The technology revolution is changing how we produce, distribute and receive information… will you be able to evolve and adapt?

Gil Asakawa | NABE Communications Workshop October 10, 2012 | Denver, Colorado Tech Evolution is speeding up  The Industrial Revolution let loose a flood of incredible changes to societies that have enhanced our lives for generations, past and future.  But this March of Progress in consumer technology has been speeding up.  What does that mean for the future of communications, which is a fundamental part of social, personal and professional interaction – of society itself?  It means, to paraphrase Bette Davis’ character in the classic film “All About Eve”: “Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy ride!” http://www.isgtw.org/visualization/isgtw-image-week-technology-adoption-rates-historical-perspective Telephone  1870s: The first consumer technology that followed in the steps of the telegraph (invented by Samuel Morse in 1837)  Impossible to imagine modern society without the phone

Radio  1895: First wireless transmission sent by Guglielmo Marconi  1912: Marconi’s “wireless telegraph” became more popular after Titanic’s sinking  1920s: AM radio is born Christmas Eve 1906; regular broadcasts by 1920 including music, news & sports Radio  1954: Portable transistor radio invented  New tiny radios are just in time for rock & roll  Top 40 format created with repetitive playlists  By 1970, mellow FM radio takes over  Where’s radio today? Cars, satellite, Pandora Television  1926: Though tech had been brewing for decades, the first demo of a live broadcast was given on Jan. 26 in a London lab  1929: RCA experiments with daily broadcasts  Doesn’t really catch on until 1950s – Baby Boomer audiences Television  Some color signals were broadcast and sets sold in the ‘50s but didn’t saturate market until early ‘70s  1972: The last daytime soap opera converted to color for the fall season  1996: First HD TV broadcast in Raleigh, NC Recording  Analog to digital, from reel to reel to tiny recording devices only spies and writers once dreamed of  Everyone can now produce and distribute media  What does that mean for copyright law? Cell phone  1946: First mobile call made from a car through Bell System’s Mobile Telephone Service  1983: First US 1G mobile network and phone, DynaTAc, launched  1991: Palm releases Kyocera 6035, first “smartphone” in US

The Game Changer  2007: First iPhone goes on sale, in works since 2004; sells 6.1 M  Apple releases iPhone 3G in 2008, 3GS in 2009, iPhone 4 in 2010, 4S in 2011 , iPhone 5 on sale now

The Game Changer  iPhone wasn’t just a phone, it’s a handheld computer with always-wired features like GPS, video, digital camera, livestreaming  iPhone has led to Android, Windows competitors (several have already failed): HTC, Samsung, Nokia, RIM/Blackberry  More Android phones out there, but rule market

The Internet  The arrival of the commercial Internet in the early ’90s was a game changer  CompuServe and AOL helped guide millions online with the promise of email and access to a new universe of information  Introduction of Netscape, the first commercially sold (at first – free later) Web browser in the fall of 1994 opened up the worlds outside AOL and C-Serve  Now you could stay up all night clicking from ugly website to the next via “hyperlinks” Communication in the Digital Age  Email (old school) – but can you remember life without email?  Instant Messages/Chats/message boards  Text messages (on cell phones)  Streaming video and audio: Free Internet “phone” calls via Skype, UStream, Livestream and other sites  Social Media: The future of Communication has arrived? Social Media = Web 2.0  Social media is the evolution of communication  It’s sometimes called “Web 2.0”  It allows people to connect directly with each other  It can take the traditional media out of the PR loop  It’s about Sharing information – conversations – wioth friends, colleagues, family, clients

 Social media is a lot of different sites and services  It can include , instant messages, even text messaging on mobile phones  There’s a lot of social media out there. How many of these do you recognize: , Twitter, Ning, Friendster, , , FourSquare, Napster, Groupon, YouTube, , Buzz, LinkedIn, Plaxo, Posterous, StumbleUpon, Delicious, Wikipedia, Yelp, Flickr…. That’s just a start!

