Ed Peaco

I am curious why those who say that the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey is too intrusive are not more disappointed with corporations that harvest personal data for profit.

We mindlessly agree to share our personal information with Facebook and Google, which say up front they will use it in various ways to make money — but suspicion surrounds the Census Bureau, which has a two-century track record of confidentiality and data protection.

Which terms of service seem to embrace data stewardship more rigorously?

Facebook:

For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos (IP content), you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook (IP License). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account unless your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it.

Census Bureau:

Violating the confidentiality of a respondent is a federal crime with serious penalties, including a federal prison sentence of up to five years, a fine of up to $250,000, or both. We promise that every person with access to your information is sworn for life to protect your confidentiality. We promise that we will use every technology, statistical methodology, and physical security procedure at our disposal to protect your information.

A couple of years ago, I signed up for Census Bureau updates as part of a story I was doing. In recent weeks, I have received two e-mails from that agency regarding challenges to its funding.

Specifically, politicians are trying to delete the American Community Survey from the bureau’s research portfolio. This survey fills in the gaps between the decennial surveys and provides a rich and dense body of data for citizens and businesses to use for planning their futures. Some politicians say it’s too intrusive, unconstitutional and a waste of money.

Each message from the Census begins with the same language and follows with links to news and opinion articles from major media organizations.

Today’s message reads:

Last week the House of Representatives passed a bill that contains the Census Bureau’s budget. We are receiving many questions from the press and stakeholders all across the country. In an effort to continue to be responsive to these questions, we are providing an editorial from the Washington Post and an opinion piece from Roll Call.

Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-american-community-survey-is-a-count-worth-keeping/2012/05/15/gIQALTRISU_story.html

Roll Call
http://www.rollcall.com/issues/57_136/Research_Cuts_Are_Akin_to_Eating_Seed_Corn-214527-1.html

Observations:

1) The Census Bureau may be prohibited from doing PR on its own behalf. In any case, this is a great way to conduct a PR campaign without doing any PR.

2) I worked for the Census Bureau in 2010 as a clerk, handling tons of raw data compiled by the enumerators. For two months, I entered the bureau’s world of privacy and confidentiality. The data protection practices were comprehensive and rigorously observed. Although my experience was a limited glimpse, I feel that it suggests the whole of the bureau’s culture. So, I suggest that though the American Community Survey may be intrusive, it also is secure.

3) If the American Community Survey were discontinued, the need for this data would not disappear. I suppose Census opponents would suggest that this function should be left to private enterprise. Then what? No research firm would take on the project unless it could be monetized. In this mindset, would only people who paid a fee be counted? Would the only people who could access the data be those who could pay for it?

4) This latest turn for the worse in our politics confirms the continuation of a campaign of willful ignorance and the denial of the value of facts, science and knowledge of all forms. We are trying to be stupid.

Back in the early 1970s, we began the transition to gender-neutral pronouns. The laudable principle of overturning patriarchy in pronouns led to various solutions.

Old way:

The person texting should at least be aware of where he is.

New ways that are more or less correct but awkward:

The person texting should at least be aware of where he or she is.

The person texting should at least be aware of where she is. [And perhaps use "he" the next time such a situation occurs to even things out.]

New way that many grammarians recommend:

People who text should at least know where they are.

New way that millions of non-grammarians use every day:

The person texting should at least be aware of where they are.

This last version contains an agreement violation. However, why not just change the grammar rule to make this usage acceptable? Of course, editors of dictionaries and manuals resist caving to the rabble, but, over the decades, the rabble usually prevails on such matters. If we caved now, we could save a few decades of fuss.

In my new freelance role as a music writer for the News-Leader, I had the pleasure of interviewing JJ Grey in advance of his performance with his band, Mofro, at the Gillioz Theater in Springfield. Grey, purveyor of rural wisdom with plenty of soul, told me a fascinating story behind one of his more curious songs, “King Hummingbird,” from his current album, Georgia Warhorse. I have been learning that it’s easier and more fun to ask musicians to tell me a story than to try to talk about music with them (although of course I must do both).

Read my article before it passes to the dark side of the News-Leader pay wall. Read my impressions of the concert at my personal blog.

