The View From the Phlipside

(These are the scripts from my weekly media commentary show on WFRA-LP Jamestown)

My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media. TV, Radio, the movies and more. I love 'em and I hate em' and I always have an opinion. Call this the view from the Phlipside

Wow, I never thought I'd see the day when I'd report this story. But here it is and it even makes an awful lot of sense. Coffee shops are cracking down on laptop users. In fact some are even giving the laptop brigade the old heave ho. That's hard for me to imagine. Let's face it coffee shops and computers have an almost primal link. There's a local place here in Jamestown that will RENT you a laptop if you'd like to surf while you eat even! Here's what's going on:

With the economic downturn folks have more time on their hands and they're spending it looking for jobs, networking, just trying to stay up with their lives. And let's face it, it's pretty boring being at home all the time. So you go down to your favorite coffee shop. But where you used to only spend an hour or so there before, because you had to get back to work, now you can spend HOURS there. Of course since you're out of work you're not going to be spending a lot of money. So you're going to nurse that cup for as long as you can. That, needless to say, is where the rub is. Coffee shops are businesses, very often small businesses. The lunch hour is especially vital for the survival of most of these businesses. The last thing they need is a lot of low spending squatters taking up all the retail customer real estate.

So several small coffee shops in New York City and a couple in San Francisco have laptop free times during the day now. 11 AM to 2 PM weekdays and 10 A to 3 P on weekends you need to do your surfing somewhere else. Other places are also limiting use during prime evening hours. In addition some places are increasingly worried about the electrical usage from these long term users. Outlets are being covered over to keep laptop users from plugging in. In at least two coffee shops in the Big Apple laptops are just verboten at any time.

How the backlash is going to develop will be an interesting development. But one person notes there's also an interesting sidelight to suddenly having to go elsewhere for your wifi (oh, let me suggest the public library is a great place to get some work done). What can develop out of this is the return of one of the greatest of all communications mediums. Remember when you went to the coffee shop - for some great conversation?

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I know for a lot of older folks there are few things more annoying than watching the younger generation typing away furiously on their phones. There's something about the absorption into the process of sending text messages that just makes some people crazy. Of course we're also watching people do it while walking and sadly we've seen recently in Buffalo two young people killed apparently while the driver was texting. Never the less I think we need to acknowledge that whether we like it or not texting, in all its various forms, is here to stay. And here's the proof.

Item number the first - Black Hawk County in Iowa is now set up to receive text messages on its 9-1-1 service. At the start it's only on one service provider but you can expect to see that change (who wants to be known as the cellular service that won't let you call for help?). At first my reaction was "Come On!" but even a quick look shows that's this not a bad idea at all. If you are hearing or speech impaired being able to text emergency services will be a huge advantage. You're no longer tied down to specialty equipment in order to make the call. There are added advantages for situations when talking to the operator could endanger your life (think hiding in a closet while an abuser or even worse may be searching the house for you then add in kidnap victims and hostages). Plus this is a simple and quick means for the younger generation to communicate. I can only look in awe at the speed my younger friends can type out a text message. In emergencies speed IS of the essence.

Item the second is even more interesting. Twitter, the text message based micro blog service, seems to have found a new arena - religion. I'm sure there's been lots of religious tweeters before but there are two very interesting ideas under way. If you're Jewish saying a prayer at the Western Wall of the remains of the Temple in Jerusalem has always had a special place. But not everyone can get there. No worries! Now you can tweet your prayer, it will be printed out for you and placed in the wall! Meanwhile the Roman Catholic church seems to have its eye on the future as well. Cardinal Sean Brady of Ireland recently endorsed the idea of sharing prayers on a daily basis via either text or Twitter.

So be careful the next time you get grumpy with a young person texting near you. They might be chatting with a higher power.

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Periodically while I'm watching TV a commercial will really grab my attention. Sometimes positively, sometimes negatively. If they really grab me I share them with you. Today it's the new Ford campaign that has grabbed me.


Before I get started let me make something clear. What follows is NOT a criticism of Ford's cars and Trucks. In fact as the son of a car guy (and former Ford employee) I'm very impressed with the current and coming models from the Blue Oval Boys. I just wish I could say the same about their current ad campaign.


