I sat James Cameron’s version of Titanic out. Wishing to be somewhere else. Not understanding why you needed that much slow-motion to sink a ship. Timing how alien-long it took for bodies to crash on decks. Trying to keep an interested face while the obligatory love-story was steamingly consumed on the backseat of an oldtimer. On a cruisehip. I hated every second of the 194 minutes (!). Vowed never to buy, download, webstream or rent the thing.

I thought I was over it. My therapist thought I was over it. But some Bonobo did it again… they will roll Titanic 2 soon. With a delicious plot: On the 100th anniversary of the original voyage, a modern luxury liner christened “Titanic 2,” follows the path of its namesake. But when a tsunami hurls an ice berg into the new ship’s path, the passengers and crew must fight to avoid a similar fate.

Some plots should be shot before they’re pitched…. and quartered for good measure.

My colleagues from the London office invited me to speak at their healthcare event “How to communicate with the 21st Century Patient”.  Highlighting the importance of digital media seemed a logical thing .  More and more patients turn to the internet as their first source of information, confronting their medical practitioners and doctors with the information they have found online. Dealing with this “dr Google phenomenon” is something that is changing the medical playfield, and frankly a bit of a challenge.

A freelance healthcare writer, co-presenting at the event, is an excellent    journalist (with a focus on print media). However, I had to disagree with her when she stated that off-line information is per definition better than on-line information, and that online providers of content are mostly inferior to off-line providers.

And that is when the sleeping journalist in me roared. When I was a young press monkey, older journalists were better, and journalists with a blue accreditation cards were better than the ones with a green card. Now the quality debate shifted to it’s online, or offline.  Honestly, that is enough nonsense to propel a pound of half-cooked beef in an orbit around Betelgeuse.

It is NOT about off line or online. It is about quality of content. If the content is good, crosschecked, weighed, referenced, footnoted, transparent, honest and correct…. I could not care less if it is written by a journalist with a diamond incrusted press card, or by a nerdy blogger in a Hindustani basement.

Encyclopedia Britannica, the self-proclaimed God of wisdom, proves to be less correct than the crowd sourced, wiki-drafted, and community controlled Wikipedia.

Trust me, you will also find fine and balanced content online. Written by journalists; bloggers; moms and dreamy eyed students. Not all of those have nihil obstat press card blessing… who cares?

Mom tried to raise me to be an honorable citizen. Thinking of it: so did dad. Greet people. Thank them. Speak with two words. Be helpful. Pay for things you need. Get older ladies safely across busy streets.

Honestly, they succeeded quiet well.  I was managing reasonably good, trying to be mister almost perfect. And then… I bought an iPad. And my world shifted. Because mister Steve Jobs disagrees with mom. He does not want me to be a nice citizen.

My iPad has all this great tools and things. It’s a fully mobile, highly connected dog-and pony show. But to make half of the stuff work, mister Jobs wants me to cheat. I live in Belgium, and iTunes will not let me buy ebooks. ITunes will not let me buy TV-series. iTunes will not let me buy movies. No buying, no renting. God and Steve know why.

I cannot even buy my favorite stuff in another country than Belgium. iTunes will not let me. American Express and Visa ensure there is nothing wrong with my credit. There is something wrong with iTunes. There is something wrong with Steve.

Now that he pocketed a small 1000 dollars, I discover that some nice features of my iPad only will work if I rip or download illegally. Apple will not take my good money for legal entertainment on my kosher personal iPad.

Sorry mom… blame Steve. But nothing will stand between me and an iPad driven Monthy Python.

There is always something. An earthquake. Michael Jackson passes away. Brittney Spears could not find her undies. Steve Jobs iPhone presentation crashed (hihi). Paris Hilton hates undies. Perez Hilton accuses Miley Cyrus of doing a Spears/Hilton. The BP oil well catastrophe, Porter Novelli doing a EMEA social media tour….

Every day something pops up that shakes the web and throws my beloved Tweetdek bananas. But I can live with that. It puts a smile on my face, makes me a little wiser, and gives me something to talk about in the elevator.

