Kathlyn Clore

I should be writing this from the Netherlands. But instead of flying back to Maastricht today to work from the offices of the EJC, I’m home in Monterey.

Until May.

That’s because a volcano in Iceland is emitting tonnes of ash and limiting air traffic into and around Northern Europe to nearly nothing.

Probably, you, like me, have been reading or hearing about these events via whatever media you normally consume. Copy editors and announcers alike have been tormented for nearly a week now trying to spell and/or pronounce “Eyjafjallajökull”, the name of the volcano that has been puffing ash clouds into the air above Europe and grounding airplanes around the world.

The only people who have not been following this gigantic news story?

The men and women who man the phone lines at call centers of airline companies.

The people at United Airlines - which I was supposed to fly with from Monterey to Denver, on to Newark and finally to Amsterdam - seemed particularly uninformed.

Sure, I received several e-mails urging me to change my flight plans prior to my scheduled departure from Monterey. That was nice; I have never received this kind of prior notification from an airline company (then again, they’ve never had to deal with a disruption like this).

But when I called to find out about my options, I found a very uninformed group of employees. That, or I found a very good group of actors playing the part of uninformed employees.

While I could see at its website that Schiphol airport, for example, was closed at the time of my flight from Monterey, the United people couldn’t. News media like the BBC were reporting that the situation with the ash cloud was worsening. The United people had no idea what was going on. It appeared highly likely that I wouldn’t be able to go, but United’s website still said my flight was a “go”.

At the same moment, Google News was brimming with stories about airport closures.

Scotland opened its airspace, then it closed again.

The front page of Schiphol airport’s website warned travelers that the airport was not sure when it would re-open. Check with your airlines, Schiphol’s website suggested.

Ha!

United employees apparently aren’t allowed to use the Internet at work. I inquired about my options and told the United employee I reached after a half hour delay (nothing compared to the 160-minute delay I faced just three hours prior to my scheduled departure from Monterey) I figured she knew more than I did (being on the inside of the situation) and hoped she could talk to me about my options. She chuckled.

“We’re usually told last,” she said.

Great. Helpful.

Meanwhile, I was searching for information about the situation by using a number of media tools. I think my instinct to reach for these tools is reflective of the evolution and sophistication of Web 2.0 tools for enabling people to connect with each other to find out “what’s happening on the ground.”

But it’s also indicative that the “best” legacy media brands - like BBC, for example, - are still important. Their reporters are the ones with more access to the kinds of “official sources” that are making decisions about things like keeping airspace open.

I probably refreshed BBC.co.uk more times yesterday than I have on any other day. They do a great job of time-stamping their stories, which was a major help.

Other key resources I used to track the news events that impacted my flight plans:

- EUfeeds.eu: The web development team at the EJC created this tool, which aggregates and nicely displays news headlines from the newspapers of each European companies. I was able to quickly find out what Dutch media were reporting about the situation at Schiphol (the airport I was trying to reach).

-Google Translate: I can usually get the gist of articles in Dutch, but I’m not experienced enough with the language to get the details. But when I used my basic skills to find an article that seemed useful, I could pop it into Google Translate and learn more.

- Skype: Being able to instantly reach my colleagues in Europe, in particularly the Belgian web projects manager I work with, was great.

- E-mail: I could use CC to quickly inform groups of colleagues about the changes in my plans. And it’s great that Gmail automatically groups e-mails as “conversations” so that I could respond to individuals on the e-mail thread who replied to me individually.

- Smart phones: I myself don’t use one, but my colleagues do. My Belgian web projects manager was able to advise me throughout his Saturday night with his iPhone (that, or he added the “Sent from my iPhone” tag to his e-mails to convince me that he was having a night on the town rather than geeking out in front of his computer ; ).

- Twitter: I used Twitter in several ways. The people I follow linked to useful news articles and blog posts from other travelers (including a link to the Flickr pool of ash cloud photos) I searched “ash” to find out general information about the situation. Later, as it emerged, I followed the #ashtag. I also searched “Newark airport” to see what was going on there. I found several Tweets about the dismal situation at the international departures area at Newark.

