NACH.COM

Nach.com Links 04/02/2008

2 04 2008

IOC to Beijing: Open Internet during Olympics :: msnbc

Nobel peace winner Wangari Maathai tear-gassed in Kenya :: BBC

This may come as a bit of a blow to anyone who’s been busy burnishing their digital street cred. What else have you got to offer?

Steve Rubel spots three tech-driven media careers that will vanish as the roles are subsumed by generalists who simply incorporate digital expertise into their workflows and toolsets.

1. Social Media Consultant, Manager

“Hiring someone just to “manage” social media is a luxury that companies will integrate into broader marketing communication roles.”

2. Internet Advertising Sales, Online Advertising Sales, etc.

“Soon all advertising will be managed via digital technology and platforms, even if they end up running in terrestrial media. This means it will become very difficult to discern selling digital ads from just plain old ads. Clients will want to manage and measure their integrated campaigns through a single point of contact or channel and figure out how offline/online work together.”

3. Digital Talent Agents

“Every agent will need to know how to identify and talent from the web. The line between digital and traditional will be obliterated as more amateurs recognize that they can market themselves using the web and will forgo going on auditions.”

OK - but a lot of companies and nonprofits are still catching up and could still use help in these areas. Or, to put it another way: there are still lots of entrepreneurial opportunities in all three, so I’m not sure I’d declare the party over just yet. Still, the general insight is important not only for career planning but for strategic thinking about HR, training and growth. Should your company hire a social media guru, or invest in a marketing/communicatinos or media leader who can add digital tactics and knowledge to a broader set of skills and functions.

A more intriguing question is: What skills or jobs might leapfrog these or be the next “it” career for media worker bees with aspirations of edginess?

Two come to mind:

Designer. Design skills, like digital skills, will be integrated into many other roles. The world will continue to be a roll-your-own, home-made We Media experience, but the experience itself will become more visual, more polished and professionals will distinuish themselves and establish trust through greater attention to the design and experience of their brands.

Entrepreneur. Self-reliance, passion and an instinct both for creating great products and selling them will become commonplace. I’m not sure this is a good thing, but it’s coming. Or already here. This reflects hype and a culture that sensationalizes entrepreneurial behavior to an unhealthy extreme. We celebrate young startup founders who get rich quick; we celebrate serial entrepreneurs who appear addicted to the rush of building and bailing out of one company after another; and, on the other hand, good old fashioned jobs for decent pay don’t seem any more stable or permanent than startups or working for yourself - so even if you work for a big company you’ve got to wonder, always, about what’s next. Journalists, nonprofit activists and anyone who seeks to exert influence will find their entrepreneurial skills are as important as their social networking and digital media skills - and those will still be important too.

Starbucks Tries Social Media Annotated

tags: crowdsourcing, socialmedia

Muhammad Saleem in ReadWriteWeb writes:

With Starbucks’ stock beaten down from its mighty highs of $47 to recent lows of $17 in the face of strong competition from Peet’s, Caribou, McDonald’s, and Dunkin’ Donuts and a suffering economy, the coffee house chain has made many changes over the past few months. From eliminating jobs and reshuffling management to permanently shutting down lagging stores and retraining its baristas, perhaps none of these moves will be as important or effective in the long run as the development and launch of My Starbucks Idea.

Project Agape and The Point have raised more than $7 million each for online social activism

tags: entrepreneurs, social

Source: paidContent

My experiences with Storymaker | News Videographer

tags: flash

Adobe AIR project via University of Missouri: Wallowr

tags: no_tag

Wow, looks promising.