Oh, That Test!

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Over the summer, my wife and I ran into an old friend: PR maven Robbie Vorhaus on the streets of his hometown of Sag Harbor. I've known Robbie for far too many years that I'd care to admit. We reminisced about the PR biz back in the day when the choice of media channels and methods for gaining mindshare seemed so finite (and manageable). 

He eventually reminded me of "the test," which I hadn't thought about in years. Back then, I had devised a media relations questionnaire for prospective hires, which served as a non-scientific barometer of one's experience toiling in the PR trenches. Sample questions included:

Fill in the cities: 

__________ Times Picayune
__________ Globe
__________ Inquirer

Where can one watch:

KUSA-TV _____________
WMAQ-TV _____________
KGO-TV _______________

What do the following stand for:

SMT ___________________
DMA ___________________
VOT __________________

The questionnaire also asked prospective employees to match high-profile journalists with their national news organizations and even NY-based news organizations with their street addresses.  There were also some practice questions as well:

• Both "Good Morning America" and "Today" have requested to interview your celebrity client. How do you determine which should get the booking? 

• You accidentally gave both Time and Newsweek the same "exclusive" photo.  Now what?     

(Gee, life was so easy back then!)

The test ran about 3-4 pages.  For today's new world order, I thought the time was ripe to update the questionnaire, which, again, only provides a glimpse of one's media connectivity and curiosity (versus PR acumen).  Internet access d̶i̶d̶n̶'̶t̶ ̶e̶x̶i̶s̶t̶ is forbidden during the administration of this test.

The PR 3.0 Questionnaire

Rank the following in order of their unique visitors per month:

___ NYTimes.com

___ Gawker.com

___ Politico.com

___ TechCrunch.com

___ HuffingtonPost.com

Match the following people with their place of work:

Dennis Crowley ___________                               Facebook

Tina Brown  _____________                                 Foursquare

Andrew Mason _____________                             Twitter

Pete Cashmore _______________                          Groupon

Sheryl Sandberg _______________                       Google

Larry Page __________________                          Mashable

Vivian Schiller _____________                              NBC

Jack Dorsey __________________                        The Daily Beast

Describe the following:

Spotify ________________________________________________

GroupMe ______________________________________________

Flipboard _______________________________________________

GetGlue _______________________________________________

Instagram ______________________________________________

Tumblr ________________________________________________

Bit.ly __________________________________________________

BuddyMedia ___________________________________________

Who is Siri?

_______________________________________________________


Whose Twitter handles are these?

@Carr2N _______________________

@APlusk _______________________

@acarvin ___________________

@pkafka ________________________

@benpolitico _____________________

@Xeni _________________________

@Zee _____________________

@Dens _____________________

@Ev _______________________

@Finkd _____________________


What are The Shorty Awards?

_______________________________________________________

Where can one find The App Store?

______________________________________________________

What's the significance of Twitter hashtags?

______________________________________________________


Match the following journalists with their news organizations:

Emily Chang ______________                                   CNN

Andrew Ross Sorkin _______________                     NPR

Bob Garfield ____________________                       Bloomberg TV

Piers Morgan ____________________                      Dow Jones

Kara Swisher ____________________                      The New York Times

Lara Logan _____________________                       Business Insider

Henry Blodget ___________________                      CBS News             

True or False?

The Huffington Post owns AOL ____

The Atlantic's digital ad revenue is greater than its print ad revenue _____

Fox News Channel is "fair & balanced" _____

Bill Keller has left The New York Times  _____

Fairchild Publications is the parent company of W Magazine & WWD _____

Which does IAC NOT own:

The Daily Beast, Newsweek, Match.com, Vimeo, Expedia, Ask.com, Gothamist? 

______________   

What do the following abbreviations stand for?

SXSW ___________________

API _____________________

iOS 5 ____________________

RT ______________________

HTML5 __________________

DM _____________________

NYTM ___________________

Complete the following:

President Obama recently made news in social media circles. He joined ______________.

Michael Arrington recently quit ______________ to start a _____________________.

Lance Ulanoff is the new editor of ________________.

Frank Rich recently left The New York Times to write for ____________________. 

Anderson Cooper is the son of ______________________.

Robert Scoble first made a name for himself blogging for ______ under the name __________.

Keith Olbermann has his own show on _________________.