I also amusedly followed Jeff Jarvis, a New York journalism professor who is well-known for his active blog Buzz Machine and book “What Would Google Do,” as he attempted to leave the re:publica conference in Berlin and catch a flight back to New York. Jarvis used Twitter and his conversation skills to hitch a ride to Munich and get on a standby flight after his Berlin flight was canceled. He Tweeted throughout the saga. Reading about his struggle to get a flight convinced me that I’d be an idiot to go to the airport.

- Radio - It’s a vintage medium, but important. When I had to run some errands Friday, I kept the car radio tuned to BBC World News. I heard interviews with scientists and engineers who talked about why planes couldn’t fly through the ash cloud.

So, did the United Airlines staff use any of these resources? No.

In my opinion, that’s a huge problem for the United corporation.

I truly believe United could have better helped me figure out my travel options - and craft better policies to help their customers - if its employees were all able to have Hootsuite or Tweetdeck open in front of them.

As for United’s totally bogus “we-won’t-give-you-your-money-back-until-your-flight-from-Newark-to-Amsterdam-is-actually-canceled-nevermind-that-you’d-have-to-plan-on-being-stuck-in-Newark-for-a-solid-week-in-order-to-do-that-because-we-wait-until-the-last-moment-to-formally-cancel-a-flight-but-you-can-have-a-United-voucher-now” policy… That’s a different and entirely more annoyed post!

They’re online!

First: I loathe seeing baby faces as Facebook profile photos and feel a wave of nausea when I see college-educated women posting on Twitter about potty training. The term “mommy blogger” gives me a headache.

That said, I do think the Internet is a wonderful tool for women in their childbearing years.

The Internet can help mothers be more informed. It helps connect women who are balancing family and career. It helps women make informed choices as heads of purchasing in their households. And it does this in a way that wasn’t possible years before, when having one’s first child - while continuing to be a woman concerned with her career and education - was a very isolating experience.

Yesterday I read two articles concerning feminism and female advancement in the workplace. The first was written by a former Wall Street Journal editor turned business mag editor.

Two quotes I found relevant:

“In my time as an editor, many, many men have come through my door asking for a raise or demanding a promotion. Guess how many women have ever asked me for a promotion?

I’ll tell you. Exactly … zero.

Sure, it’s a risk to ask for a raise. But women need to take risks — and to realize that at some point they will fail.”

Agreed. And we need women bloggers and commenters and Tweeters and friends on Facebook to remind us about this; we need to converse with each other to learn how to take risks in a women-friendly way (which is to say, a way in which women feel comfortable).

and

“Women define success differently; for some it may be a career, for others the ability to stay home with children. They also define themselves differently. I’m in the unfortunate position of witnessing many friends and colleagues laid off over the past year. But the women are less apt to fall apart — and this goes even for the primary breadwinners — because they are less likely to define themselves by their job in the first place.”

I agree.

The latter article on this I read yesterday, at Gawker, ripped this former editor a new one for her short-sightendness. While I thought the tone of the Gawker post was pretty haughty, I have to agree: The former editor seems out of touch and not ‘Net savvy whatsoever.

Then today I saw this post, at Venture Beat, a tipsheet for strategic communication efforts involving women who were born between 1977 and 1996.

It says:

“Millennial Moms are supplanting college students as the most connected and technology-dependent population, concludes a white paper by social marketing agency Mr Youth.”

I am not ready to wrap this all up (microfunding, advertising, entrepreneurship and educational opportunities still to be considered), as I think this is an emerging issue… But I do think the Internet enables women in an important, unique way that is so far only being considered by marketing types.

Two stories surfaced in the national American press this weekend that appeared to call into question the concept of free speech.

The first and more lively issue, speech on social networking platforms, reveals itself to involve a question of ethics and protocol rather than free speech. But the second issue, limits on corporations’ ability to campaign for specific politicians around election times, does seem to involve issues of free speech.

First, the issue of free speech on social media platforms. In an article I read in Sunday’s New York Times, the right of members of the U.S. court system to speak about their work on social networking platforms was questioned.

