Zuimei is okay, his bar survived the 8.9 Richter earthquake which has devastated parts of Japan. I am obviously relieved. It could have been much worse. If the earthquake had happened farther south Tokyo would have been rocked even harder.
This video makes me a little nauseas even though that is exactly what buildings are supposed to do. It did get me thinking however about information and how rapidly it is distributed these days. I called Zuimei last night at around 11:30 so that should have been 12:30 pm his time.
This was a few hours before the earthquake. The quake, which happened around 3:00 pm local time, was reported on twitter as it happened, was on you tube within minutes and hit the major news networks within the hour. In fact, there is live footage of the tsunami response was so fast.
A hundred years ago, when there is a disaster we wouldn’t have known about it until long after it was over and the clean up was well underway. Now we can respond in hours and help out immediately. Donate to Japan’s disaster relief here or by using a mobile device and text REDCROSS to 90999 to make a $10 donation.
Recently in the Toronto news there has been a fair amount of traffic around the issue of social media and the TTC. The media has managed to make a mountain of a molehill and managed to distract the union and it’s head Bob Kinnear from the issue at hand. That however isn’t what interests me. What I find fascinating is the use of social media and social networking tools in this debate.
It started with this photo:
This photo ended up in all the papers and resulted in the operator making an apology and explaining that he was on a new medication. A perfectly reasonable excuse in my opinion except for the fact that he didn’t contact his union.
If I had trouble staying awake at work I would immediately go and talk to my boss, explain the situation and go home. If I did need a nap I would take it in a lounge or employee area where I was out of the way and certainly out of the public eye.
The interesting thing about this picture however is how it made the rounds and media explosion ensued. First media was talking about Twitter and Twitpic and all the different ways people can share images.
Next this video appeared on the internet of a driver taking a coffee break in the middle of his route. Apparently this poor guy is now suspended pending an investigation.
The description reads: “TTC driver taking a coffee break in the middle of the shift while leaving the bus with passengers behind – The driver did it every week night in a period of 2 weeks (total of 10 times)!”
The head of the Union’s response is,
“We have heard from many operators who now fear taking a few minutes for a needed washroom break because they don’t want to be subjected to ridicule or embarrassment,” Mr. Kinnear added. “I invite any journalist here today to go online and take a few minutes to research the health effects of chronic urinary retention. Let me give you a head start on the most common problems: urinary tract infections, kidney infections, kidney failure, bladder cancer and prostate problems.”
Are you kidding me? You’re actually going to defend this by talking about urinary tract infections?? That’s probably not the best way to handle this. A more appropriate response would have been:
“We try to ensure our drivers have ample time to use the facilities at the end points of their streetcar runs, but clearly it is not enough. We want to ensure our drivers and employees are comfortable as well as our customers as a result we have asked drivers to make an announcement when they need to stop for any length of time. We will do our utmost to ensure streetcars stay on schedule.”
Of course, that would require streetcars to have a schedule but I digress. This stopping issue wouldn’t be a problem except it has happened many times and now with cellphone cameras and Youtube anyone can be a reporter:
The problem with reporting however is that there is a bias, and no journalistic ethics need be applied. This kind of guerrilla journalism isn’t about reporting on events or distributing information it is about pushing an agenda. Every photographer makes a choice when he or she chooses to point the camera. And that isn’t to say this media blitz is all one-sided either. All the streetcars have cameras in them now. The CBC has a video posted of a driver needing to fight a passenger off of the bus. And the TTC employees have posted their own Youtube videos:
Personally I applaud the TTC putting cameras on the streetcars. It not only ensures the safety of the drivers but the passengers as well. And no one deserves to get assaulted while at work no matter how late they are! While I support the TTC I suggest the footage should be kept off of the internet.
A Facebook group called “Toronto Transit Operators against public harassment” which describes itself as “a group where Operator’s can give suggestions on how to fight back to the recent photo and video harassment from passengers just looking to make trouble for us.” cropped up not long after these videos appeared.
At one point they were reportedly advocating a work to rule policy to combat what Union boss Kinnear described as, “ an entitlement to film our operators in the performance of their duties”. That Facebook group started out public but quickly became private after the public lashed back on the site.
What is interesting is there is another Facebook group for “Employees of the TTC” and it is open to the public. And the public is beginning to lash back again. This is a social media disaster for the union and the TTC. First off you have to have a strategy and a clearly defined purpose when deciding to engage in social media. The last thing you need is a mouthy employee to write something rash which further damages your already battered reputation. You also don’t want to add fuel to the fire of the malcontents
The Union, if it had any brains at all would ask it’s members to kindly stop attacking the public, because right or wrong, if you argue with a troll it only gets stronger!
