The New Nixon Podcast Is Up And Running

October 31, 2009 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under Advertising, Foundation News, Interviews, Media, New Media, Nixon Administration, Nixon Center, Nixon Foundation, Nixon Library, Nixon Library events, Podcast, Popular Culture, Richard Nixon, Social Networking, Technology, The National Interest, The New Nixon | Leave a Comment 

During a recent visit to the Nixon Library, I had a discussion with several people about the potential for a podcast, something designed to highlight the events at the library, as well as the larger work of the Nixon Foundation.

We determined to use the recent visit of Sonny West and his talk about the day Elvis came to see President Nixon in the Oval Office for the premier production of the podcast.

This podcast is being registered with I-Tunes and will be available through them by the end of today. This, of course, makes the podcast portable. It can be downloaded to I-Pods and other such devices. In the meantime, here is a link to the first episode of what we hope will be a regular feature.

A couple of provisos: First, the theme music is from “VICTORY AT SEA” at the recommendation of Sandy Quinn. He told me how much Mr. Nixon enjoyed it – so it was an obvious choice. Second, some of the audio during Sonny’s remarks is a little difficult to hear and I suspect he pulled a Fran Tarkenton and scrambled out of the pocket, straying from the microphone, at times. These technical difficulties will be addressed and corrected for future events and podcasts.

But even with a few “glitches” – this podcast will be, I think, a welcome edition to the wonderful media expressions of the Nixon Foundation.

It is my privilege to host and produce this and I look forward to working on new editions about once a month – so, stay tuned! My special thanks to Philip Bassham, on my staff in Fairfax, for his vital help with this project.

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What Would Marconi Tweet?

October 3, 2009 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under Culture, Lifestyle, Media, Social Networking, Technology | Leave a Comment 

Next to Jack The Ripper, whose identity remains unknown to this day, the most infamous murderer in British history was a man by the name of Hawley Harvey Crippen. He was a self-styled doctor who practiced a version of homeopathic medicine. He was also married to a woman he grew to hate, eventually killing her and dismembering the body. The quack told friends and neighbors that she had gone to America and died.

Soon, however, suspicion grew that something was awry. Crippen fled across the Atlantic with a paramour, while Scotland Yard investigators examined his home. They found partial remains of the body and began searching for the traveling couple. This was in 1910, just as wireless radio communication was being popularized. In fact, the capture of Crippen was largely due to the use of Mr. Marconi’s technology. Ship after ship passed word along across the Ocean, like runners passing a baton in a relay race, to be on the lookout for the doctor and his companion.

The captain of the SS Montrose had been keeping his eye on a suspicious looking couple on board his vessel, and finally sent the message: “”Have strong suspicions that Crippen London cellar murderer and accomplice are among saloon passengers. Mustache taken off – growing beard. Accomplice dressed as boy. Manner and build undoubtedly a girl.”

Long story short, the law was waiting for Dr. Crippen and company when they arrived in Canada. This story is told famously in Erik Larson’s 2006 book, Thunderstruck. It was a world changing moment. A revolution in communications was underway.

Spark by spark, dot by dot, and dash by dash, the world was becoming smaller.

Recently, while in a hospital waiting room with family members of a wonderful lady who was about to undergo surgery for a serious health issue, I called the group together for prayer. A girl in her late 20s asked me to wait a moment as she fished through her purse.

I wondered why.

Then she held up her combination cell-phone, I-Pod, computer, and device of all trades – one of those hi-tech whachamacallits – and pushed a button. Then she said, “Alright, go ahead.” I prayed, but I was at least a little curious about that gadget. My first thought was that it was a camera. So I kept my eyes closed – you know, to look more spiritual in the picture. But I soon found out that the prayer had not been recorded as an image. Rather it was captured as an audio file via the device’s voice memo feature. Then this prayer was emailed to the patient awaiting surgery. It was my first experience with cyber-supplication. Hers too.

Just when many of us who have been around the proverbial block a few times have made our peace with so many changes in how we live our lives, now comes along a whole new genre of technology and practice to sweep the world and invade our homes, businesses, parishes and pews. And while some are still debating the merits of methods and technologies now already obsolete, we are faced with the challenges and opportunities presented by newer social media vehicles immensely popular right now – like Facebook and Twitter.

But can anything of real and lasting value come from technology that limits information to a mere 140 characters?

Certainly. We regularly see examples of how social media can play a constructive role in society. Last year when a hotel in Mumbai, India was attacked and held for a time by terrorists, the world first found out not via FOX NEWS, CNN, or any other mainstream media outlet. Instead, someone sent a Twitter message (called a “tweet”):

Mumbai is in chaos. 18 dead, 40 held hostage at Oberoi, a five star hotel, firing going on at a JW Marriott.