But trop is too much. I hate football, yet the whole twitterverse cracks at its seams because a couple of million bonobos all over the world painted in their favorite war-colours (seriously orange?) chatter endlessly on how  where and when a midsized leather ball should roll. Seriously, it’s football. Keep it in your sofa, between your pizza and sixpack.

In about a weeks time sweating men with shaved legs will take over the twitterverse, steaming up and down some way overrated French hills in de Tour de France. And, mind my words, Twitter will crash again.

I have nothing against all that healthy sporting on TV, but when it crashes my online universe I’m getting annoyed. I’ve seen more Twitter fail whales than I can handle. I hate fail whales.

So does Mariana Pugliese, a web savvy cake designer from sunny Buenos Aires. The haunting fail whale chased  her so badly at night, that she decided to create it in real life… and eat it.

Cool. A Fail Whale Cake. Can’t wait till @princess_misia makes me one….

Hilarity when the Molenbeek police rushed in to save…. the @pnbr5 demo car. We positioned the Lotus on our parking lot, complete with some nice smoke puffin out of the smoking machine in the trunk. The brave officers where almost halfway shooting their fire extinguishers from the hip, when we could prove them all was fine and under control. This neighborhood is in excellent hands!

This is a small reminder of our tweet up that will take place on Wednesday, June 23!

During the teet up you will meet with the Porter Novelli digital experts including:

Gary Stockman, Porter Novelli CEO
John Havens, VP, Social Media at Porter Novelli and the author of the book, Tactical Transparency: How Leaders Can Leverage Social Media To Maximize Value and Build Their Brand
Marta Majewska, Digital Expert
+ me

and discuss social media in a lovely atmosphere – with snacks and bubbles!

The tweet up will start at 4:45 pm and last till 6.30!

Location:
Porter Novelli Office
Louis Mettewielaan 272
1080 Brussels

Tweet me @dannydevriendt or @pnbr5 if you wanna join!

It must be a plague, or a disease. In any case it seems contagious. And freaking annoying. For some reason way too many people tell me they’re not into Social Media. They do not get it, do not need it, were never on it, will surely quit it soon. It makes their lives miserable; it will ruin their family life, and in no way it can get compatible with their work environment. Most probably the life expectation of this planet goes down the drain per tweet that leaves my Tweetdeck.

All of this garbage-nagging gets to me by phone, over a beer, on Facebook, Twitter or when I’m bolting something manly and robust on my Landy. Most often the people who shower me with this nonsense tilt their head a bit to the left, and wait expectantly. For the argument. For the arguments. For that flood of highly intelligent, moist-making logic, highly skilled ratio and passionate savoir-faire.  They wait for me to tackle their opinion, to try to convince them otherwise, to prove them wrong…

They’re waiting for a fight….

But frankly, I cannot be bothered. I just don’t care. If people think they should not be on Twitter, that is fine by me. They can quit Facebook, any day. They can blow their blog out of the water.  I care as much as them trying to buy a pink Hummer.

Honestly, it’s a free world. You have the right to think Social Media is wrong, overrated, annoying and will affect us as a species in a way that most certainly displeases Darwin.

Just do not bore me with it ….

Shuffling through my weekly mountain of undigested news, I stumbled on a nice article in the Wall Street Journal on how Digital Media have created countless gigabytes of text, sound, and images… most of it created by people who understand little of the professional standards and practices for media. One might think that this produces an un-fresh sea of mediocrity, eroding quality and acceptability, and steering humanity as we know it directly into chaos and intellectual collapse.

But do not jump too quickly to the wrong conclusions. Since Gutenberg invented the book press (and people eroded contemporary literature with vulgar versions of the Bible and its interpretation) , every increase in freedom to create or consume alarms people who want to defend the old system and set of metrics….  Every century, the “old ones” accuse the new technology to make the younger generation stupid. And still, humanity seems to get smarter, week by week…

Close to two billion people today are connected to the same network, spending more than a trillion hours a year of free time, creating a cognitive surplus so gigantic that even a tiny fraction of it that can be seen as “valuable” creates breathtaking positive effects.

The Wall Street Journal states that: “Increased freedom to create means increased freedom to create throwaway material, as well as freedom to indulge in the experimentation that eventually makes the good new stuff possible.”

