To get the final product, here’s what i did:

1. Used a Wacom Bamboo Fun tablet to draw out a rough sketch of the concepts in Macromedia Flash (because i am used to the Flash drawing tools)
2. Printed the sketch on a piece of paper for reference
3. Fired up Screen Toaster to do the screen capture, and set the “geek settings” to replay the recording at 2x speed
4. Recorded a screencast while drawing the sketch in Flash (without audio)
5. Used the Screen Toaster tool to add voice over to the video (using a Sony ECM-MS907 microphone)
6. Tried to upload to YouTube directly through Screen Toaster, but had some sort of technical problem, so just saved a version on Screen Toaster, and a local .mov file, which i then uploaded to the SociaLens YouTube account.
7. Embedded the YouTube video in this blog post
8. Wrote this blog post

Considerations for next time:

1. Check audio levels more carefully (i used the Screen Toaster defaults, which didn’t record at a high enough level)
2. Imagine my audience a little more vividly (it’s sort of strange presenting these things without real people in front of me)
3. Speak more succinctly (this is something i need to work on in every context)
4. Take the time to sketch objects a little more carefully (i am still not completely used to the Wacom tablet)
5. Experiment with object-drawing capabilities of Flash?

All told, the process took about 1 hour, though i think with practice, i can probably get it down to about 20-30 minutes, as well as improve the quality as i get more used to drawing with a tablet, the recording/uploading process, and get used to thinking within the context of this process.  For this first try, i chose a topic that is probably just as easily tackled through a text blog post, but hopefully future versions will deal with more visual-dependent ones.  I’d love to hear your comments on this.  Did the visuals help at all?  Is it better than a blog post for these sorts of concepts?  I’d also love to see some of my colleagues in industry and the academy experimenting with this.

“..writing three songs about United Airlines and my experience in the whole matter. I would then make videos for these songs and share them on YouTube, inviting viewers to vote on their favourite United song. My goal: to get one million hits in one year.”

Dave followed through – and achieved his goal – somewhere in the first few days that the first of the three videos was online.

Within just a few weeks, the video had received 4m views on YouTube alone, as well as 19k comments from people who were not all that friendly toward United Airlines.  Why does this make the case that new media fluency needs to be developed outside of the marketing department?  Because United’s new media-fueled problem was brewing for nine months before anyone within the marketing department ever heard about it.  Now, the ball is in the marketing department’s court to try and salvage the brand.  It is also in the court of the branding and leadership folks, who need to figure out why the airline’s stock dropped 10% within four days of the the first video going live.

There are two important aspects of this issue: the ethical and the functional (they are not really separate, of course, but for the sake of this post let’s treat them that way) The ideal ethical response would have been for United to take care of Dave’s claim regardless of his ability to use new media against them.  They don’t appear to have done so in this case, so i will leave that alone for now, and move to the functional aspect of this: How would new media fluency outside of United’s marketing department have helped?

Anyone who has spent time on YouTube and who has ever watched Internet sensations “go viral” (spread far and wide) knows that music videos are some of the most likely to spread quickly throughout the Internet.  This is especially true on YouTube, a platform whose list of top-viewed videos of all-time consistently includes both amateur and professional music-related videos.  So a new media-fluent United customer service department might have therefore seen it as a legitimate threat to their brand when a professional musician tells them directly that he is taking his case against United to YouTube.

At the very least, one of the employees who dealt with Dave would have discretely escalated the issue to a few people within the customer relations department.  “Could this guy be for real? What if his video does go viral?”  At best, a truly new media fluent staff may have actually seen an opportunity which could have been brought to the marketing department.  “Could we pay for this guy’s guitar and ask him to write a positive song about our honesty?  Maybe we should be engaging all of the musicians who regularly fly on our airline and who might produce songs for YouTube?”

At the time, i considered the possibility that this was a move, scripted by the Obama camp, as a symbolic demonstration of a new, inclusive leadership paradigm.  But Obama has continued this practice over the last few months.  The most recent and conspicuous example happened this morning at the G20 summit in London, where CNN cameras caught Obama and Gordon Brown entering a building.   Obama, just ahead of Brown as they entered a narrow door, reached out to the rather surprised British guard outside, who with a broad smile shook Obama’s hand.  Not wanting to seem impolite, he kept his hand extended, assuming that Brown would follow suit.  He did not.  Instead, the British PM went directly inside, forcing the guard to quickly withdraw the gesture and return to his official stance.  Though we must be careful not to infer too much from such small events, we must also be careful not to miss their significance either.

In 1964, media theorist Marshall McLuhan predicted that the advent of electricity and especially electronic communications (starting with the telegraph), started a paradigmatic shift that would occur over the course of tens and perhaps hundreds of years by increasing speed and  ubiquity of information.  Since SociaLens tends to focus on social media in the present, i will mention here that social media is both a product of and contributor to, this ongoing shift.

One result of this shift (and i am paraphrasing a massive amount of McLuhan’s work here) is that, over time, humans would begin to become aware of more of the world all-at-once and as an inclusive whole.  As key skills, knowledge and tools became easier for anyone to create and/or access, hierarchical ways of being and organizing would begin to yield to more inclusive, less-specialized forms of organizing to accomplish goals.  In some earlier related writings, Alexis DeTocqueville (1831) wrote of America that it was, for many reasons (including its media), a more homogeneous democracy than previously existed in France and England.  Assuming that McLuhan and Tocqueville were correct, a likely outcome is that people in leadership, if they are to maximize their effectiveness in leading these more empowered workers, will increasingly  lead by respect and example rather than manage by authority and mandate.

Shaking hands with the guard at the door certainly seems to be  in-line with this sort of leadership, as was the Obama campaign’s use of social media as a way to empower his volunteer campaigners.  It will be interesting to see if there are other practices which begin to emerge over the next decade as Obama and other leaders seek for new ways to lead in a changing culture.

What are some other examples of this new style of leadership or of organizations?