But only two matter… for now Facebook: The 900-lb gorilla  It’s where your audience is  845 million users worldwide – not 900 pounds, but 900 million users. Almost 1 BILLION people. India has 1B people. has 1.2 B!  100 billion connections between users  425 million mobile users  1 of every 5 pageviews on the Internet  250 million photos uploaded DAILY  2.7 billion likes EVERY DAY  20 minutes time spent per visit – it means people pay attention when they’re on Facebook Source: Sarasota SEO Services How is FB useful?  Facebook isn’t just for keeping in touch with friends and family, updating them with what you’re doing that instant  Facebook is for sharing information, including news, events and tips for any community, industry or among organizations like bar associations  Facebook is a bonanza for marketing, brand-building and public relations including, for your organization as well as your organization’s members!  Think of Facebook as a way to BROADCAST news and information. That means the more friends you have, the larger the audience you can reach. Facebook 101  Create a Page. Unlike Facebook “Groups,” Pages are outside the FB firewall and are indexed by search engines.  Promote the Page! They’re mini- extensions of your brand.  Manage the Page. Don’t just put one up and check it off as “done.”  Give it a voice, keep it dynamic. Respond to comments and questions.  Don’t post a link to every story. Pick your water cooler content. Maximizing Facebook  Your Profile lists your updates and all your activities.  Whether it’s your personal account or your association’s page, why not post updates about this conference and what you’re learning in Denver?  Note that you can post updates, photos & videos from mobile phones  Gold standard of social media is “going viral”  Every time you post something, it will appear on your friends’ Wall. If they share that it will appear on their friends’ wall.  You can also post something directly on a friend’s wall, and that will appear on their friends’ wall.  When friends of friends share it, you’ve gone viral!

 Facebook Groups can be set to private and become a powerful discussion area for your members only  Does all this mean you don’t need a website for your association? No – use social media to drive traffic to your website.  Warning: This is all changing with mobile, because the rules are changing yet again. What about Twitter?  Twitter is a “micro-blogging” site. Once you have an account, you can post updates of up to 140 characters. That’s about as long as a text message – the perfect length for today’s young people!  There are only 250 M users on Twitter but that’s nothing to sneeze at.  When news happens, turn to Twitter for instant eye-witness coverage as well as conversations about the breaking news  Twitter’s power is in its ability to “Retweet” updates and virally get the information to more people.  The larger your audience, the bigger your broadcast reach.  A Tweet might be Retweeted by someone and one of her followers might Retweet it again, and so on and on. It’s a very powerful communication medium!  Hashtags (#) help organize content on Twitter (and on some other social media)

What else?  Google Plus  A Facebook competitor that has yet to show staying power. Google has tried several social media features but given up on them, but they seem committed to G+  Pinterest  A very graphically-focused sharing site where you “pin” photos and videos, more popular for now with women (bridal shower links, shoe catalogs) but men and companies are joining the site  Tumblr  A microblogging site that’s quick and easy to share photos, videos, text like regular blogs, or just headlines The future?  One word: No, not “Plastics.” It’s “Mobile.” Mobile, mobile, mobile.  Communications will evolve to suit mobile platforms: phones and tablets. Even laptops will be obsolete within a few years (laptops this year overtook of desktop PCs)  Apps – which were first introduced in Apple’s iTunes store in 2008 --will replace websites as the primary way people access content and information on the Web  There are more than 650,000 apps available in iTunes – no lie, there’s an App for almost everything.

Not just science fiction  Augmented Reality  Layers of information that’s available when you point a mobile device. Not just for getting the history of a landmark.  Imagine pointing your phone at a crowd and having face- recognition software parse through the people and posting info next to felons. This is already possible (imagine the rich possibilities of legal cases in the wake of such uses)!  RFID – also called Near Field Communication, easy to embed tags in clothes, boxes, even people  Pay for your Starbucks by tapping your phone against the counter.  Get an alert about a sale at the Gap when you drive by a Gap billboard with an RFID chip Not just science fiction  Have you seen the 2002 movie “Minority Report”? All that future stuff was thought up by scientists who are already working on it.  Swipable computer screens? Done.  Billboards that talk to you when you walk by? See above.  Cars that drive themselves? Coming. Soon: Google just received permission from California for a new classification of driver’s license for robotic cars.  This isn’t science fiction, it’s science fact, and it’s already here. Think of all the legal ramifications – attorneys will be very busy in the new era. Darwin was right: Adapt or die  Technology is evolving ever faster, and the only constant we can expect is change.  We can’t stop the march of progress… so we must embrace it, deal with it, expect the bumps and complications and evolve our communications to fit the new reality, whatever that may be.  It will be a bumpy ride, but what an exciting time to be alive and seeing a whole new way of life – and new ways of communicating – becoming the standard!

Thanks for letting me babble! www.gillers.com [email protected]