What is the standard email nomenclature for journalists at:

The Wall Street Journal  ____________________

The Associated Press ____________________

Conde Nast __________________________

How many years has CBS "60 Minutes" been on the air? ___23  ___33 or ___43 years

What is Mediaite and which ABC News contributor founded it? _________________

How does Twitter make money?

___________________________________________________________________

Which print magazine has the largest U.S. readership ______________________?

When is it OK to pitch a story idea via a Twitter direct message?

______________________________________________________________

Having fun yet? Y or N

Wodka Woes

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What's the best way nowadays to thrust your unknown brand into the public spotlight? 

For one brand in the ultra-competitive vodka category the answer seems to have emerged during a marketing creative session in which the participants apparently helped themselves to a more-than-generous sampling of the product.

The result surfaced above New York's West Side highway on a billboard that read:

"CHRISTMAS QUALITY. HANUKKAH PRICING. Great Vodka. Priced Right."

Two carefully selected dogs were pictured. One in a Santa hat, the other in a yarmulke. Now clearly this ad offends through its stereotypical depiction of the Jewish people.  I just wonder whether the geniuses behind this campaign recognized how offensive the creative execution  really is/was, and went ahead anyway.  The importer Panache describes the brand this way on its website:

"In 2009 Panache brought Wodka Vodka to market — a quirky, premium vodka with a value vodka price tag. Wódka was a hit drawing the attention of consumer and business media alike for its fresh positioning and innovative business strategy. Wodka Vodka sold its first bottle in October 2009 in New York City, launched its marketing campaign nine months later and recently, following multiple features in Time Magazine, Forbes and Bloomberg Businessweek, has been anointed as the leader in the rapidly growing 'Cheap Premium' segment of the vodka category. Panache is focused on growing Wodka Vodka rapidly while maintaining the humble, egalitarian beginnings of the brand."

Truth be told, Twitter was all a-flutter about the campaign, which also earned the Gawker treatment. Had you ever heard of the brand prior to this?

On second thought, the purveyors of (tasteless) Polish vodka came to their senses in recognizing it's not nice to f**k with the residents of Manhattan's upper west side, let alone the Anti-Defamation League, which issued its own opinion. The billboard will be coming down.  From The Examiner:

Kim caricature by Mike Briggs

"UPDATE(November 22 3:45 EST): According to a publicist who works with Wodka vodka, an official response is being prepared, but the publicist assured Examiner that the billboard in question ((Christmas/Hannukah") 'is coming down.'

Let's drink to that. Now if only the Boycott Kim (Karadshian) petition would have the same effect!

PR Redefined

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Over the weekend, I received an email from Keith Trivitt who (literally) manages PR for PR's sake. He's the in-house communications pro for PRSA, the industry's trade association. Keith tipped me off to a new campaign by the organization that hopes to "modernize" the definition of public relations in a world where social media has changed everything. It seeks to accomplish this (no small undertaking) through crowdsourcing, a new logo and umbrella theme.

One of most venerable chronclers of the ad/marketing industry, who periodically acknowledges the PR profession in his column, took the opportunity to do so today. Stuart Elliott of The New York Times wrote:

The New York Times's Stuart Elliott

"The effort, of course, has a catchy name, Public Relations Defined, and a logo, too, that proclaims its goal: “A modern definition for the new era of public relations.” The effort is being spurred by the profound changes in public relations since the last time the organization updated its definition, in 1982."

BTW -- You can catch Stuart -- if jury duty doesn't sidetrack him -- along with four other influential ad/marketing reporters editors at our next PCNY lunch Dec 12 in NYC. (But I shamelessly digress.)

The trade association is not alone in scrutinizing how the profession see itself and is seen by others for its future sustainability. MWW's Michael Kempner posted today on his blog about the need to inculcate college students:

MWW's Michael Kempner

"We spend so much of our time… and rightly so… helping clients brand themselves for future employees, we often forget to do the same for ourselves. Yet, PR firms offer among the best places to work for those searching for creative, collaborative work environments on the cutting edge of technology and trends. We need to do a better job as an industry of merchandising the field for graduates if we are going to compete for the top young talent and ensure the future of our profession."

And the other week at PR Week's NeXT conference, we watched the leadership of Ketchum, Edelman and Golin Harris paint a most promising picture of our industry's future in spite of the absence of a clear and consistent definition for what we do.

Since I'm fond of the PRSA team and appreciate their earnestness here -- sorry Jack -- I did write Keith back to offer my two cents on what currently ails the profession:

It's a question to which I've given considerable thought, especially nowadays as practitioners grow increasingly frustrated by unanswered emails to journalists and ineffective direct-to-constituency communications, two-way included.

