Mo Krochmal's Digital Dashboard/Site Matrix

2010 was one of life-changing experiences for me and a time when these experiences added up to a commitment on my part to focus on the professional application of social media.

I’m a social median. I don’t think social media has been around long enough and been studied long enough for anyone to be a guru or an expert in it, just a practitioner.

But, I can’t think of a word that better describes what I do, because my social-presence is my laboratory. I share professionally many aspects of my life, I interact with people, I create new relationships and I contribute learning and knowledge in ways never before possible.

I build on my experience as a journalist and as an educator, to learn as much as possible by listening, studying, participating, planning and advising.

For the past 16 years, I have been engaged in new media as a journalist and a producer, and a teacher. I have reported on innovation, from the glass box offices and laboratories of Silicon Valley, to the hallways of Cambridge, Mass., -- all from a base in New York City.

I have taught graduate students and undergrads – some eager, others not – how to share truth, or as close as time and ability allow -- while using new digital tools.

I was actively involved as a user when the Internet exploded in the 1990s and as a reporter on the front lines of technology as digital innovation evolved at a dramatic pace. And, now, we add another layer to this cycle of change with social. To me, this is so logical and so sensible that I’m absolutely compelled to work to gain knowledge that will allow me to be a trusted source of valid information and credible wisdom as we apply these new ways to journalism and education.

I would like to say that 2010 was a great epiphany and, if you read on, you will find your lodestone for social media. But I can’t -- there isn’t a lodestone, yet.

I have put a lot of eggs in one basket – the social media basket – at some risk. I understand that, but counter by saying that this is something about which I’m passionate about with great hope for a better future through digital technology.

The tools we have now are fun to use – if you share with me on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Qik, Ustream, and LinkedIn as well as numerous others, you know that I use many ways to share what I’m doing, thinking, studying, watching, eating or seeing. I stream video, I share pictures, I tweet and retweet, and I try to extract as much learning as I can about how to do this. Why? So that I can teach others how to do it quickly and effectively. You can read about what I do on Krochmal.Posterous.com

If you are interested in a graphic stream of postings that I curate, you can read Krochmal.Tumblr.com. If you want to know what I’ve done each semester, you can read Krochmal.Synthasite.com

If you want to know what I’m doing, join me on Facebook. If you want to talk business, join me on LinkedIn. I use a lot of different services so that I can have a deep familiarity with each, but that is not enough. I want to be able to explain to others the functionality and use of these tools in storytelling.

Today’s Internet is like newspapering was in the early 1990s for me, it’s reading the wires and the photodesk and picking what I wanted to put in tomorrow’s paper. I just do that now, in real time. And, now I can get immediate impact and a measurement of analysis.

The Twitrratr service tells me that reaction to my Twitter sharing is 78.9 percent neutral, with 19.17 percent positive sentiment versus 1.92 percent negative. Quibbling about the faulty algorithm for negative, as a journalist I’m happy with the negative, but I would like to move the needle in either direction this year.

I have been a multimedia journalist all of my life, but only now are the tools so easy to use and numerous that my entire experience is needed to do what used to be very specialized skills.

I stand in front of the camera and behind it. I can produce live streams, or organize national coverage and create social around it.

I have digital tools to push buttons, and I still have to make news judgments or decide when to go live. It all comes together.

In my life, I have shot news movies on an Arriflex or have used the 3-chip cameras, or still cameras. I have worked in radio. Now I can do all of that from my phone and you can share it, right now.

I can design systems that support from 100 to 1000 people doing journalism around breaking news events.

I think social-media is what Clayton Christensen calls a disruptive force and one that is allowing many things, never before so possible, at such an accessible cost, to happen.

At this point, one would lay out several case studies where social-media has changed our way of looking at things and there are plenty of examples available out there to find.

But, each instance of social media success is unique and typically can not be replicated. You can design for viral, and hope, but not guarantee it. We are but in the diaper stage of this evolution and there is lots to learn. So, the No. 1 thing I learned this year is that learning doesn’t stop. Ever. We are in a time of change, so the ability to figure things out quickly allows us to do what we do with information and tools more efficiently.

Let’s say the assumption is, you buy in somewhat on this, and are maybe a little cynical, somewhat doubtful and resistant. That perfectly fine.

I know where you are coming from, and I respect that. The Internet is a toddler and social media is even more toddling than that, while the pace of technological and computing empowerment continues, apace. New tools are coming out so quickly. Almost any problem that computing might be able to solve in terms of work flows, it seems like someone is working on it. There’s a beta for that. I check so much stuff out that I put that I’m a beta-tester on my business card. That gets a smile from folks.

Technically, I think of something I want to be able to do, or accomplish in a work flow, and I can find some kind of solution. That is not to say that I have more than a few challenges in my technology basket of things I want to solve without programming skills. I want to figure out ways to integrate tools. So I’m a mashup person. I like to create efficient systems from the low-end tools that are becoming available. I try to look toward the future to the next few months or as far out as five years and plan for that. I call that azimuth.

And, I work the systems.

Let me give you an example, based on my experience:

In April, I decided to try and improve my ability to shoot and edit video in high definition and to share it rapidly and widely. That was an expensive decision as it entailed going all-Apple in my production process.

So I started with the purchase of a Kodak Zi8 for its ability to shoot in 1080 HD resolution, and for its microphone jack. I then proceeded to put the camera in my pocket, where it fits nicely, and shoot as much as I could in my daily doings.