I am working on a story for the Springfield (Mo.) News-Leader about a small group of Civil War re-enactors based in the Ozarks who will be participating in the 150th Anniversary Re-enactment of the Battle of Wilson’s Creek, August 12-14. For these guys, re-enacting is part history, part recreation. In addition to numerous interviews, I spent an afternoon with some of the group at the rural home of one of the members. They drilled and planned for the event and also provided a shooting demonstration. Look for their story — plus pictures by a professional photographer — in Sunday’s News-Leader.

Danene Beedle

As marketing director for the Missouri Wine and Grape Board, Danene Beedle works to integrate the board’s website and social media platforms into a one-stop clearinghouse for experiencing the state’s 100-plus wineries. The goal is to encourage people to visit not just the local winery but to visit multiple wineries while traveling more broadly within the state.

The website compiles information for consumers, tourists and industry professionals. One of the more impressive elements is a catalog of all wineries with summary information and links to wineries’ independent sites. Tourists can plan a trip, choose a wine trail and learn about winery events.

Social media reinforce these opportunities, Beedle says. “We’re taking action to provide people information in a format that they want.” Timely updates encourage responses and suggest action, such as:

• Twitter: Celebrate the “Dog Days of Summer” by taking your pooch to @MtPleasantWine (July 7)
• Facebook: Where will your weekend wine adventure take you? (June 10) — generating eight comments.

“We like to ask a lot of questions on Facebook. We like to be more conversational in nature rather than commercialized,” she says. “We really want people to respond.”

The board presents YouTube videos that provide education about wine, and it maintains a Flickr account where people are welcome to share their Missouri wine photos, she says.

Passport program

This year, the board is promoting a winery passport program in which visitors gain points toward rewards. “It’s a great way to increase tourism and increase visits,” Beedle says.

The program is structured to encourage roaming: “The cool thing about the passport is that once you go to a winery, you can’t get more points there. You have to go to another one.”

Beedle has not pulled numbers on participation in the passport program, but she says she’s noticing that wineries grouped into a wine trail are experiencing more passport activity.

Personal use

In the social media of her personal life, Beedle says she exercises her competitive spirit using Foursquare and chronicles her travels and activities with @MoWineGirl, frequently discussing wine.

She points out that Foursquare is structured to facilitate tweeting from a smartphone about activities at a specific location, a feature she enjoys.

Beedle emphasizes that the Missouri Wine and Grape Board’s official channels are distinct from her opinions and observations in her personal Twitter account. Even so, for Beedle, wine is a topic that fuses the personal and the professional, as these MoWineGirl tweets demonstrate:

• Try the @missouriwines Nortons with lamb burgers, steak or blue cheese. Stay in touch and let us know what you think #wbc11 (July 23)
• Love the winners WWW.missouriwine.org #awardwinning wines (July 20)

“It does, of course, overlap,” Beedle says of her discourse on MoWineGirl, “because I work a lot in very social settings. My work is social.”

Americans usually associate Twitter with marketing tactics and personal expression. The work of Iyad El-Baghdadi is one more reminder that the medium also can serve to disseminate powerful ideas with universal application.

As the Arab Spring erupted earlier this year, I began following on Twitter a few close observers of the revolution in Egypt. Most of them were journalists, but among those who were not, El-Baghdadi stood out as a voice of reason with a bit of a sense of humor.

El-Baghdadi followed the unrest as it spread to other nations. Using his Twitter account from his home in Dubai, he relayed reports from sources involved in uprisings and presented analyses based on his observations.

Over the weeks of upheaval, El-Baghdadi noticed that embattled Arab leaders were responding in similar ways, as if they had a standard operations manual for handling unrest. On March 23, he shared his observation with this tweet:

Help me compile an “Arab Tyrant’s Standard Revolution Response Manual.” What would be on it?

Respondents posted roughly 100 tweets in a “flash of brilliance spanning several continents,” as he calls it in the introductory chapter to the book in progress about the tweets. Among them:

Ignore events completely, realize late how serious things really are, and give a midnight speech to the nation. #ArabTyrantManual

Burn down your own police stations and blame it on the protesters. #ArabTyrantManual

Reshuffle the cabinet. Then reshuffle it again. #ArabTyrantManual

In the introductory chapter, El-Baghdadi acknowledges that he would not be able to publicize his highly charged ideas without the liberties granted him as a citizen of the United Arab Emirates, whose form of government he considers unique to the Arab world. “Its leadership has created and catalyzed social change, rather than stand in its way,” he writes.

