ESPN and Sports-related Information
August 23, 2011
Lest anyone think that the tagline for this blog (“How to Stay Afloat in a Sea of Data”) applies only to business/government analytics, I’d like to share a recent sports article by Matt Mitchell (KVUE reporter – Austin) that addresses how sports-related information is created, digested, and broadcasted by ESPN today. A certain nautical feeling can overcome any observer ingesting a series of (often misleading) ESPN statistics but Mitchell makes a more general point about the influence the organization’s influence, in light of the its recent investment in the Longhorn Network, which will be dedicated to University of Texas sports:
The problem with all of this is the very real threat of sports hegemony when ESPN wields enough influence to alter the very sports it broadcasts by driving the national conversation.
ESPN’s distorting influence on sports stories came into sharp focus for me when the network raised LeBron James’ “Decision” about where to play basketball to unprecedented prominence before preceding to pillory him on a regular basis.
In Guy LeBord’s The Society of the Spectacle, the author observes that “modern industrial society . . . is based on the spectacle in the most fundamental way.” The trajectory in ESPN’s development validates that hypothesis in one particular sphere of society.
Open Source Hardware
July 31, 2011
Have you ever heard of ‘open source hardware’? This video provides a great overview of an effort to re-create basic machines (e.g. tractors) so that they are cheaper, modular, and more easily assembled in distributed sites (i.e. outside of traditional factories). The designs are shared across the internet, of course. It was exciting to see a concrete example of how the ‘electron economy’ is changing the ‘atom-based economy.’ We should keep our eyes open for many more such examples in the years ahead.
Digital Credibility
July 18, 2011
Credibility is an essential component of any relationship, personal or professional. One key challenge of the digital world is how to create credibility for oneself among the many folks an individual interacts with casually.
I’ve come across a few digital experiences lately that shed light on the new ways we earn trust nowadays:
- I took a tour of a social media command center at a major company. They explained that comments/complaints about their company are monitored across the web but that comments made by more influential people are addressed first. How do they know that someone is influential? Because they went to Harvard or hold a post in government? No (OK, there may be some exceptions.). Rather, the company sees how many followers an individual has, how many re-tweets of their comments there have been, etc. The day will come that having digital followers will be the quickest way to get your phone company, or mortgage company, to address a problem. In fact, that day has already begun.
- The job search services site, Ivy Exec (where, incidentally and disclaimer-ly), I have a post about “How to Change Careers in a Knowledge Economy“), ask me to check out their new site. I was fascinated by the validation service they offer. For $68 they will perform a background check on you, to ensure that your resume is reliable. How will employers know to trust you? Because they may trust Ivy Exec.
- The Harvard Business Review comments, in a piece about the work of Morten Hansen and his thoughts on collaboration, that we should strive to build weak ties at work, not strong ones. The point, I think, is that the premium on extending one’s ‘network of credibility’ is very great today.
What changes have you noticed, in terms of how you build professional credibility, in the past decade or so?