One PR pro recently summed up the disruption of the engagement game: "it's a buyer's market," meaning that those you're hoping to engage have a myriad other credible sources for story ideas or actionable information. We're simply no longer serve or are perceived as the primary bearers of timely, accurate and actionable information. Google, Twitter and Facebook have seen to that.

Hence, as I see it, the challenge for the PR industry lies less in redefining what we call or how we define ourselves, and more in regaining that lost authority we once held as the most trusted and informed sources for our clients' news and point-of-views to both journalists and end-stakeholders. After all, we're still closest to the real newsmakers.  

If you do want to weigh in with a new definition, here's the submission form to make it easy.

Nook's Pants on Fire

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Kindle Fire

It's not nice to mislead lie to one of the two most influential gadget gurus reviewing today. Well, that's just what the inimitable David Pogue of The New York Times alleges proves Barnes & Noble did in describing its new Nook e-Reader, built to go head-to-head with Amazon's much-ballyhooed Kindle Fire.

Nook

What's more, it's not the first time that @pogue caught the once high & mighty bricks & mortar bookseller in a fib lie. He even pulled the language from his two-year-old review outing B&N for its (under)exaggerated weight claim:

"There’s no doubt at all that we, the overworked members of the tech-reviewers’ union, have always accepted manufacturers’ benchmarks as accurate. In the Nook’s case, for example, every single major reviewer–Wall Street Journal, USA Today, PC World, CNET, Engadget–wound up parroting the company’s weight claim. Including me. It’s just never occurred to anyone that these companies might lie about this stuff."

This time the misrepresentation had to do with Nook's purported and promoted ability to play videos at true high-def resolutions. As Pogue wrote:

"But if I read all of this, I might come away with the impression that the Nook Tablet can show high-definition video! Well, guess what? It can’t. Its screen resolution is 1024 by 600 pixels. That’s not even close to high definition."

In his just-posted column, aptly titled "Nook’s Specs Are Exaggerated, Again," Mr. Pogue takes the company to task in no uncertain terms. Other than the fact that the specs don't live up to the billing, I wonder whether Mr. Pogue was also feeling a bit used by Barnes & Noble's communications consiglieres. He writes:

"During the week that the world’s tech critics were preparing their Kindle Fire reviews, Barnes & Noble representatives went into pre-emptive attack mode. They gave us private briefings to make sure we knew that they, too, had a new line of e-book readers coming out."

I mean, no self-respecting reporter wants to feel that he or she is a cog in a company's marketing strategy. Right?

Crisis Quarterbacks

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BP former chief Tony Hayward  Photo | Justin Thomas

Playing Monday morning quarterback for the crisis du jour has long been a favorite pastime of PR pros and media types everywhere. I mean who didn't have an opinion about how BP behaved in the aftermath of the Gulf oil spill?

And did Tiger Woods, faced with a growing chorus of accusers, do the right thing by using his website to break his silence, holding a presser to which few press were invited, and eventually talking exclusively with ESPN and the Golf Channel?  Even this PR pro weighed in at the time.

It's easy to opine about such things from afar, but much more difficult when you're sitting at the table with what you are told are all the facts at hand. Trust me. The facts are never all at hand.

Didn't we learn in the last 24 hours that Penn State Asst Coach Mike McQueary did in fact stop the "horse play" in the shower and inform the police? And didn't we learn that Penn State president personally appealed to authorities to seal the details related to transgressions by Mr. Sandusky?

CBS Corp's top PR guy Gil Schwartz recently put the business of crisis management in perspective by asserting that these are not PR problems at all.  BP, Netflix, Bank of America and Herman Cain eventually developed PR problems, but they started as behavioral or operational problems.

The rapidity with which they grow into a full-fledged PR crisis often is a function of having good instincts, or in these cases, a lack thereof. If you've been in this game for any notable length of time, you can pretty much predict how stakeholders will react to certain words or deeds. Schwartz noted:

"It's my contention as Gil Schwartz who thinks about this seriously and as Stanley Bing who just pokes fun because it's a lot easier, none of these people have PR problems. They have decision-making problems. They have operating issues. They are ones that produce situations that can only be fixed by good public relations. So these aren't PR problems, these are management problems that are solved by the heroes of business." Here's more.

