How tablets are changing how we consume news

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Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism has just released some great research on how people use tablets (still mainly iPads) to consume news. The infographic below summarizes the findings – click on the image to go through to the original full-size version.

The very short summary is that those who own tablets usually access news on their devices, they access more news than before, and that substitutes for other news sources. However not many are paying for new on their tablets yet.

The survey results, combined with the announcement lower cost tablets such as the Kindle Fire, are entirely consistent with the arguments I made when I released the Newspaper Extinction Timeline, which is now a few days away from its first anniversary.

There are still major uncertainties on issues such as news pricing structures, screen technologies, and device formats, however the trends are clear. News will be accessed where we are, and delivered on screens larger than those on mobile phones.
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The future of Chief Marketing Officers and leadership

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Last week I attended a breakfast organized by IBM for a small group of Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) and influencers, hosted by its Australian CMO Mark Willson.

IBM had recently launched its global CMO study, showing what CMOs are thinking about marketing today and in the future. At the breakfast it gave us a sneak preview of the results from the Australian respondents to the study.

We were shown four infographics that highlighted the results as a starting point for a robust breakfast conversation. It was a very interesting and useful conversation; I thought I’d highlight just two of the many issues we discussed.


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Book research: Looking for case studies/ leading practice in using crowdsourcing

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I am in the final stages of completing a book on how to use crowds and crowdsourcing effectively, which I am co-authoring with Steve Bynghall.

We are using brief case studies liberally through the book, however we need a few more to flesh it out.

We’d love to hear from you if you have been using crowdsourcing tools or approaches extensively enough to have learned useful lessons, and believe you have valuable insights to share from your experience.

To offer your case study or experience, please use the contact form on crowdsourcingresults.com. Please let us know very briefly:
– what you have learned
– what you have found most useful in your use of crowdsourcing tools
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The global state of the mobile industry

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Mary Meeker, formerly of Morgan Stanley and now of venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers, continues to do her annual presentation at Web 2.0 Summit, providing an unparalleled compilation of research about the global internet industry.

There is a lot to digest in the 65 slides of the presentation, so I thought it was worth pulling out some of the more interesting ones on mobile. Below is the full presentation, plus six charts giving insights into the state of the global mobile industry.

KPCB Internet Trends (2011)
Here are the 7 selected charts with brief commentary:
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Workshop slides: Creating the Future of Professional Services

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I am about to hop on a plane to Hawaii, where I will be running the ‘keynote workshop’ on Creating the Future of Professional Services for global accounting network DFK International’s annual North America conference on Maui. While it’s pretty crazy, I will only be there for as long as I spend travelling to Hawaii and back. I just have too much on now, including a lot of other client work and finishing a book very soon. In any case I intend to enjoy my brief sojourn in the sun :-).

As usual I will share my slides, mainly for workshop participants, since the slides are not intended to be used as a stand-alone, but also for anyone else who happens to find value in them.

The original idea was for me to do a keynote, but we soon developed the idea to be a half-day highly participatory session that will go into detail on pressing practical and strategic issues. There are five sections to the workshop, each with a presentation supported by the slides below, and then activities including discussions, case studies, exercises, strategy frameworks, and action plans, which are described in detailed handouts for all participants. The five sections are:
* Driving Forces
* High-Value Client Relationships
* Power of Networks
* Levers of Success
* Leadership

Here are the slides:

The latest on the future of journalism: where value creation means jobs

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As part of News Limited’s launch of its digital subscription plans that I wrote about earlier this week, News has just launched the site Future of Journalism, (subtitle: A Discussion Hosted by News Limited).

It includes videos, infographics (very clearly taking a cue from social media here!), and articles. The site says “We have gathered thoughts from some of the leading personnel at News Limited, and engaged a range of industry leading commentators to share their opinions,” so while they are hosting the discussion they are trying to make it far broader.

I suppose the implicit point of the site and discussion it is intended to engender is that for journalism to have a future, it needs to be paid for, so you should pay for their subscription plan.

I was asked to contribute to the site at short notice, so given my schedule I thought it made sense to share my NewsScape visual on where value resides in news today (and thus what you can get people to pay for), and managed to find time on an airplane flight to write a few notes on how this was relevant to journalism.

You can see my article on the Future of Journalism site, or here it is in below in full.

The Future of Journalism

The NewsScape
Click on the image to see large version

Journalism has a rich future. In some ways it will be very similar to its rich and illustrious past. In others it will be very different, reflecting the current fragmentation and restructuring of the world of news. Among other shifts, journalism will encompass not just words, but also images, data, video, visualisations and more.
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Breaking: Details of News Limited’s digital subscription plans

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I am at what would not long ago have been unimaginable for News Limited: a briefing by senior executives for bloggers and social media. What is even more surprising is that social media are getting the scoop on mainstream media in being briefed first.

The executives present include Richard Freudenstein, CEO of The Australian and News Digital Media, Ed Smith, Chief Marketing Officer of New Ltd, and Clive Mathieson, editor of The Australian. Many of the most visible people in social media in Australia are here, including @servantofchaos, @silkcharm, @GaryPHayes, @mediahunter, @tiphereth, and @katydaniells, with @bhowarth and @mumbrella crossing the chasm as both social and mainstream media protagonists.

Here are some notes live at the briefing.
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Using social media to track and drive organizational success metrics

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This week I was MC for the AHRI HR Technology conference, and ran one of the workshops on the following day, on Creating Results Using Social Media.

A real highlight of the conference was the Social Media: Risks and Rewards panel, which I chaired, with the participation of a fantastic cast of Peter Williams of Deloitte, Steve Barham of LinkedIn, Laurel Papworth of The Community Crew, and Sam Mutimer of ThinkTank Media.

It was a fabulous discussion, and we covered a lot of territory in the conversation.

One of the many topics discussed was the use of social media to track metrics and correlate these with organizational success metrics.
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The future of cars: Why car exhaust will be as anti-social as cigarette smoke is today

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Earlier this week I was interviewed on ABC TV about the future of cars, in a program to coincide with the start of World Solar Challenge, the annual solar car race covering the 3,021 km from Darwin to Adelaide.

I talked about several facets of the future of cars, including changing energy sources and their implications, new car materials and structures, and the rise of self-driving automobiles.

It is important to understand that while zero emission vehicles, usually electric, are a key objective in moving beyond petrol-driven cars, that electric cars usually still pollute. In most countries electricity is generated primarily by a variety of dirty fossil fuels. Refueling your car by plugging it into the mains doesn’t mean it isn’t polluting, simply that the pollution happens elsewhere.
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Workshop content: Creating results using social media – the HR perspective

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Tomorrow is the Australian Human Resources Institute HR Technology conference. I will be MC for the conference day, and will also run a half-day workshop on Creating Results Using Social Media on the following day.

I thought I would share the visual content we will be using during the workshop. As usual, the slides are not intended to be useful by themselves, but to provide supporting content for the activities and discussions of the session.

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