I live in New York City, a place so visually rich and complex that you always have things in the public domain that just beg to be captured in stills and video. Part of city living involves walking, so I try to stretch my exercise periods with casual street reporting.

I share the things I see. I take photos and videos with my Zi8, or my Nokia N97 smart phone, or my Nikon Coolpix 300. I share a lot on Facebook. It’s where I post photo albums and video interviews. I make these public.

This year, I shared more than 1,200 photos and posted 62 HD video interviews on Facebook, under my individual account.

A great majority of the videos posted on Facebook were done over two weeks in August, when I joined Jeff Pulver and Alan Weinkrantz in traveling to 12 Midwestern states in seven days, from Ohio to North Dakota and then finishing up in Detroit. The trip was so incredibly well planned and smooth and allowed the three of us to meet and talk with more than 200 midwesterners about social media. We made stops in each state where there were people that had taken time out of their lives to come and talk with Jeff. Alan was the musher, Jeff the star and me, the eyewitness.

The trip is where my newfound skills in HD video and production and editing hit the crucible.

We traveled in a from-the-factory 2010 bronze metal flake Buick Enclave crossover with room for the three of us, our baggage and tons of Kodak equipment and Glaceau water to give away at each stop.

I talked to folks in 12 states and shared this experience through some 50 video interviews the people and their towns and social media.

I would start each stop with a live video from my phone, using the Qik service to do a scene setter with notices then sent to Twitter, and the video then posting to YouTube and Facebook in real time. I would turn on the application, point it at the location and record the scene and local sound and then I would ad lib an introduction for where we were. I have downloaded all of those videos and will edit and stitch those together, soon I hope. I just have to find that file.

OK, so we were on location, and I had done my Qik. Inside, if there was food, I’d share a photograph of it. I made it a point to ask any restaurant I entered if they served something special. So I had an amazing fried peanut butter sandwich in Dayton, fried pickles in Indianapolis, chicken fried steak with two different types of gravy in Omaha and always hot chocolate chip cookies in the DoubleTree Inns we stayed in. Jeff likes to start the day with a social breakfast and we found wonderful meals across the Midwest.

I had put together a supporting rig for my Zi8 that included a bracket and an LED light as well as a lavalier mic. With a 16-gig memory card on board, I was able to do lengthy handheld interviews with good sound a lighting in HD.

I would try to do as many interviews as possible and limit them to a couple of minutes.

When we left the stops, I would fire up my MacBook Pro and my iPad. We had WiFi on the road, via WAAV and Sprint. We had both systems set up and were able to host a hot spot that supported my equipment and Jeff’s decrepit MacBook Pro with a webcam. We were able to video Skype with the world while we were rolling on interstates. We Skyped and we broadcast on UStream as we drove from venue to venue.

I used that time to download, edit and attempt to upload the HD video from the road. The whole process was excruciating. I was not able to do layered editing, but rather nips and tucks at the end of file and just letting them rip. At nights, I would download, and post photographs and write captions.

And, I would check-in on FourSquare where I could.

In many ways, being on that trip with Jeff was the highlight of a year where I spoke at his New York 140 Conference Meetup about issues in social media and higher education, and was invited to speak at his New York Conference, and participate in Kinernet UnConference as well as travel the road trip. Jeff’s kindness to me was beyond generous and humbling. Beyond that, he came to my class on March 25 and really inspired my students, sitting through five hours worth of classes with me, as I was scheduled back-to-back-to-back that semester. After the spring semester ended, several of my sophomore students joined Jeff and worked as interns, while others landed social-media internships.

This convinced me that there is a need for people who have a basic understanding of the tools of social media and can help enterprises accomplish their missions by using these tools professionally and wisely for the good.

The appearances at Jeff’s conference and meetups really forced me think ever more deeply about social media. But, that’s not to say that I discovered social media in 2010. I didn’t. I was lucky enough to learn about Twitter from Steve Rubel, a former colleague of mine at CMP Media in Manhasset and someone who is regarded as an expert in social media and technology. Steve recommended Twitter and I adopted it in March 2007. I introduced my students to it and continued to use social media in my curriculum, posting to Tumblr, and creating groups on Facebook as well as creating blogs and wikis.

No, 2010 was when I committed to social media as the area in which I would I’d like to be a part of the conversation as this gets professionalized.

Social media, at essence, is interacting with people by using new forms of technology.

Human beings are social. We have cultures and we are in a time of flattening, of bottom-up, hierarchy flattening change.

In 2011, social media will become more professional and we will start to reach agreement on definitions and best practices and there will be a growing need for people who understand the multiple disciplines involved in this tool.

I want to help people learn how to use it. So, to that, in 2010, I started a coaching and consulting practice as well as offering learning to larger organizations. Perhaps the proudest moment for me in 2010 was on Oct. 19 when Jonathan Ezor and Jeff Namnum joined me in presenting “Social Media Day of Giving Long Island” at Touro Law on Long Island.

There’s more giving to come in 2011. I have already accepted speaking invitations to Teacher’s College to speak to Nabeel Ahmad’s amazing classes on mobile education, and social media. I look forward to other opportunities to share what I know and help the professionalization of social media.

End of Year Report:

Original Content
Krochmal.posterous.com – Blog of original articles on research and findings.
Through Dec. 30, 2010:
2010 -- posted 45 articles for 84,331 page views, or an average of 1,852 views per article.
2009 – posted 38 articles for 15,975 views, or an average of 420 views per article.