Mike McQueary

In revisiting the Nittany Lions, now that they've experienced the requisite blood-letting, but reel anew from a surprise network TV news appearance by the root cause of the university's anguish, we learn that Penn State's overseers have wisely tapped crisis counsel from one of Omnicom's premier agencies - Ketchum.

On the same day, The New York Times's Joe Nocera weighed in with "five steps" the university should take to put this dark chapter behind it. They included:

1. Withdraw from post-season play this year.
2. Discipline the rioters.
3. Promise not to use its status as a state institution to shield itself from the inevitable civil lawsuits that will be brought by those who were allegedly abused by Jerry Sandusky. (Too late?)
4. Establish a victims' compensation fund.
5. Announce the cancellation of the 2012 football season. 

Even a Penn State lecturer, when visiting a professor's class titled (!) "Joe Paterno, Communications and the Media," conceded that the university has "lost the PR battle." Steve Manuel, a senior lecturer of public relations in Penn State's College of Communications, said:

"The golden rule of public relations is you have to get something out in the first 60 minutes," Manuel said Tuesday during a guest appearance in professor Mike Poorman's class.  "And mentioning the victims always comes first. Bad news doesn't get better with time. When you cede the message to (critics or adversaries), you lose the battle."

I'm not sure I agree with Mr. Manuel. In this 24/7 news environment, time does eventually heal.  People simply forget or are onto the next shocker.  Wasn't the GOP frontrunner recently accused of sexual improprieties?

Quick and thoughtful action can help quell a growing problem, unless of course, new facts emerge to thrust the issue back into the public spotlight.  But then again, here I am armchair quarterbacking a PR problem without the luxury of all the facts at my fingertips. Shame on me.

Political PRatfalls

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Bachus denies trading options on non-public info | AP Photo 

Can a muckraking piece on "60 Minutes" influence the national conversation and produce real change? Or has the splintered and ephemeral media, coupled with audiences so easily sidetracked by the next Paterno or Kardashian, lost their mojo to move mountains?

In this new news environment where few hard-hitting stories stand a chance of supplanting child molestation or celebrity divorce headlines, one still has to appreciate the work done by CBS News in the opening segment last night.  Correspondent Steve Kroft and his producers outed (mostly GOP) Congressional leaders for sleezily profiting by (legal) insider trading.

Nancy Pelosi

The segment stunned, and was the talk of the Twittersphere today. There was something in it for everyone's political proclivity.  We expect this kind of sleezeball behavior from the likes of Boehner, Hastert, and Gregg, but when Kroft pressed Princess Pelosi at her presser, it was priceless.

Will these revelations produce new rules prohibiting politicians from profiting from material info gleaned in closed-door sessions? Five years ago, perhaps. Today? Doubtful.

Talking about politics, we're just beginning to get a real taste of the politicization of the Roberts Court. I'm not talking about today's news wherein SOTUS has agreed to hear a case on Pres. Obama's landmark Health Care Reform Act after it was upheld in the lower courts. No. I'm talking about the emergence and soon-pervasive political ads funded by Super PACs of questionable provenance.

I even heard a few TV spots for local New Jersey races last week paid for by "Americans for Prosperity," or rather, the top 1% of Americans who wish to remain prosperous. We all know who's pulling the strings, here, right?



So it was refreshing to see the first TV spot for Massachusetts Senatorial candidate and political newbie Elizabeth Warren. And it wasn't even paid for by some opaque, inspirational-sounding organization with deep, yet nefarious pockets. What impressed me most was Ms. Warren's opening line:

"I'm Elizabeth Warren and I'm running for the Unites States Senate. And before you hear a bunch of ridiculous attack ads, I want to tell you who I am."

It's a small thing, but her calling out those attacks ads in advance is a thoughtful and pre-emptive tack that won't eliminate the nasty ads, but will make people think twice when they hear them. Brilliant.

Hardball's Chris Matthews with Alan Cummings  ("Eli Gold")

After "60 Minutes," my wife and I watched "The Good Wife" wherein one subplot showed the Eli Gold character (the law firm's "crisis guy") offering CNN's Chris Matthews, in a prime-time cameo, a compromising photograph of his politician client.

The goal of course was to use Matthews to put the photo in the public domain to pre-empt a potential voter backlash.  Sounds good on television, but such a blatant quid pro quo is easier said than done with a reputable journalist.