Let's begin with a quick review – the automotive industry in the US has been getting hammered over the last several years. Within in the last year two of the big three have gone through bankruptcy and had to go hat in hand to the federal government for money to keep them alive. The exception to this was Ford. With some better management and product design they were in better shape to weather the storm and come out the other side ready to roll.


Which is why the current ad campaign puzzles me. It's the tag line that is the true source of my discomfort. “Why Ford? Why Not?”. Why Not? Really? Why Not is something I usually say when I agree to do something that I'll regret having done the next morning (Again this is NOT a comment about the product just the ad campaign people. Do NOT write me letters claiming I'm slagging Ford cars and trucks) A car company that has managed to do what Ford has done in the last year deserves a better ad campaign than one that say's “Hey, we're better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick”. Why Ford? Cause we're not as bad as THOSE guys.


The reality is that I think they're really close to a much better ad campaign. Let's keep everything else about the campaign, the look, the spokespeople, everything except the tag line. How about we use the ad time to tout all the great things about the new Ford products – styling, options, fuel efficiency. Then at the end it's “Why Ford? That's Why”. Positive and assertive rather than negative and insecure. It would be a campaign that aggressively pushes Ford forward as a winner, as an innovator and as a product you want in your life. Not something you're willing to accept until something better comes along.


Why should Ford change their ad campaign? That's why.

Call that the view from the Phlipside

Resource Review - Joopz and Tatango

Joopz and Tatango- Text messaging services for youth groups

OVERALL - It's a two fer one this week. I felt bad about just doing Joopz (again) since I mentioned them last year before I started the 52 resources in 52 weeks challenge. Then I found Tatango which is a different way to achieve the same goal. And that's the ability to reach out to our young people with text messaging. These are oriented to mass texting which gives you the ability to reach the entire group all at once! Both have free and low cost versions.

WHAT'S IT ABOUT? It's interesting to see two companies taking very different approaches to the same concept. Joopz offers web based texting that is two way (folks can respond to you), group messaging, reminder messages, and scheduled messages. It's a pretty straight forward service. The free service is very usable and their full service is only $19.95 a year! Tatango is a slightly different. It has more bells and whistles (for example you can send a voicemail to all your group members through the service). There's a very usable free service. The pay services (there are about five different levels) are more expensive while still being a fair value for all the options you can get.

With either service you'll get the ability to connect with your youth using the medium that they use most often. And the great thing is that you can do it from any computer anywhere! I've been experimenting with the text service the last couple weeks and it's very quick and easy. You can even divide the contacts so you can just text adult leaders, parents, youth or all of the above.

RESERVATIONS With Joopz it's the fact that you can't create a group larger than 10 people. It means multiple groups to cover everybody. It's a minor annoyance but it's an annoyance. For Tatango it's that the free service is paid for by small ads inserted at the end of your text. They are small 30-40 character (age appropriate) ads placed at the end of each text message. For a great free service you'll just have to choose your poison.

RECOMMENDATION I've been very impressed with both of these services. Take a look at both services and decide which one will work better for you. Right now texting is THE preferred way to communicate for young people. With these services you can get on the cutting edge with very little upfront cost to you.

Resource Review - That's Not Cool.com

That's Not Cool.com
OverallSeems like every time we turn around there's some new concern for our youth. As they spend more time on places like Facebook and MySpace plus time texting and sharing photos there are more pressures coming to bear on them. Cyberstalking, pressure to take and share nude photos, even controlling issues like someone texting or emailing them constantly are growing problems. Well the folks at the Ad Council, The Family Violence Prevention Fund and The Office On Violence Against Women have come together to create a really good AND really cool website.

What's It About Using video, cool graphics and common sense they create a very approachable way of talking about some potentially scary topics. I can see this being used from Middle school on up. Plus they have a section where youth can discuss the issues online, links to resources if trouble gets really serious, and even youth created videos on the subject.

In their words:
Your cell phone, IM, and social networks are all a digital extension of who you are. When someone you're with pressures you or disrespects you in those places, that's not cool.

Thatsnotcool.com is attempting to raise awareness about digital dating abuse and stop it before it gets worse. Sponsored and co-created by the Family Violence Prevention Fund, the Office on Violence Against Women and the Ad Council, the site is designed to address new and complicated problems between teens who are dating or hooking up—problems like constant and controlling texting, pressuring for nude pictures, and breaking into someone's e-mail or social networking page.

