CommunicateAsia

Samsung’s Blogger Relations Disaster

This tale of blogger relations gone bad emerged two days ago on The Next Web. In short, bloggers were invited to participate in a product campaign, flown halfway around the world, and then given threats by Samsung to essentially work as a promoter or possibly be left stranded in Germany. Additional stories have emerged of corporate pressure tactics that bloggers face.

Samsung has issued an apology and even sent a private email to one of the parties. And of all strange things, Nokia appears to have stepped in, offered help to the blogger, and given assurances that they could stay and cover the event. If correct, I certainly would give a hat tip to Nokia for showing how blogger relations can be better handled.

Nice job by The Next Web on capturing this story.

How Rural Farmers in India Use Mobile Information Services: This Week on For Immediate Release Podcast

Asia Report Aug 13.mp3 Listen on Posterous

Brilliant Example of Organizational Storytelling: Curiosity’s Seven Minutes of Terror

Still wondering what a great example of organizational storytelling look like? Here is the best example I have seen in a while. NASA, a publicly funded organization, needs to explain to citizens and fans around the globe why the Mars landing was such am amazing engineering feat. This five minute video does so brilliantly and illustrates how organizations can look for interesting ways to share their stories.

Here we see one problem, followed by another, and how the engineers solved each. No data dump. No boring download of “we did this” or “look how amazing we are.” This is a basic problem-solution-problem-solution narrative that leaves me impressed. Fantastic!

This Week in Asia: Corporations in China Turn to Social Media for Recruiting

Asia Report Aug 6.mp3 Listen on Posterous

More Details About Singapore’s Decline in the Information Society Rankings

Since 2002, Singapore has declined comparatively in the rankings of information societies when measured according to ICT skills. This is mixed news. Foremost, the sub-index of the overall information society rankings maintained by ITU is imperfect. But before we are quick to conveniently dismiss this ranking, let’s state up-front that the ITU effort is the best available rankings and here is what the skills sub-index actually measures.

adult literacy
gross secondary enrollment
gross tertiary enrollment

Because this is a proxy indicator—we are not yet able to directly define and measure what is digital literact across 100+ countries—the measure is given less weight in the overall rankings. Still, overall, Singapore declined in the rankings which means that other nations are progressing more rapidly.

Given the tremendous infrastructure in Singapore, and the high levels of technology adoption, I see a tremendous opportunity for this economically advanced nation to scale up its digital literacy training (e.g., in schools and corporations) and start taking advantage of the resources already available.

Requesting Your Help to Pre-register for Favortree: A Collaborative and Gamified System

I need just 5 people to pre-register here for Favortree. Here is how they describe this collaborative and gamified site. If I get 5 people to register, I get access to the beta and can explore how this might be used in my courses. Thanks!

Play it forward with our new mobile favor-trading game.

Borrow textbooks, lend a video game, or help a neighbor plant a garden. By helping your community with small favors, you earn rewards to be traded when you need help.

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