Girls Who Code

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It's no secret that New York City and the nation are banking on a healthy culture of innovation and entrepreneurship to drive and sustain our economic future. It is these two areas that offer the greatest cause for hope when considering our nation's low educational ranking compared to other countries.

Est. Annual Test Score Gains 1995-2009

Most concur that the shortcomings in U.S. education reside at the K-12 level. And that girls in particular are way overshadowed by boys when it comes to gaining proficiency in computer science - a necessary ingredient for fueling this culture of innovation. A 2011 U.S. Department of Commerce study found that only 14% of engineers are female.

Girls Who Code Gala at NYSE

Big business also recognizes the upside in helping bridge the tremendous gender gap in technology.  In June, Twitter, General Electric, Google and eBay announced their support for a new New York-based organization called Girls Who Code that teaches high school girls how to code.

This week, I attended the gala celebrating the first graduating class of Girls Who Code, held on the vaunted floor of the New York Stock Exchange.  I also chatted with Reshma Saujani, the organization's founder, and Kristen Titus, its executive director. (Please forgive my cinematographic shortcomings.)



Separately I spent time with two of 20 girls who made it through the inaugural eight-week, 9-to-5 program held in August.

On the floor (literally) of the NYSE

When considering the numbers, it's not hard to recognize the value propositon here:

"By 2018, there will be 1.4 million computer science-related job openings, yet U.S. universities are expected to produce enough computer science graduates to fill just 29% of these jobs. And while 57% of bachelor's degrees are obtained by women, less than 14% of computer science degrees are awarded to women."

While we're talking about the gender disparity in technology, I'd be remiss not to mention Rachel Sklar's efforts to Change the Ratio of women in the field or the recent New York Tech Meetup "Women's Demo Night," co-sponsored by Change the Ratio.

Match.com for PR?

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My friend, former client and occasional collaborateur Christine Mohan flagged the inclusion of my tweet in a TechCrunch piece yesterday on the launch of AirPR, a "match.com"-like service that attempts to fix our "broken" PR industry. It followed TC's first story touting the imminent arrival of this VC-fueled and managed service.

Love it when non-PR people claim to know how to "fix" our business. tcrn.ch/RfQgNV Introducing AirPR. (@techcrunch)
— Peter Himler (@PeterHimler) September 25, 2012

The writer Rip Empson neglected to include our follow-up exchange wherein I said I'd reserve judgement pending knowing more about the service. I also registered my firm given the prodigious amount of work we've done with the start-ups and the entrepreneur community over the last seven years, and before that in the big agency world during the dot-com boom.

@ripemp Our industry, like journalism, has its flaws, but I'll reserve judgement on this outside intervention until I learn more.
— Peter Himler (@PeterHimler) September 26, 2012

So yesterday AirPR launched (with that TechCrunch exclusive, I presume). Here's how the service describes itself:

"AirPR is a technology platform to increase PR performance. The company was founded to solve the problem of discovering top PR talent to serve specific client needs. AirPR was created with the belief that higher price does not equal better performance.

The goal of AirPR is to match “best in breed” PR independents with startups and enterprises through an innovative Marketplace. AirPR reduces the friction typically associated with discovering high performing PR talent.

The AirPR platform provides control and trust in the PR process for a fraction of the time and cost. Once clients and PR talent have been vetted using AirPR’s proprietary matching algorithm, PR professionals can view projects relevant to their area of expertise and create client proposals using AirPR’s innovative biddi [sic] platform."

And here's a link to the bios of the executives behind the service, which (encouragingly) included Rebekah Iliff, the former CEO of talkTECH, "one of the fastest growing, launch-only PR firms in the US." Launch only?

As you have read, the site aspires to automate the client-agency matching game with a proprietary algorithm. So much for chemistry. I did register to join, but was only asked for my name, agency name and an email contact. So much for big data.

I haven't heard back, so it would be unfair of me to pass judgement without tooling with the tool.  I will say, however, that the "broken" PR model to which TechCrunch alludes and which AirPR seeks to fix most likely entails the earned media equation only, i.e., the success the agency or practitioner has generating editorial coverage for the client.

Clearly TechCrunch is frustrated by the voluminous amounts of inane and misguided story pitches from PR people using unchecked automated email services that flood its reporters' email inboxes daily. While startups wonder why their agencies can't break through this caustic clutter.