That isn’t to say there hasn’t been adult and measured discussions but if the Union, or the TTC decide they want to hash it out in the social media space they had better get a game plan together. The public has been in this space for years and they had best catch up before they try to go troll hunting.
What would happen if you created a social networking site, but limited people to 5 friends?
The problem with Facebook, anyone can tell you, is people from your past contacting you (and you wished they wouldn’t) or people who are really only acquaintances friending you and blasting you with inane Farmville requests. And the truth is that if you were good enough friends to stay in touch with these people you would have. Of course there are lots of stories of people connecting with old friends, re-igniting old love affairs and finding long lost paramours. and while it is fun to catch up you don’t really take an active interest in their lives. But what if you could only connect to 5 people?
I think a number of things would happen:
First, “friending” someone would mean something. Every time you friend someone you are spending what I like to think of as social capital. There is an expense that does into friending someone which diminishes the value of your friendship. This is sort of like inflation. Inflation isn’t the cost of things going up, but rather the value of a dollar going down.
If I have 5 friends and I friend you, it means something more than if I have 1000 friends. You are one of five so it is a pretty exclusive group and I obviously care enough to select you. You can see this affect on Twitter with people who follow 5,000 others. They are “friend collectors” who think it is a big deal, they can’t possibly be reading all those tweets (and holding down a job). They will follow anyone and their dog in the hopes of getting followed back. But if someone I respected only followed 10 people then I would look at those 5 closely since that person I know made a conscious choice to follow these people.
The other effect is that companies would stay away. Who on earth is going to “friend” the GAP or BMW or RCA records when they only get five friends! A company would only be able to friend 5 as well so they couldn’t mass market.
Lastly you would have to think long and hard about whom you friended. Personally I wouldn’t friend anyone I see all the time since there wouldn’t be a point. I wouldn’t friend co-workers because I see them everyday. I would friend people who I don’t talk to very often but use social networks to keep track of. I would friend people who I want to listen to because they are interesting or provide value. Especially since they may not friend me back. I might not be one of their 5.
While I realize the marketing and money-making aspects of this sort of social network are limited I think it would be a very interesting social experiment.
When I look at what is currently going on in Iran, I cannot help but think of Tienanmen in that spring of 1989. In both bases the populace was attempting to send a message to it’s government about what it wanted. However in 1989 China was able to effectively shut down all communications within it’s coutry and prevent any news of the protests and subsequent crack down from reaching other parts of the country. Even today, most Chinese still don’t really acknowledge what happened.
How would things have changed if there was Twitter in 1989, or Facebook? Or even the Internet? With the advent of satellite phones, Facebook and Twitter it is much, much harder for the ruling regime to quiet any dissension. Essentially, the people changed the game. With state controlled media people were forced to consume whatever news the state chose to make available, but now you can gather your information from anywhere.
And this is a game the people can win.
Peter Bregman wrote in the Harvard Business website an article entitled, Play the game you know you can win. Essentially if you are up against a more powerful opponent then change the game to play to your own strengths.
This is also something straight out of Sun Tzu’s classic Art of War and as old as the story of David and Goliath. Malcolm Gladwell wrote an entertaining article onhow Davids go on to beat their respective Goliaths by changing the rules. When David took off the armour and dropped the sword in favor of the sling, what would have been a hand to hand fight he couldn’t win became something he could.
How the Iranian populace will win the struggle with the ruling regime is if they keep changing how they protest and continue to feed information to the world and to each other.
They are already using Twitter and Facebook to get the news out, but now they need to flash mob. Start gatherings of people that quickly form and quickly disperse. They cannot withstand direct confrontation because the Basij and police are armed while, as we have seen, the populace is not. Also working in real time favours the insurgents. If they plan on having a protest tomorrow and announce it on Facebook then the government can prepare. If they flash mob the groups will be smaller but more agile.
And they need to dispense with custom. Protest during the call to prayer, protest in the mosques, protest in the government buildings, disrupt the common threads that the government uses to control people.
They need to continue to expose information to the Persian communities outside Iran. Here in Toronto there have been multiple protests, but they are not in the right part of town. They are in the Persian part of town where most people already know what is going on. As we have seen from the Tamil Tiger protests, you need to inconvenience people before they pay attention. The protestors here need to inconvenience their own governments to get them to apply pressure to the ruling regime.
By changing the rules fo the game, the Iranian people have a chance to instigate the change that most want to see, or at the very least get another election, one that this time won’t be so easily rigged.
