Jan 192012
 

I gave a few books as gifts last year. These are the three non-fiction books I most often recommended to people. I ended up giving away multiple copies of these.

The thing they have in common: they all make you revise your view of the world.

1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created

It’s sort of like Connections but for world history since that date, with a huge emphasis on the way globalization changed the world. One of the best moments is when he talks about plants… as American as apple pie (apples are from Kazakhstan); Italian food without tomatoes (they are from the Americas); the Irish and potatoes; southeast Asian cooking without chilies (from Mexico); Switzerland without chocolate (also Mexico); and rubber having basically moved from Latin America (where there’s a native endemic pest that kills the trees) to Southeast Asia (where there isn’t… but 40% of the world’s rubber comes from those trees, we’re utterly dependent on it for airplane tires, electrical wiring, and medical use; and we’re just waiting for the moment when some idiot travels from Brazil to Indonesia with some mud on their shoe and kills the entire monoculture crop in Vietnam & South China.

I can’t resist, even though it will bloat the blog post…

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Chong & Koster

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Oct 302009
 

This is a shoutout to my younger brother Josh Koster (who has been featured on the blog here before) — his firm Chong & Koster, which does political new media services, has just announced a partnership with TSE Consulting, which is a company that deals with what can only be called the politics of sports. They’ll be doing their “nanotargeting messaging” thing for sport-related campaigns.

It is fascinating to me to see the sorts of convergence that are happening; here, it’s new media marketing crashing into Olympic bids with the tools honed during the last election cycle. The world is changing fast!

See the other great press articles that Josh has contributed to at Chong & Koster, or visit them on CrunchBase.

Jul 102009
 

The news is full of commentary about how significant the speech that President Obama is going to give in Ghana tomorrow is going to be. And the White House is making a serious social media effort –Facebook, SMS, Twitter… And virtual worlds, as the Annenberg Center for Public Diplomacy notes. And Metaplace is working with them to host an event with a live video stream of the speech, plus additional speeches and music afterwards, crossworld with Second Life. It’s all happening early tomorrow morning.

This is exciting to me on many levels. Lately, a few of the speeches I have given have been about the broad question of where virtual worlds are going, and how they may connect to real people’s lives. What we have here is a powerful tool for social media, one with different affordances than are brought to the table by SNSes or streams — but in many ways it is underutilized because of the barriers of entry and the ways in which VWs are still tied to models established in the 1970’s.

I’ve often stated that the clear killer app to date for virtual worlds is escapism. How much of this is because virtual worlds have been islands unto themselves, not interacting with or interwoven with the larger Internet? In many ways, it may be permeability that opens up the many use-cases that are possible — not just for serious purposes, but for escapist ones as well. Virtual worlds need not be a world apart. Here we see virtual worlds taking their place alongside other social media in a discussion that is truly broad, bringing the unique characteristics of placeness and co-presence to the table.

Please join us for an event featuring Obama’s speech streaming from Ghana along with leaders speaking: Kenton Keith, Tim Burke and Derrick Ashong.

On Saturday, July 11, a global conversation will push definitions of citizenship by demonstrating how new technologies enable global civic participation. Citizens from numerous countries will meet together in virtual worlds to collectively watch a speech from President Obama, view Twitter feedback on his talk, and a join in discussion with musician and activist D.N.A. (Derrick Ashong), Ambassador Kenton Keith and African historian Professor Tim Burke.

President Obama will speak to a live audience in Ghana, Africa. His speech will recognize Ghana’s stable democracy and leadership in the region. It is expected that Africans from all over the continent will converge for this momentous speech. The White House is using a Twitter feed which will enable individuals from around the world to participate in the conversation and share their thoughts with President Obama.

This event provides a public sphere for people to come together as citizens sharing independent views which in turn shape the political institutions of society. These conversations, literally hosted in a virtual physical space, are essential for the marketplace of ideas in our globalizing society. Following the event will be music from D.N.A. Please join us for this historic event.

Come to http://www.metaplace.com/Interval/play on Saturday the 11th at 5:00am Pacific for this great event!

Nanotargeting marketing messages

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Feb 062009
 

My brother Josh Koster works in politics. He does “new media” at Chong & Koster, which means that he handles doing viral and Internet marketing of campaigns — not the presidential ones, but downticket ones… like Al Franken’s. (If this interests you, they are always looking for new advertising talent).

Ars Technica just posted an article about something Josh wrote for Politics which he calls “Long Tail nanotargeting” of marketing messages. I thought both were a great read, and have relevance and applicability well outside of politics.

People don’t go to one place, looking for one thing. Their whims take them to a million places. The trick is to be everywhere, with tightly targeted messages. It’s about showing them highly relevant factoids/ads tailored to the whim they’re currently indulging, which if clicked, will redirect them to a relevant part of your website or related off-site content. In short, long-tail nanotargeting takes those little gems—be it an endorsement, video, news story, or ask—and shows it to the people who would care.

— Josh is Managing Partner at Chong & Koster