#1 Thing You Need to Learn from This Post:

Leaders in Port-au-Prince are hosting the #OpenHaiti Camp on Monday and welcome your online attendance to help them define a Project Worth Doing using open technology.

A More Detailed Exploration:

During my recent trip to Haiti, our group had the opportunity to meet with the organizers of this coming Monday’s #OpenHaiti Camp. This ideas came out of the recent TEDxPortauPrince event and will be hosted at the same venue, EPIH.

Do you have an interest in open technology and open systems? Can you spare 15-30 minutes or more to join in via Twitter and their wiki?  Be sure to RSVP on their Eventbrite page.

Here’s the full event description from the organizers:

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Here we are. You and I, plus another 6,999,999,998 more people. Today statistically we’ve reached the 7 billion population mark. What matters now is what is next.

As part of my Deutsche Telekom responsibilities, I recently took part in helping to shape what has become the 7 Billion Actions campaign under the auspices of the United Nations Population Fund - an innovative campaign that is building awareness around the opportunities and challenges of a world of seven billion.

As an individual as much as a representative of a large, multi-national communications provider, population-relevant issues and causes matter to me probably as much as they do to you.

To that end, the social media team at the UNFPA sent along the following tips how everyone across the social graph and blogosphere can help contribute to the cause:

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I’ve got a full work plate this morning, and my own set of feelings to process about the news of Osama bin Laden’s death (more on that will likely appear on my Tumblr later tonight), but wanted to get down a couple noteworthy bullets. If I have time, I’ll return and flesh these out into a coherent piece.

We all know that social media get the word out at lightning speed–but what struck me most about this news was not the speed of information, but the immediacy of community development. People are using Twitter and Facebook to work out what are, for many, complicated emotions. Relief, joy, anger, sadness are all appearing at once. This is in stark contrast to what we often see in traditional media soundbites (particularly video media), where broad strokes are painted when it comes to emotional content–i.e., those people are cheering, those people over there are not. Social media is creating a space where it’s acceptable, and useful, to express multiple feelings. This is also very different than, for example, the days following 9/11–when the war on Afghanistan was announced, it was largely extremely taboo in American public squares (online or off) to express concern, or disagreement. Part of that was the political climate, but part of that was that there weren’t necessary effective public spaces for people to be nuanced human beings.

I’m also struck by the speed with humor was employed as a tactic to process the news. Again, in contrast to 9/11, when we waited two weeks for the new issue of The Onion to come out–no one made any jokes before then. Not only was it taboo, but there just wasn’t a way to deal. (By the way, that issue of The Onion might be the best one ever–headlines like, “God Angrily Clarifies ‘Don’t Kill’ Rule, “Hijackers Surprised To Find Selves in Hell,” and many more gems.) Last night, some of the immediate jokes, some in good taste, some not, clearly paved a way for people to express all kinds of reactions to this global news phenomenon. My personal favorites were @marcfaletti‘s “It was that f***ing iPad location history, wasn’t it?” and the newly created @OsamaInHell account tweeting, “Wait, what?”

More as time allows today…

The Honorable Justice Clarence Thomas has been a judge on the U.S. Supreme Court since 1991. The last time his voice was heard during proceedings was five years ago. According to court manuscripts, he has since not asked any in-court questions or engaged in dialog while on the bench.

According to the Pew Research Institute, young online audiences seem to be taking a similar approach.

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Back from the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear, strangely, of all things, it was micro-blogging that got rejected.

Yup! No Twitter, no Facebook status updates, no quick text shout-outs. Nope! Nada! Nothing!

To be sure, any and all mobile communication on all carrier networks was out. Voice and data. You name it.

While I initially suspected complete event-caused subscriber overload (my Blackberry screen message said as much), I soon discovered this “no mobile” diet is a perfectly normal scenario on D.C.’s National Mall.

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Here in the west, the intrinsic value of individual innovation and intellectual property is such an ingrained ideal we can take it for granted sometimes.  Not so in Asia, where the blatant imitation of successful products is often the sincerest form of flattery.

This is especially true when it comes to popular culture and technology.  Twitter has been so phenomenally successful that it’s now arguably both a cultural and technological phenomenon  – so maybe it’s worth taking a look at a few of the Asian Twitter clones out there.

The first thing one notices is that most of these sites use the same shade of turquoise blue and the same style of font used in the original.  Again, to western eyes, copying the Twitter look and feel so slavishly might seem utterly shameless – yet it’s just another example of the how different the Asian mindset is from ours when it comes to such matters.

It should come as no surprise there are several Twitter knock-offs in China – but there are also more innovative sites as well.  Take, for example, digu (below).  This Chinese Twitter clone features an interface that pops up real-time geo-located balloons of posts as they occur (much like similar western sites such as twittervision).

It’s worth noting, though, that digu’s interface is really just a Google Maps-powered mashup.  It’ll be interesting to see if Google continues to make their API available to Chinese sites like digu  in the event they do end up pulling out of the search business in China…

…maybe not.   But we’re going to write one anyway – because we feel there are still at least two interesting things left to say about the new Apple device unveiled last Wednesday:

Point #1. Technically, the new Apple new iPad device was disappointing on several levels (still no Flash support, still no multitasking, still no video partnerships, still no AT&T alternative).  But while the storm of negative Twitter reaction had already begun while while Steve Jobs was still on the stage, it was not until the next day that the negative reaction was reflected in the stock price.  Take a look at the chart to your left – the iPad event started at 2:00 Eastern Standard Time and was accompanied by a clear immediate spike in Apple’s share price, due as much to the sheer momentum of pre-event buzz as to superficial (“isn’t Apple the coolest?”) mainstream media coverage of the event itself.  Despite an army of bloggers and tweeters continuing to bash the iPad for its disappointing feature set throughout the day, the price remained elevated – in fact, it was not until the market open on the next day (Thursday January 28th) that the stock suddenly pulled back, ending up lower than it was pre-announcement (armed with knowledge of the twitter traffic, shorting Apple at about 4:00 that afternoon would have been a good move for for short-term traders).

To me, this lag time between the (misguided) initial spike and the next day’s eventual retreat represents the disconnect that still exists between the technorati and investor classes.  That there was such a disconnect even in this case was surprising, though – because Twitter coverage of the event was fueled by an unprecedented number of tech websites serving live video streams of the event (surely a record for a product launch).   When it comes to high profile corporate events and/or panel discussions, the immediacy and global reach of live streaming internet video combined with social media platforms such as Twitter form a powerful and mutually-reinforcing mechanism to amplify and increase the penetration of any breaking news – yet still, it took a day for the initial widespread disappointment in the iPad’s feature set to register in Apple’s share price.

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Listen! I know how digitized and rapidly changing our world has become. I live in New York. I am a new media analyst for a major telecommunications company. I co-write a blog.

In other words, I eat and drink the stuff our increasingly digital real-time media reality is made of. But ever so often, I am still amazed if not puzzled about how much the times they are a changin’.

The other day I had to check the Web site of what used to be my local savings bank back when I lived in Germany — a good fifteen years ago, no less.

Turns out, they’re now into Twitter. Yes, Twitter! I was stunned. The old-fashioned local savings bank of my childhood days is now condoning micro-blogging, for that purpose flaunting its very own Twitter account.

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Just in case you were wondering – no! d i g i t a l m i s s i v e has not gone into hibernation or is contemplating early retirement. Far from it actually. 

It’s just we’ve all been rather busy with jobs, projects, plus some vacation time here and there, which has caused us to post less than we have since we started this blog in August of last year.

Which brings me to the topic of my (long overdue) post: What happens if a blogger doesn’t blog each and every day? 
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