Reservations Actually not many. I'd love to have some resources for a more in-depth discussion after the kids have taken a look at this. I didn't see a lot of ways for the adults in these young people's live could hook in to help. I'd also be concerned that some of the callout cards might escalate a bad situation.

Recommendation It may be a real eye opener for adults to cruise through and see the kinds of things that some young people are doing out there on the digital frontier. It may seem harmless but it's not. A photo that was supposed to be for "someone special" very quickly can end up on the world wide web and things get ugly at that point.

I can give this resource a very strong recommendation. I'll have a link to it on the youth ministry website in the near future.

Peace

New communications

I've mentioned that we were moving into (yet another) new way of communicating. Over the last two years it's become clear that my reliance on e-mail was hampering my attempts to communicate with my youth. They were pretty clear that e-mail was not something significant in their lives. They might look at it occasionally.

So that wasn't helping. What they were into was texting. The problem is that texting doesn't lend itself to the kinds of information transfers that I normally do. A text is commonly less than 150 CHARACTERS. (As an example the last sentence was 44 characters long. So I can do three fairly short sentences.) And doing mass text "mailings" wasn't easy and usually was fairly expensive.

My first thought was a relatively new service called "Twitter". According to their website

"Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?".

The problem with Twitter is that I would need all my youth and leaders to sign up and then either add me to a list of Twitter-ers that they follow on their cell phones or regularly check their Twitter page for my "tweets" (that's what the individual messages are called). It just didn't seem like the answer I was looking for.
(I will note that at least one youth minister out there, Shaun Mayfield Student Ministries Pastor at Red Mountain Christian Center in Mesa AZ, has found a way to make it work that is kinda cool. I quote him from the comments page at YS Blog:

We have been using Twitter in our youth as a MAJOR feed for information for a little over a year. We use it during our services and during the week, I will explain both.

We knew the fight to stop phones in service would be a constant battle so fight fire with fire. I have an intern that has a copy of my sermon notes with certain areas highlighted and he sends out a twitter as I am saying that, about 5-10 during a service, there is a lot of reasons for this that is VERY positive, email me for more reasons.

I start of every message with a 30 second intro saying if you are new here pull out your phone and send a txt to 40404 and type follow eikonlive then if it is your first time then put in your name and you are all set up. Then throughout the week we will send you updates. We have nearly 200 people that are people that have been through our doors and several parents. The key is building a culture within your group/kids/parents.

Then we also send out updates/event details/ etc during the week, respecting the amount of txts.

As we explain it regularly it doesn't take time and it has created an AMAZING culture in that our kids are having conversations through twitter and responding to the tweets during our service asking questions or delving into the topic deeper.

You can check out their Twitter page HERE

It seems like a very creative use of the service but I was looking for something more straight forward (at least in my own mind!)

And I think I found it. JOOPZ This is a web based texting service that works with pretty much any cell service in the US or Canada. It offers "two way" texting, group messages, reminder notes, scheduled texts and more. The free service is pretty good so I looked to see what the Premium would cost me.

$19.95

A year.

I looked at that three times. Most of the bulk texting places charge that much or more a month. In fact I just re-re-re-checked because I'm still not sure I got it right.

Yep. $2.95 a month. $19.95 a year.

Joopz isn't perfect. The largest group I can create is only 10 people. Since I'm hoping to get at least 100 people signed up that means 10 groups. Which is still WAAAAAY better than most other options. I'm also more limited on my messages, only 100 characters. So two sentences. My youth will approve any limitations on me talking, lol!

Because it's web based I can access it from anywhere I have internet access. I can see this as a way to communicate at Senior High conference, at convention, at EYE plus routine updates on what's happening with applications, web updates, new e-mail(!) and more.

So I'm pretty excited. Now I just need to get folks to "sign up". I'm not going to just randomly cull cell #s and load them in. By my lights that would be wrong. So I still need people to "enroll". Which amounts to sending me their name and cell phone number. I do the data entry.

My promise has been that they'll only get a limited number of texts from me, maybe two a week, no more than 12 a month. It's all designed to point them towards other things of note.

At least that's my vision for the moment. We'll see how it works out.

Peace