Generating publicity (earning media) remains valuable in the conduct of the PR profession, but it is just one dimension of an increasingly complex discipline that also entails owned and paid media, and hybrid earned-owned approaches. (Think HuffPost, Forbes, MediaPost, The Atlantic...). Then there's the navigation of the social spheres.

Most significantly, I would be hard-pressed to understand how an algorithm can identify clear, concise and compelling communicators, or those with sufficiently-honed instincts to advise the C-Suite on how to behave in a crisis. These are valuable intangibles that defy automated discovery.

Still, I do appreciate Rip's closing comment:

"Of course, this is not just all woe-is-me for startups. PR professionals have a tough job. It’s not always easy to make virtualization backup and recovery seem sexy, and it makes no sense for them to have to rep businesses that aren’t in their wheelhouse." 

Right.

New York Tech-Worthy

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U.S. Chief Technology Officer Todd Park

We're not worthy. We're not worthy. We're not....

Well, actually, we (the New York Tech Meetup community) are most worthy of a visit from Todd Park, U.S. Chief Technology Officer. NYTM executive director Nate Westheimer (Wayne) proclaimed:

"So cool to have USA's CTO @todd_park speaking here at #NYTM!”

 Cool indeed.

Mr. Park's infectious enthusiasm for the open-source and startup revolutions resounded Tuesday evening when he touted five projects that could benefit from the coding smarts resident among many of the 800 gathered at NYU's Skirball Auditorium and the NYTM event  livestreams at Foursquare and New Work City.

Inc magazine senior reporter April Joyner was among a number of journalists in the audience, which  included CNN's Laurie Segall and PandoDaily's Erin Griffith. Ms. Joyner summed up the government's projects as follows:

• The Open Data Initiative, an effort to make government data machine-readable and accessible to all citizens. 

• RFP-EZ, a campaign to streamline the contracting process for tech start-ups so that they can more easily sell to the government. The federal IT market, Park noted, is about $80 billion. 

• MyGov, a system that will enable citizens to access government services more easily online. 

• Better Than Cash (formerly the 20% Initiative), a program to introduce electronic and mobile payment systems to developing countries to facilitate the distribution of aid resources. 

• Blue Button for America, an effort to boost the portability of health data by enabling citizens to download their information online.

Following Mr. Park's rallying cry, the October NYTM got down to business showcasing the technology from ten startups. Mr. Westheimer reminded the audience, a quarter of which acknowledged their NYTM newbie status, that questions about business models and revenue streams are forbidden. It's not that they're not important, but NYTM is really focused on new technologies, he explained.

Of the 11 startups that presented, all had some redeeming value, if not that gee whiz factor. There were several that stood out, IMHO. They included:

Keya Does Her Civic Duty w/ ElectNext

ElectNext - An election-oriented/civic engagement platform that made me wonder why someone hadn't thought of it sooner. (I had the same feeling after seeing TurboVote present last month.)  A very poised and articulate Keya Dannenbaum laid it all out. This tool opens by asking the users a series of issues-oriented questions. The app then produces the name of the political candidate(s) in the user's voting district whose public positions and voting records most closely align.

ElectNext's algorithm seeks to eliminate the unfortunate roles that style and histrionics play in the election of our public officials.  It aspires to eliminate the "low information voter" (if that's possible).

Riggs Kubiak Constructs His Case for Honest Buildings

I also enjoyed hearing about Honest Buildings, a data-driven platform for the commercial real estate set in which my old pal (and AmieStreet client) Josh Boltuch has a hand.  The site aggregates and makes searchable everything and anything you need to know about the people, properties and services in that industry.

What's neat is that Honest Buildings taps LinkedIn's API to supplement the industry data it already has.  As their tagline reads: "connecting people to empower cities." I don't doubt it.

Other intriguing startups included old favorite Flavorpill, which showcased its new event-driven site that adds a social layer so friends can learn what other friends are up to.  Unlike Plancast, Flavorpill deploys a group of culturally aware influencers to seed the site with curated offerings. It describes itself as "a network of culturally connected people, covering events, art, books, music, and pop culture the world over. Highbrow, lowbrow, and everything in between: if it's compelling, we're sharing it."