That message was 107 characters long, and it got the word out about the emerging and ongoing story several hours before any traditional news organization went on the air with it.

Earlier this year, as thousands of Iranians took to the streets in Tehran and elsewhere to protest a clearly corrupt election process, the preponderance of any news we were getting here in the west came via Twitter as courageous people sent messages all over the world.

I am a grandfather six times over. This, by definition means I am an old dog who has difficulty learning new tricks. It is a proven fact that the older we get the harder it is to acquire knowledge and skills on a conceptual level. If you doubt this, prepare to be humbled soon as some five year old gives you a tutorial on a video game.

How much of our resistance to any change is more about the fact that new things intimidate us instead of the well-articulated arguments we pontificate about? “Well, back in my day, we didn’t have sliced bread, or running water. We even had to grow our own oxygen.”

Scott Bettinger, is the President of Echo Media in the Detroit, Michigan area – his company specializes in helping organizations – even churches – tap into the power of technology. He suggests that, whether or not leaders use “social media, at the very least they need to understand it to better understand” their clients and customers.

The first thing we need to know about social media tools is that we must understand their limits – what they can and can’t do. They are designed for attention spans that are very short. And while the Biblical passage John 3:16 in the classic King James Version would fit in one “tweet” at 117 characters, fans of longer literary passages would find themselves increasingly frustrated. The Shakespearian concept that “brevity is the soul of wit” has a found a home in the 21st century.

My personal experience with social media tools started slowly; largely because of generational reluctance. But once I learned my way around, it opened many doors to help me get to know people in my congregation better – and for them to get to know me better. I find it especially rewarding to connect with young people this way. On a daily basis, I can keep up with them, a few sentences at a time. And it usually works out that I am able to have a real conversation the next time we meet in person. “Hey, how was the zoo?” or “Are you feeling better?” or “I read that article you linked to from your Facebook page, very interesting.”

Joe Sangl is a financial planner and author of the wonderful book, I Was Broke – Now I’m Not. He travels across the country conducting seminars. He is also a big fan of social media tools such as Twitter. In fact, he sent me a tweet directly on point as I was writing this article: “Social media amplified the individual voice and allowed us to follow our heroes and learn from them at a distance.”

Of course, as with anything, we must be careful about being preoccupied with anything. We should never worship at the altar of any tool or technology. Twitter, Facebook, computers, televisions, cars – all and any of it can become too important to us. But if we remember to keep such things as servants and not let them become masters our lives can be enriched.

A few months ago, our youngest daughter and her husband gave us our sixth grandchild, a beautiful boy named Tiernan. I was at the hospital, but keeping a wise distance from the festivities. When the baby arrived, I sent out a tweet: “eight pound boy – red hair.” Anyone up at 4:13 a.m. that Saturday got the word. Soon came a picture.

Congratulations poured in – via Twitter, of course.

Then at 7:26 a.m. the very next morning I sent a different kind of message: “Pray for Tiernan Michael Zizolfo, my grandson born yesterday, he has made his way to the NICU. Nothing alarming, but possibly an infection.” All turned out well, but it was comforting to be able to get word to people that quickly.

What Marconi unleashed on the world is still on the march. Sure the lingo can be confusing, I mean who would have guessed 10 years go that we’d have a word like “tweet” in our regular vocabulary? But then again, Mr. Morse’s code was, I’ll just bet, a little hard to figure out at first, too. And remember, when the first telegraph message was sent a little over 165 years ago, between Washington, D.C. and Baltimore, the words were taken from the Bible as a reminder of the potential power of any tool and of the hand of God in and over all: “What God hath wrought.”

If you sent that today as a tweet, you’d have 117 to spare.

The After-WHCA Scene In A Nutshell

May 15, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Entertainment, Media, Social Networking | Leave a Comment 

Chris Lehmann, once the Washington correspondent for the New York Observer, now contributes to theawl.com, founded by some former staffers of the gossip site Gawker. This week at the site he described a party he attended after the White House Correspondents Association dinner. One paragraph, especially, caught my eye, since it illustrates how wonkery and showbiz are sometimes inextricably linked in Beltway society:

The most engaging conversation of my night, for instance, was with a learned and witty UK economist—“for my sins, I try to teach this discipline to the young,” he explained. We lamented the lack of any systemic approach to health care reform in America, the decline of the 19th century “political economy”—to the detriment of latter-day economics and politics alike—and compared the limitations of the two-party system in America and Britain. It was only when he was fetched away by his brooding-hunk son that my wife informed me that he was the father of Ed Westwick, of “Gossip Girl” fame.