On this rainy Sunday I agree. We’re watching a digital revolution: on communications, media, press, conversations, connections, privacy, work/life balance, and countless other holy grails.  There is never an easy way through a revolution. We’ll have to ride it out, bolting the rails just in front of a fast moving train.   Of one thing I’m convinced, in the end, when we will lick our wounds, and watch how the dust settles… we’ll discover it will have made us stronger, and smarter.

One of the great things about the weekends is that I can cuddle in my favorite Corbusier long chair, with something mighty nice to drink,  John Coltrane’s melancholic saxophone through my Sony acoustic system…and something to read. While I spend my evenings and nights devouring novels and romans, my weekends are for catching up on newspapers and scientific magazines. Guess what, more and more I read those online… on the screen of my laptop. And… that is not very compatible with my relaxed dude-in-long chair attitude. No good way to hold the microcomputer.

41, and trying to find a way to justify an iPad. Midlife crisis, is that you?

Brilliant. Professor Philip Zimbardo conveys how our individual perspectives of time affect our work, health and well-being. Time influences who we are as a person, how we view relationships and how we act in the world. Food for thought: tempus fugit!

Together with our Polish partner, Headlines Porter Novelli, we are supporting a wonderful project called “I am running for Kacper” initiated by a dad of a 1.5 year old boy, Kacper, who was born with an undeveloped left arm and no left hand. Dariusz Szwast, Kacper’s dad, is planning to run 750km (465 miles) across Poland, from north to south, with a main goal to generate financial resources for the treatment, rehabilitation and the prostheses for his little boy.

Impressed by Dariusz’s attitude and determination, Porter Novelli decided to support the project with strategic advice, media and social media activities, celebrity endorsement and sponsoring. The action has started on June 1, International Children’s Day, and already attracted a lot of media and public attention. In addition to receiving an extensive coverage in the Polish National TV, press and radio, the project is being supported by a large group of Polish celebrities including TV presenters, popular actors and politicians. Some of them will run with Dariusz and that includes our own Joanna Pruszyńska-Witkowska, Headlines CEO, who will accompany Kacper’s dad as he runs through Warsaw. Many fans are following and encouraging Dariusz through the project’s Facebook Fanpage, his Facebook profile and his blog and we are hoping for even more support in the upcoming weeks.

Are you inspired by this story and would like to help? Please visit the project’s website for further instructions on how to contribute: http://www.kacperkowy-skwerek.pl/.

Everyone goes high on social networks these days. Twitter and Facebook –just to name the two obvious ones- propelled themselves to the absolute zenith of popular online services. Barack Obama used the dialogue and “tribe” possibilities of social media to fuel his –winning- campaign.

Most Belgian politicians are following slowly however… they discovered social media just in time for the last elections. Bizarrely (or predictably?) a lot dropped their engagement again just after being elected… with the new elections a two weeks off, they started to target their online friends and followers again. Not very respectful, and frankly lots of orphaned followers do not take this treatment kindly.

Twitter behavior is also bizarre. Some Belgian politicians have gathered a couple of thousand followers, but do not take the courtesy to follow back. That is about as polite  as giving somebody a business card, but coldly refusing the card that is offered back… it is rude, and arrogant.

I know it is not about numbers, and I do understand you cannot interact with everybody. Star profiles like Bill Gates, or miss Spears cannot possibly even follow back their countless followers. But a Belgian politician? Should follow at least the people who are interested in him/her. Out of courtesy, for one, but also out of curiosity.

How can a politician who is not listening represent me adequately? Ignorance, or arrogance… I do not care. I will not give my vote to someone who is not even interested in following me back.

And you?

find the Belgian politicians on http://www.netvibes.com/politicibelgie

Here is me talking on Studio Brussel about Belgian politicians and their social media behavior To listen, click on the image below (Dutch only, sorry guys!).

I can feel your pain. Your teenager is a total weirdo, with wrong hair, beginning acne, white earbuds plugged in securely in its pointy ears.

“It” eats no meat, and gazes all day to a computer screen while texting friends. No worries. You’re fine. The fruit of your love is not turning into a lonely socially challenged psychopath (well, most are not, anyway).

