help me give a presentation on "new media/web2.0" by suggesting books, articles and exercises.

January 14, 2008 9:24 AM

I need to give a presentation on "new media". Help me by suggesting articles, books, and exercises that best demonstrate how electronic communication has changed the way we communicate.

I'm the webmaster for a voluntary organisation in the UK. We have twice yearly meetings with regional communications reps, who are either volunteers or have a communications role in addition to other roles. I've been asked to do a session (60-90 mins) on "new media including blogs and youtube". I know that's a bad start, so do you.

To help me, please suggest books that I can buy, articles that I can read, and exercises that I can use to give busy and technologically illiterate people some basic grasp of how electronic communication has changed the way we communicate.

At this point, my plan is to:
a) give them a broad overview of the dominant trends of the last ten years so that they feel they know what people are talking about
(yes, I'm going to have to mention web2.0, if only to point out that zeldman is right and it's really web1.1)
b) suggest some future trends (convergence, privacy fears, online apps etc.)
c) suggest a few non-threatening ways in which they can try this out (del.icio.us for tags, bloglines or equivalent for RSS, flickr for community etc.)

posted by unless I'm very much mistaken to technology (8 comments total)

How about this from the front page?
posted by hermitosis at 9:29 AM on January 14, 2008

Well, the nice thing is (from the way you've described your audience), you'll be "the expert" and can fashion the discussion however you like (as opposed to dealing with their expectations).

I don't know about going back ten years. That's a looong time ago in new media years. If they're non-techies, I'd couch your remarks in social terms, such as the hope of the Web was that people could share and collaborate information and ideas (then talk about blogs and social sites like flickr). But you might also think about talking a bit about the negative aspects of these social sites (as in "do we want to be 'on' all the time --twitter) or being overwhelmed by the influx of new information. I think your (b) and (c) topics are good.
posted by Taken Outtacontext at 9:45 AM on January 14, 2008

Anything by Dion Hinchcliffe will be of great use to you. And he has great images to help visualize what web 2.0 is.
posted by [insert clever name here] at 9:58 AM on January 14, 2008

I don't know about your audience, but depending on their level of familiarity with teh internets, a brief introduction to social media will probably blow their minds (I'll leave it to you to Google the incredibly well-documented topic).
posted by designmartini at 10:07 AM on January 14, 2008

You'll definitely want to hit up commoncraft for videos on this sort of thing, and I always thought the videos by mediatedcultures were cool and impressive.
posted by cashman at 10:27 AM on January 14, 2008

One thing you shouldn't ignore is the actual sites themselves. Rather than just talking about blogs, YouTube, and flickr, go to those sites and give them a tour designed to illustrate the points you are making. You know about blogs because you've seen them, not because someone told you about them. If they actually see the sites you are talking about in person, they will come out of the talk having seen them rather than just hearing about them.

A few other random tips:

60-90 minutes is a looooong time for a presentation. If possible, try to add some interaction or a Q&A session. You don't want to bore everyone to death with 90 minutes of PowerPoint slides.

I think you should focus less on the history or side issues and more on the key points of how the different technologies work in terms they can understand. Think about it like you're trying to give a presentation about cars, with the hope that they will go home and try to drive a car by themselves. You wouldn't spend most of the time talking about the Model T, the history of airbags, or how fuel injection works, with a quick description of the pedals and the steering wheel at the end. The first questions the audience will ask is "What is this?" and "How can I use it?", not "What is the history of this?" or "What are some controversies surronding this?".

No matter what you decide to center you presentation around, try to focus on 3 or 4 "take home points", and make sure that all of your presentation works towards communicating those points.
posted by burnmp3s at 11:10 AM on January 14, 2008

I might mention the Cluetrain Manifesto.
posted by veronica sawyer at 12:22 PM on January 14, 2008

Thanks everyone - I was struggling a bit with where to start on this, and these have really helped. I've best answered cashman's video links because they're just the kind of thing I was looking for to start a discussion, but lots of other good points.
posted by unless I'm very much mistaken at 6:05 AM on January 15, 2008