”

So right now you’re probably thinking that this sounds great, but wondering how it works. Well anywhere you see the RSS logo (normally in orange, but like shells in the Mario games, it can come in a variety of hues), or word ‘Subscribe’ or ‘RSS,’ you can sign up to start recieving RSS feeds. Nearly every these days allows you to subscribe via RSS, and those that don’t are missing out.

At Toronto’s recent WordCamp, I heard Joe Thornley compare subscribing to RSS Feeds to subscribing to magazines. Rather than having to drive all the way downtown to the store and look around to see if his new magazine had arrived, Joe noted that he simply took one of the subscription cards, filled it out, and everytime a new issue of that particular magazine came out it would be delivered right to his house. I think this is a great analogy, except that the best part about subscribing to things via RSS is that they are free and magazines aren’t.

Get started by first signing up for (or downloading) an RSS reader. There are plenty out there, but I prefer Google Reader. It is easy to sign up for at http://reader.Google.com and you can start using it right away.

While some sites will require you to manually input the address of the feed you want to subscribe to, clicking on the RSS logo on a page will generally take you right to Google Reader and allow you to subscribe to the RSS feed.

If you use Firefox, the little RSS icon will often appear in the address bar to let you know you can subscribe to that particular site just by clicking on the button, and being brought to Google Reader.

So what else can you do with RSS?

If you perform searches on a regular basis, it might be easier to subscribe to them via RSS. That way, you’ll be notified everytime a new search result comes up.
Technorati allows you to subscribe to an RSS feed of their search results, as do Twitter and Google.

I also use the Hype Machine to look up music fairly often Since I’m super into an artist named Lykke Li, I subscribe to an RSS feed of search results for her name on the Hype Machine so that I can always get the latest remixes.

For those of you using Yammer for internal communication, you can also subscribe to an RSS feed of your company’s conversation so that you can stay in the game.

If you have an account with Delicious, you can also allow people to subscribe to either every bookmark you save, or just ones you save with certain tags. For example, you could subscribe to my Delicious account at http://delicious.com/parkernow and get every single book mark I save or, if you’re like my roommate, you could choose to just subscribe to the bookmarks I tag ‘music.’

And if you monitor certain Wikipedia pages, you can pay attention to them more easily with RSS. By going to any Wikipedia page and selecting the history tab near the top, you’ll be able to bring up another menu down the left-hand side. One of those items is “RSS”, and subscribing to it will alert you everytime someone makes a chance. Not only will it let you know that the page has been changed, but it will let you know how the new version compares to the old version.
If you start making your RSS reader part of your routine, you’ll realize how much time your saving and how much extra information that you’re absorbing.

Oh, and Dave Fleet has some great tips for using Google Reader to help you with your media monitoring.

I’m sure I’m missing some RSS tips here…any other suggestions?

-Parker

Since the launch of CNW’s Social Media Release a few weeks ago, I’ve often been asked if including comments on the body of a release are a good idea, and if people should opt for them.

Comments are a great tool. If people react to your release in a positive manner, this could be reflected in the comments they leave, supportive of your brand or message.

However, there is the chance that someone will react negatively to your announcement. The fear of them leaving a critical or otherwise nasty comment is what is driving the uncertainty about using comments on a release.

Rather than being seen as a threat, I think that the negative comment should be seen as an opportunity. If one person is critical of your announcement. When they leave a negative comment, you have the chance to respond directly after it and in an official capacity. In a release without comments enabled, unhappy visitors might vocalize their feelings elsewhere, in places you can’t reach or might not be aware of. Further visitors to the release who might also be harboring the same feelings might read your response and be swayed.

-Parker

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You know what would be awesome? What would be awesome is if someone created an email to FTP service.

I’m talking about the kind of system where you could simply email files to your server.

To upload files related to BlogCampaigning, I have to use either an FTP program (using Fetch for Mac right now) or Dreamhosts web-based FTP.

It would be way more simple if I could simply email files to my Dreamhost space. The FTP login information could either be specified in the email body, or set up with an account to which the email is linked. I envision being able to specify the path in the body of the email.

Is there anything like this out there? I’ve taken a look at YouSendIt, but it isn’t exactly what i’m looking for. There could also be a huge flaw with this system that I’m just not seeing.

-Parker

Yeah, after a few months of wicked hard work from a whole bunch of different people, the CNW Group Social Media Release has arrived!

If you’re not sure what a Social Media Release is, check out this video that CNW commissioned the amazing Mark McKay to do:

If you didn’t get it from the video, one of the solid points about the CNW SMR is that everything is embeddable. That’s how I got the above video into this blog post.

But what’s up with the little round face?

He is CNW SMR – the lines coming out of his mouth represent a message, while the ear represents the comments. Essentially, he’s a conversationalist, just like the CNW SMR.

It is also one of the first SMRs to truly offer comments on the body of the release. I’m not sure that everyone will go for this sort of thing, but I think that it is a fantastic idea. If one person has a comment (negative or positive) about your organizations announcement, chances are others will as well. With comments, that one person (or more than one person) can voice their opinion directly on the release, and you as a PR pro can also respond directly on the release. The advantage of being able to have an official reply in an offical place is obvious. (Oh yeah, these comments are RSS enabled as well, meaning that if you want to keep up to the conversation via RSS, you can)

In order to give you social media enthusiasts a better idea of how sweet the CNW SMR is, Todd Defren graciously allowed me to adapt a chart he created a few months ago that aimed to “untangle the various SMR offerings” from major wire services.

What else is cool about the CNW SMR? Well, you should check it out here and see for yourself (or check here for more CNW SMRs). You can also follow @CNWGroupSMR on Twitter to be updated when we issue new Social Media Releases on behalf of our clients.

The whole CNW team was awesome to work with on this project. Product Manger Duane Bayley has done a fantastic job (and if you have any questions, hit him up on Twitter) of working with the design team on getting all the elements right. CNW’s in-house graphic designer Kelly also did an amazing job of creating all those little face icons that you see on the release (I’ve also got a lot of respect for Kelly for being so patient with me and all my last minute suggestions).

I’d also like to give props to Mark McKay for making the kick-ass video above – he was truly a pleasure to work with. And thanks again to Todd Defren (and the SHIFT Communications crew) for letting us adapt their chart and Brian Solis for being a decent enough guy to provide us with both a quote and a photo for our SMR.

So what do you think? Is the CNW SMR the kind of thing you think you would use? Why or why not? Any thoughts on the topic that you can muster up would be greatly appreciated!

Feel free to comment on the release, email me directly (parker dot mason at newswire dot ca) or find me on Twitter.

-Parker

Disclosure: if it wasn’t already obvious, I work for CNW Group. However, this is a personal blog and the views expressed on it may not reflect those of CNW Group. Basically, I’m going to say what I want here, event if what I want to say has a lot to do with my work. Hey, it is my life and my blog. And Jens’ blog. And to a lesser extent these days, Espen’s blog. But you get the idea. Does anyone even read disclosure statements these days?