El-Baghdadi states that he is a Western-educated Muslim. His profile at his Facebook page notes that he has studied computer systems engineering and works on animation and e-learning projects among other digital initiatives. His worldview mixes critical and sympathetic perspectives toward both the Western and Islamic realms. He stimulates dialogue by posing difficult questions and fearlessly examining all aspects of an issue. Consider his blog post, “What bin Laden’s death means to Muslims.”

I asked El-Baghdadi what he hopes my American audience of social media and language practitioners may gain from the “Arab Tyrant’s Manual.” Here’s what he said in an e-mail:

The “Arab Tyrant’s Manual” is unique in that it got a life of its own right from the start. For the most part, I wasn’t writing it as much as curating it. The response was overwhelming and heartwarming. I’m convinced that the call of liberty is a grand unifier of people of different racial, cultural, and religious backgrounds.

The “manual” struck a chord not only with Arabs, but with everyone across the globe who has suffered from tyranny or watched its effects. Today I retain the word “Arab” in the title only to provide context. It is clear that this “manual” doesn’t only apply to Arab tyrants. It is also clear that it applies equally well to tyrannical institutions as it does to tyrannical individuals.

We started it as a tongue-in-cheek attempt to poke fun at tyrants in trouble, and perhaps to humanize our own experiences as we strive daily to counter their agitprop. But quickly, it became clear that what we managed to put together is a “tyrant’s survival guide,” a sort of walkthrough for aspiring revolutionaries warning them of what the tyrant will try to pull in words or deeds.

I hope that the Arab Tyrant’s Manual can help humanize the Arab Spring to mainstream American readers. It could help them navigate the daily propaganda spewed by cornered tyrants, and may help them add context to news out of the Middle East. Who knows, they may notice an item or two pulled by power brokers closer home!

Here’s a bit of short code from Technorati. It’s part of the process of registering this blog with the indexing behemoth.

29Q4CCEK2NYC

And, just so this post won’t be purely procedural, I want to recognize Melissa Donovan’s amusing yet constructive post, “How to Collect Writing Ideas While  You’re Procrastinating Online.”

Organizations delivering products and services online can benefit from giving away lots of morsels in hope that a few curious visitors who bite will turn into paying customers.

These morsels, known as “freemiums” (a word that combines “free” and “premium”), take the form of no-cost basic services that entice users to upgrade to fee-based premium services. I see several strategies for articulating this model:

Straightforward

Skype’s fee chart starts with free services and goes forward with three types of fee-based upgrades. There’s no behavior modification going in here. The customer views the options and makes a choice.

Indirect

Melissa Miller Young, a freelancer in writing, social media, and marketing, dispenses advice about her specialties in the blog at her website. She also lists her services but does not specify rates. The advice aims to demonstrate her proficiency and therefore her worthiness to be hired. It’s important to provide content that is fresh and different. An example to avoid comes from WriterTank, a freelance service similar to Miller’s. WriterTank recently presented “The Comprehensive 25 Tip Guide to Boosting Blog Traffic” on the heels of “15 Ways to Increase Traffic to a Blog” — with substantial overlap. Free, but not entirely helpful.

Nonprofits frequently use the indirect approach. The American Cancer Society provides information and demonstrates the society’s hard work. The site also has a tab for volunteering and donating.

Subtle

Whispering Oaks Vineyard and Winery’s Facebook page advertises events and products but never lists prices. It also provides glimpses of life at the winery and vineyard. These passages offer an ambience, sort of like aroma therapy, that visitors may find pleasing. The idea is simply to portray Whispering Oaks as an appealing destination.

Steps toward a successful freemium

• Identify something you can give away that will meet a need for your audience.
• Decide which strategy is right for you and craft the freemium with that in mind.
• Deliver the freemium in a consistent, predictable fashion.

For more information, Freemium Blog is an excellent resource that demonstrates the freemium as a business model.

Thanks to Jeff Riggins of the Drury Social Media program for asking me to write about freemiums. I look forward to seeing more observations in the comments section.

— Ed Peaco