How Technology Can Harness Multiple Thought Leaders

I guess you could call me a social media maven. I’m just as likely to stay awake reading Mashable.com articles on new ways organizations are using social media to promote their message as I am reading about birds seen from the Canopy Tower in Panama.

I am also prone to philosophizing and problem solving, so the conversations that began weeks ago regarding the future of birding, and specifically, the American Birding Association, have kept my brain steaming.

What are Thought Leaders?

Some great discussions followed Nate Swick’s recent blog post on the ABA’s Renaissance. In there, I mention the concept of thought leaders, which in the world of online media refers to the people with opinions, knowledge, and/or innovative ideas. Thought leaders are not always change-makers themselves, but their ideas can help induce the tide of change by presenting perspectives that counter organizational myopia.

Because it’s relevant to what I want to present this morning, I’d like to repeat an excerpt of a comment I left on Nate’s post.

“Today’s successful organizations pay attention to, invigorate, and harness the exchange of ideas that takes place online.

Birding is interesting in that a proliferation of blogs and online thought leaders organically developed over time. Most of these voices were not necessarily attached to an organization. In fact, organizations have it tough when they TRY to put out their own voices online, because readers on the Internet tend to ignore the sanitized messages in favor of more guerilla-style commentary.

Honesty, rawness, and authenticity is key…yet how can an organizations who do have to be mindful of political correctness harness these disparate voices, like yours, that have so much to offer?

I still think we’re moving closer to the idea of vocal clearinghouses…where multi-author blogs (e..g., 10000birds) or editor’s choice compilations (e.g., Huffington Post) are the norm. To reach members, have your experts, but also, stay down, stay dirty, stay relevant.”

How Technology Can Harness Multiple Thought Leaders

A nice exchange about multi-author blogs appeared on one of Nate’s previous posts and I think these blogs have merit and should be attempted.

Philosophically, however, I see one problem; once a person gets paid by an organization with a specific agenda to express an opinion, his/her focus shifts and narrows, and after awhile their commentary could become boring or at least too clean. And yet, to keep producing thoughtful, accurate, and well-researched, content writers/bloggers must be paid somehow by someone (keep that in mind, and click those ads you see on other’s sites, dear readers).

So while I presented this idea about harnessing different voices, I didn’t yet know exactly how it can be done while still keeping it gritty enough to be relevant. Well, just this week I discovered a new technology that gives me promise that in the vast sea of the Internet swim talented entrepreneurs who are building tools to make information more manageable and useful to people.

A “Birding News Daily,” Of Sorts

Take a look at this image of the newspaper I created called the Laura Kammermeier Daily.

Like your favorite newspaper, it neatly presents a bunch of headlines about Birding and other topics such as Travel, Environment, Arts & Education, and more and is peppered with enough photos and video to keep you interested. You can see it online here: http://paper.li/lkamms#

“How did I DO THIS?” you ask?

Easily. This newspaper took all of about 60 seconds to produce using the website paper.li. Let me credit @StephenDaly, a Facebook and Twitter friend whose Daily edition I first observer, for introducing this concept to me. I am one of his followers on Twitter, and found myself included in one of his issues.

What you see on my Daily is a selection of RSS feeds from all the people I follow on Twitter. The paper.li automatically condenses and displays those RSS feeds into this layout.

While I definitely see problems with automation leading to miscategorization, this could be handled by giving more editorial control over what is displayed, and how.  This newspaper can be a useful way for me to harness birding-related content that I think is valuable to people in my network. Maybe they’ll thank me for it, maybe they won’t, but it is useful to those who have an interest in what interests me.

How An Organization Such As The ABA Can Build A “Morning Chorus” Newspaper

Taking this one step further, here’s how an organization, such as the ABA, may use this concept to its advantage:

If the ABA created a Twitter list (something free and easy, requires no relationship with the birder) of a variety of voices it felt were worth following and promoting, it could turn that list into a daily  newspaper that is fed each morning. I know, let’s call it the “Morning Chorus.”

So imagine a newspaper with headlines from Twitter users such as Jeff Gordon, Gunnar Engblom, BirdChick, Dan Huber, Kenn Kaufman, Nathan Swick, Chris Ciccone, Ted Lee Eubanks, @IdahoBirder, Larry Jordan, or a host of photographers such as Steve Creek, Steve Ingraham, and others.

The newspaper is edited by a staff member who makes sure items are categorized correctly and don’t contain frivolous items (this requires advancements in the current technology). This would allows readers to get inside the minds of these active birders/thinkers and see what links they are following and recommending. Of course, there’s always drivel on Twitter, but editorial control over the List and daily content will stamp that out.

The advantages are that it would be developed/managed at little to no cost and would allow relevant/timely news from the field.

The disadvantage is that this is tied to a growth in birder’s use of Twitter, which I don’t feel confident about. It also ignores the gems that are found inside local and national birding listservs, and maybe that is coming (in fact, Eureka! I now have some ideas on that).

While this paper.li technology is nascent and kinks need to be worked out, I see this as a promising sign that technology will eventually help us manage the massive amounts of useless information the Internet throws at us every day.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some Lady Gaga news to catch up on…

What do you think of this idea? Is this beyond the perview of any one bird organization?

Do you think we’ll see a growth in birders using Twitter?