Still, Matthews took the bait, and all was going well during the live TV interview until Matthews surfaced a few other  unanticipated photos. The next day, the candidate announced he was heading into re-hab.  Now that's more like it.

NeXT PR

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I headed back to PR Week's NeXT Conference at The Times Center on Wednesday, and managed to catch most of Gil Schwartz's keynote presentation in which he ran through a litany of supposed "PR problems." You may know Schwartz by his Fortune magazine nom de plume, Stanley Bing. In his Clark Kent day job, Schwartz serves as CBS Corp's long-time communications chief.

CBS Comms Chief Gil Schwartz (aka Stanley Bing)

As part of his talk, Schwartz cited Bank of America's ill-conceived $5 debit card surcharge, NetFlix's fatal decision to intro then kill Quikster, BP's Tony Heyward's thoughtless sound bites, and Herman Cain's alleged personal transgressions.

He made an important distinction by insisting that "these aren't "PR problems." They are at their core behavioral, decision-making or operational problems, which good PR can help to resolve. Here's an audio clip (RT: 14:57) of most of his keynote. Schwartz also has this to say:

"One of our specialities is our ability to have nightmares. If you do that, this will happen. It is that attempt to make the organization 'do the right thing' that's at the heart of great public relations, which actually ends up producing no public relations at all...no stories. I have the Hippocratic Oath of PR on my wall, first: 'Make No News.'"

Following his presentation, someone in the audience asked him about his outing as Fortune's Stanley Bing. Here's his recount (RT: 3:25) in which The Times's Randall Rothenberg (now IAB chief) let it slip to his intrepid NY colleague (now in DC) Mark Landler.

I did manage to catch up with Gil as he was about to leave The Times Center and was able to get him to elaborate a bit more about his approach to cmmunications and the changes he (we) have seen in the approach we take to quell supposed "PR problems." I asked about his feeling that apologies do not work and that perhaps it's better to "starve a story of oxygen," i.e., respond once (in The Times perhaps), but leave it at that. Here's the audio clip of the exchange (RT: 5:55).

New Roots of Authenticity Panel

Later in the day, I sat through the conversation with Elizabeth Lee, group head, Edelman Digital, Sarah Colamarino, VP, corporate communication, Johnson & Johnson, Christine Cea, director of brand PR, Unilever about "the new roots of authenticity."

It was an excellent discussion with some neat case studies for the Axe, Dove, Suave brands among others. I especially liked Ms. Colamarino of J&J's summation of the new communications palette, which we're all striving to understand, let alone fill:

"It used to be a 30-second TV spot and a public relations campaign. Today, there is so much white space between the two to fill."

Finally, I attended the last session of the day in which PR Week editor Steve Barrett gathered leaders from Ketchum, Edelman and Golin-Harris to wax on the state of the industry. In this audio clip (RT: 28 mins), we hear from Rob Flaherty, Richard Edelman and Fred Cook.

Barrett, Flaherty, Edelman, Cook

First, it was clear that the agency business -- especially large global agencies like these -- are flourishing in the new communications world order. Second, in spite of many declaring the death of the meme of "who owns this new communications world order: PR or advertising? -- the debate rages on.

 The energetic and always quotable Richard Edelman suggested that PR firms are best-served when "aligned with the Chief Communications Officer." He mentioned IBM's John Iwata and the Smarter Planet campaign in which all the different communications disciplines come into play such as branding, reputation, public affairs...

"On the corporate public affairs side, I think we have to say that our opposition is not other firms nor is it McKinsey. It's actually the Chief Legal Counsel. I think we need to go at that guy's jugular. The reason is: it's a complete control function. It's totally wrong in today's society...they're thinking 1980, we're thinking today.  ...I think we have to say: advertising, lawyers...enemies."

On the question of measurement, Ketchum's Flaherty has this to say:

"One of the questions facing our business is do we prepare so that our discipline can fit in really well to what's now become the big business of markting analytics or do we try and create some sort of uber marketing analytics product of our own? I don't think we do the latter. That train has already left. There are now many systems and hundreds of companies built around marketing analytics. We have to make sure that our discipline fits in a very compelling way into that. I do think that our discipline has to measure traditional and earned media, and have our own sense of how to measure social media."

All agreed that the PR profession's prospects remain rosy. More coverage here.

PR Week's 40 Under 40

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I managed to slip away from my clients today to sit in on the the kickoff lunch of PRWeek's NeXT Conference held at The Times Center in New York.  It was great seeing some old friends, (including a few former interns now running agencies).