Citing an incident in Florida in which a lawyer blogged about a judge who he and his colleagues believed to be improperly delaying cases, The New York Times article acknowledges that when individuals become a member of the court system, they willingly give up the right to brashly criticize the court in public.

Still, it’s seems to me that the Florida lawyer who posted nasty comments about a judge for whom he didn’t think blogging about the issue was really out of line.

To broaden the issue, the article continues:

Stephen Gillers, an expert on legal ethics at New York University Law School, sees many more missteps in the future, as young people who grew up with Facebook and other social media enter a profession governed by centuries of legal tradition.

“Twenty-somethings have a much-reduced sense of personal privacy,” Professor Gillers said. Younger lawyers are, predictably, more comfortable with the media than their older colleagues, according to a recent survey for LexisNexis, the legal database company: 86 percent of lawyers ages 25 to 35 are members of social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace, as opposed to 66 percent of those over 46. For those just out of law school, “this stuff is like air to them,” said Michael Mintz, who manages an online community for lawyers, Martindale-Hubbell Connected. ”

Indeed - as my generation continues to develop professionally, what will the speech standards be on social media site?

To be sure, clamping down on social networking isn’t just an issue in the United States. Swiss bureaucrats have been asked to limit their social networking activities.

I do think that certain professions should require more decorum in social networking sites than others. It’s not like anyone forces you to be a lawyer or civil servant (OK, maybe your mother.)

Conclusion: Not a free speech issue.

Second: Limits on the ability of corporations and unions to campaign during election season.

For background, it’s best to just read this Wall Street Journal story.

The Supreme Court must decide if current limits on corporations - which are, it seems, under constitutional law treated like a person - and unions violate their free speech.

I very much like new justice Sandra Sotomayor’s take on this: Questioning if corporations should indeed be treated like a person. I am surprised that they are, actually, and don’t think they should be.

But I also think the quote in the article from justice Anthony Kennedy gets at the heart of the matter: “…that limiting corporate spending on campaign ads deprived voters of the expertise business brings to many subjects. ‘Corporations have lots of knowledge about environment, transportation issues, and you are silencing them during the election,’ he told Ms. Kagan [who was arguing in front of the court].”

Conclusion: As much as I think this is ridiculous in practice, as a free speech advocate I think that until corporations and unions are no longer granted the status of individuals, they should be able to campaign as vigorously as they want for candidates in their constituencies.

I wrote Brian Solis via Facebook yesterday in response to his post on TechCrunch, Can the Statusphere Save Journalism.

He was kind enough to respond to my suggestion that a reliance upon one’s “statusphere” for news perpetuates homophily. This could be especially true if a person’s network is not very diverse.

Here’s his response:

“I think your take is great. I disagree however, as the scientific work I’ve run over the last year demonstrates that outside influence eventually breaks homophily and actually creates distributed and distinct echo chambers (tied to different areas of focus - yes there’s an echo chamber for every topic at every stop along the bell curve) that accordingly introduce us to extended networks and extended social graphs. The point of the post was how a journalist, and in turn a media property, can use the reality of the new individual attention dashboard (statusphere) to bring people back to their content since they’re losing eyeballs dramatically and ultimately competing with the lifestreams where people discover information right now - facebook, tweetdeck, seesmic, ping.fm, socialthing, AIM (their new lifestream that launched today), etc. There are studies that haven’t yet been published that show what happens to media properties who actually carve a share of the attention dashboard and how it not only brings readers back, it changes the editorial landscape and accordingly brings new readers in. Those studied are in the black and bucking the trends of media demise. Hope that makes sense.”

I’m hoping he can point me in the direction of some of these studies, because I am wondering how this “new individual attention dashboard” (nice phrase) can bring in new readers.

One project I know about that will examine this issue is called SYNC3. It is a three-years research project sponsored by the European Commission with the goal of creating online tool that can easily search through opinions of bloggers and citizen journalists and show the blogosphere in context with news from traditional media. Basically, it will trace information flow. It’s very ambitious and has, in true European fashion, a whole consortium behind this project. The EJC (which I work for) is the leader in the part of user requirements and evaluation.

