If 91 year old Mavis from Mudgee can do it…

My grandmother, who passed away just a couple of months ago, was a late-comer to ‘new media’. But at the age of 95 she was teaching computers to the ‘oldies’ in her village. She used to dazzle us by insisting she had the latest software, reeling off features like a car fanaticist would engine parts. I took her along with me inside the online virtual world Second Life  for a Christmas party once. She wasn’t fazed by the presence of avatars controlled by people all around the world, or how we could fly around, she just thought the girls were inappropriately dressed for the snow. But companies had a hard time understanding that she was a real person. She was kicked out of her online banking because the administrators didn’t believe her age. They thought they had outsmarted an automated program trying to access the account. She wasn’t a robot, she was my granny.

I like to relate these stories to people who claim that it is not possible to learn technology when you’re older, or that young people are the only ones who understand it. Both of these assumptions are simply not true. I know plenty of young people who don’t have a clue about the diversity of things on the Net (yes, really!). People, markets and communities cannot be segmented according to their age or geography anymore. But that is rant for another time. My point is that just because someone is ‘young’ doesn’t mean they understand technology any better and conversly that the ‘oldies’ don’t have anything to teach us. Here are two examples of ‘oldies’ doing online marketing better than many:

THE ZIMMERS

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The Zimmers are well-known across cyberspace because of the content sells itself. But their sites are also well managed: they’re even getting ‘consumers’ to ‘participate’ by asking everyone for ideas on what songs to record for their album. How can you contribute? On their forum of course! This isn’t just some company (BBC) pulling all the strings though. Alf is ‘geriatric1927’ on Youtube and he did a preliminary vlog about the upcoming music video a while ago. In the video he refers you to their myspace, the motivations behind creating the song, the need to have a short vlog and so on. He’s aware of technology and the culture surrounding it:

[youtube ztclyGYYwHU]

SEWING 101

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Now this is Mavis from Mudgee Australia. I came across Mavis from a post at videomarketingcoach about a talk presented by Carol Solomon. It is just great the way Mavis tells us about her work, the ebooks we can download etc. I am so impressed by the simplicity and effectiveness of having a video introduction that I’ll be putting one on my bio site. Thanks Mavis.

Check out Mavis’ site: http://www.i-sewing.com/

Looks like the elders of the village are back, and they’re in cyberspace. 🙂

Angela Thomas on Pleasure, Play, Participation and Promise in Virtual Worlds

SL and RL colleague Angela Thomas — who was on TV with me last year (see the 7.30 Report link in my press page), edits the Slate Night magazine I write for and is at the same university as me! — was flown to the US recently to deliver a talk on ‘Pleasure, Play, Participation and Promise: socio-emotional dimensions of digital culture which are transforming the shape of new media literacies’ for the New Media Consortium. It is a great talk, jam-packed with info about what youth are doing in worlds, how they are playing with their identity and so on. I’ll be posting about the Zimmers until in my next post, but first enjoy Angela’s presentation as the audio and ppt are online at the New Media Consortium, and check out her site if you don’t already know about it. 🙂

Vlogging for Book Publishers

In a previous post I mentioned video trailers being made for books: Harper Collins Trailers and the wonderful Vidlit. Now Simon and Schuster have started doing video podcast (a type of vlogging) on books: BookVideos.tv.

BookVideos.tv offers compelling video stories that give readers insights into some of the world’s best authors. The social media video site offers the back story about the lives, personalities and the inspirations of these engaging writers. We created Bookvideos.tv to give readers the real story behind the story. It is the place where your favorite books and authors come to life, and it’s also where you can engage with the literary community on a whole new level.

There are plenty of audio podcasts by authors reading and discussing their works (such as Cory Doctorow’s podcast), and audio podcasts by publishers such as Penguin UK podcast, but I think this is the first video podcast. They’re doing just what filmmakers have been doing for a long time: posting the pre- and post-production of films. About time! It seems that video really is the preferred medium for many on the web. It can communicate so much more in a shorter period of time. Here is a sample of BookVideos.tv:

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Check out their site: http://www.bookvideos.tv/

via El MarMOogle