I didn't recognize any of the folks honored at the "40 Under 40" lunch, but was impressed by their accomplishments. They ranged from bringing their companies into the digital age to convincing the public that soybeans have tremendous nutritional value.  Oh. I love this business!

The winners will be featured in the weekly, I mean monthly magazine's August issue. Ironically, I sat at the mostly Edelman table where I caught up with some former colleagues from that agency -- the largest independent agency in the world.  Damn IPG!  (FD: Edelman was my last big agency job).

I also had the good fortune to sit next to a couple of seniors communications folks from ESPN.  I couldn't resist soliciting their opinions on the Penn State imbroglio. We all agreed that it was as bad as it gets in the PR business.

The lunch was held during Joe Paterno's presser today, and I asked my tablemates whether this octogenarian had sufficient mojo to go toe to toe with the press gaggle. "He's definitely slowed down, but still has his wits," was the consensus.  Then, as if on cue, a New York Times news alert crossed my new BB 9930.

"Penn State Said to Be Planning Paterno's Exit."

Maybe he has lost his wits?  Or more likely, the presser was cancelled. Apparently it was against the legendary coach's wishes:

"The AP says Paterno's son Scott tells it that the decision was made by President Graham Spanier's office.  Scott Paterno says his father was disappointed and was prepared to take questions about the scandal as well as the upcoming game against Nebraska."

I'll be back tomorrow to catch some of the keynotes and panels.

New York Tech Meetup: College Edition

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Hoodies on the NYTM Stage

The venue was different, as was the average age of the presenters. But that was all that had changed.  The energy from the stage and the warm embrace from the always sold-out audience at this month's New York Tech Meetup remained palpable. In fact, I sensed even more electricity in the room in spite of the event's temporary uptown setting at the 92nd Street Y.

Back in July, I cajoled my #2 son, a newly minted college graduate now toiling in technology M&A in San Francisco, to join me at NYU Skirball. Last week, my #3 son, a college sophomore on a week-long break, joined me. We found ourselves a few seats away from former NBCUni chief Jeff Zucker at his second NYTM. He (again) brought his school-aged son along for the ride. Smart.

Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley at NYTM

This particular NYTM was billed as the "second annual academic meeting." It featured presentations by student coders from mostly New York-area colleges and universities, all devout worshippers at the temples of Dennis (who was in the audience), Naveen, Jack, Ev and Biz.

The NYC-as-tech-incubation-engine meme will only continue to grow thanks to Mayor Mike and the imminent selection of one or two prominent academic institutions to build a technology research center within one of the city's five boroughs. The list of those vying for the $100 million in incentives include Stanford, Cornell, Carnegie Mellon, Columbia, NYU, Rockefeller University and India's Amity University.

But enough with the set-up. The evening opened with the usual sponsor and event announcements. NYTM's executive director Nate Westheimer turned the podium over NYTM managing director Jessica Lawrence who introduced Evan Korth, Faculty Liaison for Technology Entrepreneurship and CS professor at NYU as well as co-founder of hackNY. He took the reins from Nate as the evening's guest moderator.



We opened with a fashion-challenged Otavio Braga who demo'd BodyJam, a melding of augmented reality and one's wardrobe. I found it reminiscent of Clothia from the March NY Tech Meetup. Here's a short video clip above.

Suzanne Kirkpatrick (Commons)

All New Yorkers have come to appreciate Mayor Mike's 311 number as a channel to help make our already very civilized city even more so.  Now what someone incentivized social-minded New Yorkers to report potholes and unusual doings on the city's streets?  With Commons, Suzanne Kirkpatrick has tapped the city's API to do just. Her app rewards the civic-minded with badges and a place on a leader board for reporting ways to improve the city. Nice work, Suzanne, and kudos to Rachel Sterne and the NYC Big Apps program too for encouraging such government innovation.

I also liked Grafighters, a game that lets anyone draw a character and enter it into an animated fight. What's neat: the software recognizes the physicality and other factors of one's creation to weight its prospects for winning. See below.

Zach Sims & Ryan Bubinski of Codecademy

The mythic quality of the Zuckerberg character in "The Social Network" no doubt ratcheted interest in coding well beyond geekdom. Taking this cue, the creators of Codecademy have set out to make it easy for anyone to learn to code.  Once you learned, try finding a Hackathon to put your skills to the test. We heard from the founders of Hacker League, which seeks to crowd-source and list Hackathon events around the country.

