Losin’ It using Social Media
Two weeks ago I went to a conference called South by Southwest Interactive in Austin, Texas. Some of you may have heard of the South by Southwest (or SxSW) music festival–well this grew out of that and it’s now 3 weeks of Film, Interactive, and Music. I only had a pass for the Interactive, but that meant 5-6 sessions per day, of which I generally had 10-12 choices, plus a great many evening networking parties ranging from Karaoke to Storytelling (I attended both of these), to a manicure party, to just hanging out and drinking–it was warm enough to be outside all but the last day, which made it better than Saratoga anyhow.
Most of the people who attended work somehow in online media and most of the speakers had written popular books about new media or technology. Unlike Empire’s own All College conference I went to last week in Saratoga, or the Popular Culture Association Conference I’m speaking at this week in St. Louis (yes, my life is so glamorous), most people who attended were not academics. They worked for companies that develop things like Google or Twitter, or for companies that use social networking for marketing, advertising or public relations. There were also a lot of journalists, along with some film, television, and music people who attended other parts of the conference.
The importance of social media is nothing to sneeze at. Watch this video, by Erik Qualman, one of the speakers I saw, and the author of Socialnomics to see why: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIFYPQjYhv8
I don’t know how many of you use tools like Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter, or how many of you have a TiVo, but marketers are trying to find ways to get you to use applications like those more, and to harness the power and expertise of “your friends” to market to you, to help you do searches, even to recommend television shows to you through your DVR. Personally, I’d be freaked out if my friends could see what I was watching on TV (mostly because I have the sort of friend who say they never watch, even if they do, and some I really believe do not–they don’t even own one), but these speakers all seemed to think it would be a good idea. What do you all think?
One of the best speakers I saw, and the most relevant to this course, was 
the first keynote address (there was one each day), Danah Boyd. She has a chapter in this book: Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media . She writes about “digital kids”–kids who have grown up using social media, and simply take it at a matter of course that their lives will be lived somewhat online. Her talk was called “Privacy vs. Publicity” and she talked a lot about how kids use the Internet to promote themselves, even if it means things like providing sexy photos of themselves or describing themselves doing provocative things. Privacy, she said, is all about control and feeling safe. Social media, however, requires vulnerability–we have to share something about ourselves or it isn’t interesting to be anyone’s friend. The question is where to draw the line.
She said something I thought was profound “Adults worry about what they have to lose when using social networking, young people what they have to gain.” Girls and young women think they’re going to be discovered like Tila Tequila was, and end up with a modelling contract or TV show, so will put up the sexy photo. Those of us who have been around a bit longer worry more about what a potential employer or admissions counselor at graduate school or a date or new friend might see. What are those of you with daughters (or nieces or young friends) telling them? How are you monitoring what they are doing and how are you teaching them to monitor themselves?
Because I tend to get assigned mentees who want to be communications professionals, I also attended a few sessions for journalists. Most of the social networking types were very self-confident, good looking, people in their late 20s and early 30s. The journalists looked a lot more beaten down by life, as well they should be given the state of that profession. For any of you considering that path, I asked what they wish they knew how to do now that actual journalistic writing has become such a low-paying profession (thanks to all the magazines and newspapers than have tanked or gone completely online). Lots of people these days write for free or for very low wages, hoping to get “discovered” and given a book contract or paid online column.
I was told 1. Be a great editor-lots of the articles are being written now in India, and they will pay for people who can turn that into readable American prose, 2. Technical writing–if you can translate “tech-ese” into readable prose, you’ll always be in demand, and 3. Languages–if you can translate an article from a foreign language into English (not Spanish, there are too many of those already), there will be demand for you.
Photos:
Socialnomics book from www.socialnomics.net
Danah Boyd on Global Nerdy
http://www.soozmedia.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/sxsw-interactive-2010.jpg
It’s the Most Wonderful (and longest and most boring) Night of the Year
Sunday was Oscar night. This was a pretty big night for me, because I make it a point to see as many of the Oscar nominated movies that I can. It’s harder to do this these days than it once was for several reasons, including the fact that Saratoga Springs is relatively far from the type of theater that shows the types of movies most often nominated (The Spectrum, for those that are local, is nearly an hour away, as is Crossgates–this was a much easier task when I lived in Chicago and San Francisco or even Miami where I lived far, but there was no snow or ice to slow me down), the fact that being a professor/area coordinator/mentor is tons more work than most jobs I’ve had, or even than graduate school often was, and that my friends all have exhausting jobs and most have kids, and this year the fact that there were 10 films nominated for Best Picture instead of the normal 5 and I just couldn’t get to all 10, plus two of the animated ones, plus a few that had best actor or actress nominees in them.