Sportaneous, which launched that day, matches fitness enthusiasts with local venues to do their bidding, whether it be yoga, cycling, or soul cycling. Candor.fm graphs real-time sentiment against a given event. Move over CNN and its tracking of a small slice of the public during the debates. This tool is open to all. And Vantageous's edit suite allows smart phone users (with video) to upload and edit multiple  clips taken from different vantage points. Get it?

I would have to say that my fave startup of the evening lived up to its namesake.  Thunderclap further validates Steven Johnson's "peer-progressive" movement by providing a crowd-driven platform to help do good in the world.  If you had any questions about the power social networks wield in driving awareness and action, Thunderclap will put these to bed.

Calling it crowdspeaking, presenter Hashem Bajwa cited Beyonce's catalytic role this summer in the U.N.'s World Humanitarian Day. Using Thunderclap's platform the singer invited her Twitter/Facebook fans and followers to support her mission. Some 30,000+ did, resulting in over one billion "social impressions." Wow!

Storytelling & Other PR Schemes

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I'm prepping for two sessions at next weekend's PRSA International Conference in San Francisco. The first will consist of a conversation with three in-house social/tech PR pros from: Facebook, Skype (Microsoft-owned) and Twitter.

The idea grew out of a similar session held last spring in New York as part of PRSA's Digital Impact Conference. That panel featured PR reps from four fast-growing digital startups: Buddy Media, Etsy, Foursquare and Zynga. It explored how their increasingly beleaguered PR "departments" managed to advance their companies' brand and business interests with limited internal resources. (In most cases, our panelists were flying solo on the PR plane.)

For next week's session, I hope to get a better handle on how some of the Bay Area's more esteemed social/tech brands manage the myriad incoming requests for interviews and information, and the methods they deploy to advance their companies' POVs and business goals. (In a prep call last week I was told that the news release simply does not exist in one of the featured company's PR lexicon.)

The second session I'm moderating will take place on the same day and is audaciously titled "The Agency of the Future." It will feature the CEOs of Airfoil, GolinHarris, H+K Strategies and Ketchum. When you think of the agency of the future, I'm not sure these particular firms come immediately to mind. But, trust me, all are investing in new tools and talent to tackle the tumultuous changes we face as an industry.

Storytelling and the leveraging of owned content will figure in both sessions at a time when PR pros' historical reliance on the media filter (i.e., pitching stories to unwilling and even hostile journalists) is on the wane. Then again, is it really?

Just how much time and how many resources does a typical agency devote to developing story ideas to take to editorial decionsmakers? And other than the most digitally savvy corporate clients, e.g., Pepsi, Virgin Mobile, Starbucks, etc., aren't most SMBs still compensating their PR agencies for garnering editorial coverage?

A Wall Street Journal piece on Buzzfeed in today's edition looks at the communications hybrid of "sponsored stories" in which commercial brands pay for their "stories" to appear in Buzzfeed's feed. The site's social-minded readers then share that (quality) content via their own social channels giving the "advertiser," "storyteller," "marketer," whatever, extra amplification, let alone valuable third-party endorsement:

"BuzzFeed President and COO Jon Steinberg tells WSJ's Liz Heron and Keach Hagey how using social ads are far more effective and innovative than traditional methods, using new technology with old methods to reach the audience.

Over the next few weeks, the post drew 2,000 Facebook "likes" and about 330,000 views. But most of those views weren't on BuzzFeed's home page. Instead, they were from people sharing the post on social-media sites like Facebook and Twitter.

Stories go viral every day. But what made the post unusual is that it was an ad for Virgin Mobile, which was promoting more entertainment for sharing on the Virgin Mobile Live website. Aimed at enhancing Virgin Mobile's brand, the so-called sponsored story was an example of a new breed of online marketing that takes advantage of people's tendency to share online content with their friends."

Paid commercial content lightly cloaked as editorial content is so buzzworthy, our friends over at PBS MindShift just complied and posted a series "New Storytelling" with all sorts of useful links. The melding of the marketing disciplines and the growth in number of channels to accomodate such hybrid communications is nothing new. (I penned a piece on HuffPosts's advertorial model nearly two years ago and wrote about Altimeter's views on "workflow convergence" more recently.)

But who owns it?

I suppose the overriding question I'll have for these agency leaders is just how far have they've come with regard to paid and owned schemes for advancing their clients' business interests. As for the in-house tech PR pros, I'm very curious to know how their departments are organized and what role do their own platforms play in the everyday conduct of corporate communications.

