If you needed a reason to categorize music companies as humorless corporate entities that have no heart, here’s a woman being ordered to remove a YouTube video of her kid, because there’s a Universal Music song playing in the background.
The average person has no idea how vigorously these companies pursue documentary makers, store owners and others who have the bad luck to have a song intrude on their work.
Even someone casually humming a song can lead to copyright problems. It’s gotten to the point that filmmakers treat an incidental bit of sound as a tragic occurrence, instead of serendipity.
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Journalists and bloggers are often willing to put up with a fair amount of inconvenience in the pursuit of a story, but when the inconvenience is the news conference you’re holding, you know there’s a problem.
Here’s the unimpressed commentary by hosts of the Evil Avatar Radio show/podcast, after the early morning Nintendo press conference they attended at the E3 video game industry conference.
 
Scott:  (no one seems to use last names on Evil Avatar Radio) They got us up so early, we thought, Are they going to feed us? “Yeah, they’re going to have food for you, coffee … We’re going …read more

I had to pass on this link.
For anyone who has wondered about the Latin text that graphic designers since the 1500s use when presenting a design, this site traces Lorem ipsum (etc.) back to the 2000-year-old source, and includes translations.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.
Even better, they’ve got a text generator that gives you however many paragraphs of obscure latin text that you need, without obvious duplication of phrases.
(Now, if lipsum.com would get rid of the annoying banner ad that talks to you. I can’t stand any …read more

It’s not every industry that gives away what would ordinarily be the key proprietary assets: source codes, communication protocols, content.
In the spirit of barcamps and podcamps before it, Jeremiah Owyang is offering to hold an impromptu trade-show-cum-unconference that defies the rules of trade shows. Instead of the vendors’ products and services being at the centre of things, this event would bring vendors of content management systems together to explore opportunities for common standards, joint action, even mergers and acquisitions.
All in response to his blog post about the research report he’s writing about vendors in the content management/social networking field.
Yes, this …read more

There was a time when a public speaker could count on the attention of their audience.
Blackberries, wireless laptops, and other tools mean that you’re no longer in control of the environment you’re speaking in. Are you talking to a room full of conference-goers, or to all the readers of live bloggers and folks Twittering your comments to their colleagues?
You don’t know.
The implications for speechwriters and their clients?
Speechwriter Glynn Young says speakers need to be more conversational, engaging the audience in the talk. Speechwriters need to “think of people not as an audience, but … as a community, a community …read more

Outward-facing communication shouldn’t use jargon and inside jokes, but internally, the sky’s the limit.
 
For communication with and among employees, the use of nicknames, jargon and inside jokes is part of what bonds people together. Forcing the language to fit a preconceived notion of Strunk & White clarity can make work seem too much like work.
Relax a bit. Yes, some of your videos of the executive doing a skit may leak outside the organization. So don’t be stupid. But letting down your hair and relaxing some of the rules of formal communication is part of employee engagement.
You may want to correct …read more

Slightly bloodied, but unbowed, Sarah Lacy won’t let a Twitterstorm get her down.
The Business Week columnist spent an uncomfortable interview/heckling session at the South by Southwest Interactive conference, but isn’t overly apologetic about the interview. Comments during and after the session on Twitter got pretty nasty.  She says:
“But don’t blame Twitter. Social technologies are neither good nor evil, though they do make it easier for people to act on their base instincts. Sometimes short blogs, texts, and e-mails are negative and mean-spirited, and often they’re kind, supportive, and compassionate. (I got far more of the latter than the former …read more

Joe Williams knows how to tell a story. So much so that business people from all over North America pay thousands of dollars to sit with him in the desert outside Tucson, seeking that which cannot be defined.
The week-long corporate training sessions bump you up against Joe’s strategic thinking toolkit, his zen-like philosophical bent, and his love of the desert and its transformational nature.
Yes, the workshop could be held in training rooms in a downtown hotel. Maybe some of the lessons would take hold. But the desert and the group learning/sharing help you leave the ordinary world behind for …read more

Military language can be very impersonal. The army rep reports to the media about "incursions" and "assets" and "collateral damage" and a dozen other terms several sanitizing steps away from the brutality and boredom of armed conflict.
So it’s a relief to see Canada’s Chief of the Defence Staff General Rick Hillier recognize the value of communications in improving the reputation of Canadian forces and instilling pride in the soldiers, the military, and the role they play.
Chastised recently by unnamed government reps for speaking too plainly about the challenge that lies ahead in Afghanistan, Hillier responded with an open, caring display …read more

There’s a better way.
That’s what the social media early adopters keep telling their counterparts in public relations and marketing.
Obviously, the message isn’t getting through to the brainiacs who keep churning out key messages, the same old news releases and following them up with pitches for things that aren’t news, to the wrong people, in the wrong way.
I was speaking to a class of Regina public relations students last night with a talk called PR in the Million-channel Blogiverse (PDF) about engaging with the entity formerly known as the blogosphere.
When I got home, I read Brian Oberkirch’s latest post about how …read more