I also really do not like watching anything extremely disturbing, including war movies, particularly towards the end of a long cold winter which lets some out, and I also do not watch movies with no important women in them–no matter who directs them. I saw have seen 6/10–Avatar, A Serious Man, Up, Up in the Air, Inglourious Basterds, and An Education.
I could have seen The Hurt Locker or District 9 on Demand, but they both look like I would dislike them–Kathryn Bigelow, who directed The Hurt Locker also directed Point Break, which had as the only woman a sex symbol/damsel in distress and not really necessary–it was obvious the real love story was between Johnny Utah and Bhodie. I was glad she won, if only because I thought Avatar was terrible (the script and the acting–the technology was great). However, the fact that the orchestra played “I Am Woman” when Bigelow became the first woman to win Best Director and for Best Picture was pretty offensive. As my friend asked–what would they have played if the director of Precious, a black man, had won? Here is a blog post that considers some of these issues blog post on The Oscars.
Movie critics and others have been increasingly disturbed by the lack of good roles for women in important films. The old adage that girls will play with boy’s toys, but boys will never play with girl’s toys extends to the movies and to adulthood as far as the movie business is concerned. Most films are aimed at teenaged boys. There’s a reason that most of the nominated women were in movies that were not nominated for Best Picture or Best Director or writer.
I won’t be able to reflect on Precious, because I didn’t see it. it’s too bad because it is one of the few nominated that has a woman as the main character and as the important supporting characters as well–Mo’Nique won Best Supporting Actress and Gabourey Sidibe was nominated for Best Actress. However, the whole idea of the movie just makes me very uncomfortable. There are a lot of opinions out there about Mo’Nique’s speech, which I managed to fast forward through when the phone rang, so I didn’t actually see it comment on Salon.com. (You will have to watch an ad, but it’s free and requires no registration). Nearly every time anyone African American spoke or won anything, the camera panned to the group from Precious or the group of African people from one of the short films (about a music group from Africa), or to Morgan Freeman. it’s always like that.
For the Best Actor nominees, each had an actor who was there to give a 
testimonial about them. For some reason or other Oprah was there to talk about Sidibe. In all the other cases people had appeared in at least one film with the nominee, but in that case, presumably because Sidibe was in her first job, they couldn’t do that, but why Oprah? Why not Mo’Nique or Mariah Carey, her co-stars? Does Oprah just automatically stand for all black women? (Doing research, apparently Oprah was the executive producer for the film, but since that wasn’t clear it was just odd.)
The Blind Side stars a woman (I assume Sandra Bullock’s character is the main character and not the football player but I’m not sure) and she won. I didn’t see that one–it just looks too drippy and I’m not so crazy about Sandra Bullock. An Education also stars a woman–and I enjoyed that one a lot, but I certainly don’t think it was the Best Picture of the Year, and there’s no way Carey Mulligan was better than Meryl Streep in Julie and Julia–which was not nominated for Best Picture, but they both were nominated for best actress but lost to Sandra Bullock. Inglourious Basterds has a very important female character, and according to the rules of drama I would call her the protagonist, but arguably Brad Pitt is the “star” if only because he is much more famous. In any case, the only one nominated for an acting award for that one was a man, Christophe Waltz, for Best Supporting Actor–it’s easy for me to say he should have won, which he did, but he’s the only one I saw.
The other films I saw–Crazy Heart had a very good Jeff Bridges (he won for Best Actor), but I didn’t think a lot of Maggie Gyllenhaal’s (Best Supporting Actress nominated) performance. Both Anna Kendricks and Vera Farmiga were very good in Up in the Air, a film I really liked, but I don’t think either role required a lot of heavy lifting–I’m sure Mo’Nique’s role was much more challenging. I loved Up, but the only female character in it disappears quickly. Coraline was a good female heroine.
Of course, the Oscars is a good time to see lots of stars, both the real actors and the hot young things, trying to look their best. Mostly men look either polished or scruffy (there was very little scruffy last night, thank goodness), but women are measured much more harshly. I knew it wouldn’t take more than 2 minutes to find “grades” for how the women looked and here they are. I really disliked what Charlize Theron wore, and thought Penelope Cruz, who I generally dislike, looked great, so I’m not sure how I feel about these scores. What do you all think of how the women are judged?
Photos taken from EntertainmentWeekly.com