If you plan to attend #PRSAICON, please swing by to say hello.  If you don't, but have some burning questions you'd like me to pose, email me at phimler [at] flatironcomm [dot] com.

The PR Dream Act

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The Twitter Deluge Is The New Press Release buzzfeed.com/rubycramer/the… cc @thinkprogress
— Ben Smith (@BuzzFeedBen) October 1, 2012

Yesterday, former Politico scribe Ben Smith who now toils in BuzzFeed's media trenches under the nom de twume BuzzFeedBen tweeted a link to his colleague Ruby Cramer's post declaring that "The Twitter Deluge is the New Press Release." Ruby wrote:

"Just before noon today, about 20 lawmakers and public figures were tweeting about the economic benefits of the DREAM Act, which offers some young undocumented immigrants the possibility of citizenship. The spate of #DREAMeconomy tweets — organized by the Center for American Progress to promote their study out this morning — were a notable example of what is fast becoming the new press release for a media and political class that lives on Twitter."

The study found that The Dream Act actually helps the economy and creates jobs. The "influencers" that promoted it on Twitter included:

• New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg (309,000 followers) 
• Former San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom (1.3 million followers) 
• Former U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (239,000 followers)
• Actress (and the cause of the NY Jets' demise) Eva Longoria (3.4 million followers) 
• Journalist Jose Antonio Vargas (21,500 followers)

While CAP didn't issue and pay for a press release (that I could find), the organization did produce original and newsworthy content around the study results, including some decent infographics.

But will Twitter completely displace the paid wire release or direct-to-journalist email distribution route? Maybe so, if news purveyors provide sufficiently compelling and easily shareable content to the right set of influencers. This approach is even more powerful if those influencers have a stake in seeing the news propagate online.

In the nascent days of blogging, I remember raising ethical considerations when several of the early and more popular PR bloggers used their new-found media clout to advance the interests of their clients. Were they hacks or flacks? I wondered.  Pretty soon, tacit rules were established that demanded full disclosure when blogging about paying clients.

The advent of Twitter, and its 140-character limit, pretty much kabashed the requirement/ability to identify whether one was tweeting about a client or just something that genuinely interested him or her.  In fact, I've observed several agencies whose hiring practices clearly have given considerable weight to one's social media influence, i.e.,  the megaphone for agency clients and the agency itself.

Over the weekend TechCrunch's Drew Olanoff create quite the fire-meme with his piece "Klout Would Like Potential Employers To Consider Your Score Before Hiring You. And That’s Stupid."

"Let’s put it out there right now: I am personally not a fan of Klout, which ranks people based on their Internet interactions and engagement on services like Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. I have nothing against the company whatsoever, and this is a vertical that someone was going to get into sooner or later. However, I still feel like the whole concept is bunk."

Drew's rant was prompted by a tweet from Klout CEO Joe Fernandez singing the praises of SalesForce: "Love this Salesforce job posting looking for someone with a Klout score above 35." The conversation actually was started by Piers Fawkes (PSFK) back at the end of August in which he asked, "Should You Hire Staff Based on Their Klout Score?"

"Arguably, a Klout score describes how engaged someone is in the wider conversation around culture. If you have a job in which you’re tasked with created and disseminating culture, Klout could be used to judge your effectiveness — or at the very least rate your level of participation in this cultural discussion."

He then went on to correlate an agency's "Creativity" ranking and its Klout scores:

"When we looked at Advertising Age latest list of the top ad-agencies in the U.S., we found that the senior creative at each agency in the top 10 had an average score of 49.75, while the creatives in the bottom 10 of the list had an average score of 39.2."

His piece is reminiscent of my "Big PR Agency Social Cred Scorecard" post from October 2010. Jeremiah Owyang seemed to accept the use of Klout in hiring, while Tom Foremski, writing for ZDNet, questioned the artificiality of Klout and its ever-changing ranking algorithm. Nonetheless, as someone who recognizes that all companies are media companies -- and by extension, as are their employees -- Foremski wrote:

"However, regardless of how its measured, it's important for people that want to work in the world of influence to be active online, writing articles, active on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

I constantly see PR and marketing folk advising clients on social media strategies yet I rarely see them posting anything online, not even retweets, the easiest form of engagement. Surely, there's a serious disconnect here."

I couldn't agree more.