If you’re interested in the project, check out a survey the EJC is running.

The Internet tour guides whose job it is to notice and point out just exactly how the ‘Net has taken over our lives really like the term “Statusphere.”

Now TechCrunch wants to know if this new -sphere can save journalism. The answer is a resounding No.

Don’t get me wrong, I like this term a lot. Reading the words of online sociologists who sit around and make up these words reminds me of the first time I heard David Weinberger speak about his book Everything is Miscellaneous. I felt like Homer Simpson, smacking myself on the forehead going “Doh! It’s so obvious… Why didn’t I write this down first and get to travel around to cool conferences talking about this!”

But there is a big problem with the Statusphere: It is merely a kind of echo chamber.

TechCrunch writer Brian Solis points out, “It is the Social Effect that determines actual reach, resonance and the course for individual content.”

This is true, but has has a negative and positive effect. And the negative effect is, in my opinion, more of a problem for the Average American Jane than for the Ramblin’ Renaissance Man.

Lately I have come to realize, for example, that some of the most useful “Friends” I have on Facebook - a product I have used since 2004 - are not the grade-school comrades with whom I’ve reconnected with. Sure, it is fun to see who has gotten married, who is having children, et cetera. I dig the gossip.

But the more interesting content I find via my Facebook network comes more and more from people I have met only a few times: Friends I made in a short time who then moved to another place, nice people I have met on airplanes, colleagues I have met at conferences. I don’t actually know these people particularly well, and that’s maybe why I delight in seeing what music, links and commentary they post. I find things that surprise me.

Example: An Italian girl I lived with for a few months posted this video as she was about to attend Cesária Évora’s concert:

I’ve never heard of Cesária Évora before, but I enjoyed this song so much that I used YouTube to seek out more of her work. So soulful…

So in this way, the Statusphere exposes me to content I enjoy but might not find otherwise. But I think that in the United States, my experiences are rather unique: In the last five years, I have lived on the East and West coasts as well as in Europe. I’ve traversed the Atlantic Ocean eight times. (And no, I’m not in the military.) Obviously, I’ve done this moving around because I think it’s a good idea to travel and be exposed to new ideas and new people.

So

when I consider, say, friends who have not traveled outside the United States, who are living in the same state in which they grew up and have never lived anywhere else, I wonder if the Statusphere is as useful. Plenty of Americans speak only English and spend their lives within only one or two states without ever applying for a passport. Can a vanilla network really bring someone a neapolitan Internet news/culture experience? I don’t know if I think this Internet so powerful that it can overcome the routine of life.

Which is why the Statusphere will not save journalism.

Whenever I go to media conferences, people always cite “cats and pets” as the silly topic many Westerners network about online.

For me, it’s food. I’ve been trying to improve my cooking abilities for a few years now - although much more so in the last year since I moved in with my boyfriend, who is wonderful in the kitchen. He’s also a good dancer… Which gives me a lot to work on!

While I don’t yet have a profile there, my favorite social networking site by far is AllRecipes. And yes, I have been using it since it started appearing in advertisements for iPhone Apps.

My favorite parts of the site are the reader comments that accompany each recipe (and I love that the site organizes itself so that the review voted “most useful” pops up first) and the ability to search recipes by ingredients.

I am especially interested in cooking Thai and Indian cuisines. Especially since I’m “just a white girl from the Midwest”, the user reviews are key.

I also found a fantastic recipe for Greek omelets called My Big Fat Greek Omelet, which my boyfriend asks me to make every other weekend (if not more often). The user reviews told me to add in some garlic and onion… Which totally makes the dish drool-worthy.

Just today I realized how the site makes money. In addition to hosting advertisements, the site also charges a subscription fee for users to do “extra” things around the site. I discovered it while printing out a simple Pad Thai recipe with some really helpful reccomenations.

I discovered that while it’s free to print out a recipe (you can even print on a 3 inches x 5 inches notecard, in case you keep your recipes organized in that way) … if you want to print out the user reviews, you have to have a monthly membership.

Clever!