#Swineflu: The Problem With Twitter

April 27, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Social Networking | Leave a Comment 

Twitter has been hailed as the hottest social networking tool and reached climactic authority when its users reported and offered analysis — where the latent MSM couldn’t — on the terror attacks in Mumbai late last year. But when it comes to the Mexican swine flu, according to Foreign Policy’s Evgeny Morozov, Twitter has been a haven for panic,  its users have been persistent purveyors of disinformation, both of which are great causes of concern:

Here is a tough question to communication experts out there: how do we reach the digital natives out there, especially those who are only accessible via Facebook and Twitter feeds? The problem is that while thousands of concerned and misinformed individuals took to Twitter to ventilate their fears, government and its agencies were still painfully missing from the social media space; the Twitter of account of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was posting updates once in a few hours – and that was probably the only really trustworthy source people could turn to online.

But what about the rest of the US government or international institutions like WHO? In an ideal world, they would have established ownership of most online conversations from the very beginning, posting updates as often as they can. Instead, they are now faced with the prospect of thousands of really fearful citizens, all armed with their own mini-platforms to broadcast their fears – which may cost it dearly in the long term.

The question of whether we need to somehow alter our global information flows during global pandemics is not a trivial one. A recent New York Times piece highlighted how a growing number of corporations like Starbucks, Dell, and Whole Foods are turning to Twitter to monitor and partially shape conversation about particular brands or products. What the piece failed to mention was that conversations about more serious topics (like pandemics- and their tragic consequences) could be shaped as well.

I think it’s only a matter of time before that the next generation of cyber-terrorists – those who are smart about social media, are familiar with modern information flows, and are knowledgeable about human networks – take advantage of the escalating fears over the next epidemic and pollute the networked public sphere with scares that would essentially paralyze the global economy. Often, such tactics would bring much more destruction than the much-feared cyberwar and attacks on physical – rather than human – networks.

Tell Me How To Tweet

March 12, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under New Media, Social Networking | 1 Comment 

PJ’s Ed Driscoll gives us a guide to Twitter:

YouTube’s No. 1: Can 80 Million Americans be Wrong?

March 24, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Social Networking | Leave a Comment 

Senator Obama’s Philadelphia speech was delivered last Tuesday afternoon. A complete (39 minute) version of it on YouTube has so far received more than three million hits —- making it by far the week’s most viewed video.

For all his short term success, the Senator still has a very long way to go to catch YouTube’s all-time most-viewed video. That achievement rests on the unlikely shoulders of “inspirational comedian” Judson (Jud) Laipply, whose six minute “Evolution of Dance” has been viewed almost 80 million times since it was uploaded on 6 April 2006. It ranks as the video most viewed, most discussed, and most added to favorite lists, in the history of the site.

What is inspirational comedy, you ask? Good question, and Mr. Laipply has an answer: “Imagine blending Robin Williams with Anthony Robbins or that really funny person you know with that teacher who taught you so much about life.” So at least that’s clear.

Based in Cleveland, Mr. Laipply is a motivational speaker whose shows are styled to meet the needs of the client: “Whether a 30 minute ‘get them pumped up’ or a 60 minute ‘get them reflecting’ to a halftime show for an NBA team, Judson’s energy is contagious and the audience feeds off it.” And whatever the topic or the purpose, the Evolution of Dance is always the finale of choice.

Some of the topics he covers in his $11K comic-inspirational routines are:
o Life is Change
o The Paradoxes of Life
o Selling Sand in the Desert (How to Market and Sell Anything)
o The 5 L’s for Living
o Be An “It” Person

The various Laipply websites are not uninformative, but in many ways they raise more questions than they answer. And they fail to explain why 80 million Americans have spent six minutes of their busy lives viewing this undeniably charming and mildly amusing but clearly over long and under produced video.

Mr. Laipply’s explanation is vague (and vaguely inspirational) and hard to argue with: “Life isn’t always the party we hoped for — but while we’re here we might as well dance.”

Fifty million Frenchman couldn’t be wrong. Can eighty million Americans? To brighten your Monday morning, take a look and decide for yourself.

Stay Linked-in with The New Nixon On Facebook

February 28, 2008 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Social Networking | Leave a Comment 

I encourage all readers to stay linked in with The New Nixon by joining our Facebook page. There you will get immediate notification when our illustrious contributors post, multimedia, and information about Nixon Library Events.

If you don’t already have a Facebook profile, signing up is very simple.