And since we're in the realm of academia, what if you learned your chemical bonds on an iPad? The Times's Matt Richtel this week penned a piece on Apple's fam trips for school admins to Cupertino, a couple days after presenters from NYU-Poly showcased Lewis Dots on an iPad to help chemistry students better visualize and manually manipulate how those atoms bond.



The crowd loved LoCreep, which re-enacted a bar scene wherein a creepy-looking guy (wearing a wife-beater shirt) put the moves on a tech-savvy young woman. She gave him "her number," which, by dialing, automatically registered the creep on the LoCreep site. His creepy follow-up voice-mail only added to his "creep factor."  My son and I loved the concept, but were dubious about its commercial viability. Lots of fun and a great skit! See above.

Another crowd fave was Bluefin Labs, which aggregates the online conversation, specifically around television programs from which the company produces real-time data sets and accompanying graphics to help TV programmers/advertisers better grasp viewer engagement. The audience, clearly cognizant of the growing social TV phenomenon, sat in rapture as MIT's Deb Roy presented. Jeff Zucker, who knows a thing or two about analyzing television viewer data, was less ebullient when I asked for his opinion.

Talking about advertisers, the team at AdRunner developed an animated game that challenged the players to dodge the ads coming at you. If you crash into one, you're subjected to the pitch. Yikes.



The end of the evening featured two music-oriented applications. MIDIphon, which won the 4th annual hackNY Hackathon, showcased a mobile device as musical instrument that allows up to 16 users to each "play an instrument" via their iOS devices.  The other music presentation came from some folks at FIT who developed open-source wearable instruments (FIT, wearable -- makes sense).    We finally heard from a CS professor at Rutgers who planed to show as true automation of everyday household objects, each with their own IP addresses.  The demo didn't work as planned, but the professor was engaging and the audience appreciated the effort.

My #3 son was glad he attended his first NYTM, and even checked out Codecademy when we got home.  I don't think he'll change his major from Political Economics to CS, but having a little coding acumen in one's personal or professional tool kit clearly can't hurt.  


Photos/Video: Peter Himler with a Canon Sureshot SX20 IS

PR Rogues Gallery

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Periodically this blog looks at the media machinations of dictators, despots and the desperate to expose the dark side of PR, or at least how it's practiced by morally corrupt governments.

Nowhere is this violation of accepted PR practice more prominent than in the Middle East (though Russia could give most countries in that region a run for their money).

Arafat and Qadaffi were masters of double speak and media manipulation. Virtually everything that emanated publicly from their mouths directly contradicted their actions or their private exhortations. But then again, look where they are today.

Of the practicing media manipulators in the Arab world, few compare to Ahmadinejad and Assad in their success perpetrating a hoax on the court of public opinion. Hopefully one day each will land in that other court in The Hague. 

Iran's Prime Minister of Deception wrote the PR playbook. His Syrian partner in war crimes is now following it.

Don't believe when the master Persian propagandist calls on his Syrian brother in arms to lay down his arms. Privately, he serves as Assad's consigliere in extolling the virtues of murder and a citizen media blackout to silence critics. Where was the Green Revolution anyway as the Arab Spring was blossoming in the region? Yesterday, Assad announced another PR ploy: the acceptance of an Arab League-brokered cease fire in his country. The headline in The Telegraph blared:

"Syria accepts 'entirety' of Arab League peace plan"

A day later, we learn that 12 more protesters were killed by Syrian government forces. The New York Times headline read:

"Syria Killed at Least 12, Opposition Says, Despite Deal to End Violence"

The Committee to Protect Journalists also reports on the growing number of journalists gone missing in that country, and exhorts the world to hold Assad accountable for press freedom:

"Syrian agreement must be monitored for press freedom"

Atta Kenare/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

What bothers me most is that there are still many western media who continue to put their faith in the Syrian (and Iranian) government's empty words.  When will these editorial gatekeepers learn that actions not words of deception is the only news that merit inclusion in their news holes?

 Surely the Arab League must be embarrassed by having been duped by a desperate leader who'll do anything to hang on to his job, even if it means bringing his country to its knees. (Sure sounds like the Congressional GOP.)

 We'll always have government-controlled media arms. But when governments deceive, arrest or eliminate legitimate journalists, their news organizations should  simply block these PR propagandists' public pronouncements from their pages and airwaves, and recognize these despots for what they truly are: leaders who lie.