You just have a digital native at home. And trust me, that plethora of connecting devices; battery eating little gismos and flat screens that comes with your sweet little teenager are what the riffle is for a Para trooper: gear for survival. In todays connected world, mastering the social connection abc is simply a must.

Many parents fear that all that digital and electric hocus pocus interacts negatively with the way kids develop relationships, emotional bonds, and ultimately their own identities. Many fear that it will negatively impact the ability to communicate, interact and work with others.

Amori Yee Mikami, a University of Virginia psychologist, just conducted a research that proves that your kid is..; well doing fine actually. More than fine: Mikami found that the kids that spend the most of the time on social media sites are often the healthiest psychologically. How’s that?

I’ve been passionate about location based services for ages. In my humble –but very wise - opinion, the various possibilities for location based offerings are endless. True, location will only pay-off and be widely accepted when it will be closely linked to the psychographic and econo-graphic profile of the user. And the user needs to be in full control of the level and focus of the LBS information coming through his shields… But we’re not there yet.

After GPS in car and navigation on mobile devices, the first steps of true location based applications are surfacing fast. Twitter, Facebook and other networks scatter to embed location in their offering.  Gowalla and Foursquare constructed their complete business model around it.  Most users still look a bit hesitant at these services. Checking into places is a nice gimmick, but what does it really bring? And how quick do people tire of collecting mayorships and badges? Pay-offs will have to be found to keep as well consumers as businesses and brands in the game.

The tracks are now being laid in front of the fast moving train. Starbucks, the coffee phenomenon, already rewarded frequent customers with a collectors Barista badge on Foursquare. It now jumps a hell of a step further by offering a stunning 1 dollar discount to people holding a Starbucks mayorship on Foursquare.  

Getting a full $1 off a $4 Frappuccino is a baffling discount. For the first time, loyal customers get a tangible pay-off for their location based social media advocacy of their favorite brand.

Collecting badges, adding new places, posting reviews and sharing tips just jumped from mouth-to-mouth sharing in a game-esk set-up to a possible lucrative business with a direct ROI for participants. The rules of the game have fundamentally changed. Did any-one notice?

Armed with a tiny Sony Cybershot HX5V, Romain Pergeaux and Alex Profit, made stops in London, Cairo, Mumbai, Hong Kong, Tokyo, San Francisco, New York. They crammed three weeks of intensive driving in 80″. Jules would be proud…

Meeting a great delegation of Porter Novelli West Cost while in San Diego was nice. Great to see some real people on the old avatars. And I must admit, the Surf and Turf that I attacked during the Social Media chat was…. Mjummie. And huge! This is just a lobster…tail .

Dear Yves,

about a week ago I sent you an open post, tweet and mail: on you and Twitter. You probably did not see it, but lots of people (yours truly included) offered you some insights and do’s and don’ts on social media.

But you and your colleagues had a busy week, we know. A week where the people of this country, and people interested in this country followed every single syllable of the politicians that are negotiating the future of this country.

You twittered about nice flowers and our Belgian tennis babes. Nothing wrong with that. And you went to sleep at 1 in the morning on Wednesday. One of my American followers found that useful information. And in the midst of the negotiations on the future of Belgium, you found time to tweet about cycling.

And half the world was amazed to hear two hours later from sleepy journalists that you did not find the solution to Brussel-Halle-Vilvoorde.

@alexanderdecroo warned on Twitter that he would bring your government down, if you had not a solution today. Did he not tell you? See, you could have known if you would have followed him on Twitter?  And @svengatz said already on Wednesday he would split something, anything really. But you do not follow Sven either.

I realize negotiating is hard and perilous work. But looking from a distance, we, communications people, see a clear lack of communication. People who do not reach out, who do not find each other. Who talk, but do not listen. Who communicate egocentrically…

Maybe, going forward, you and the other politicians could start interacting, listening. To each other. To citizens. That can start with real simple things. Like following each other on Twitter.

Tell me how you tweet. I’ll tell you who are…

sincerely,

@dannydevriendt

 My inbox gets flooded by a small 350 press releases per week, and I thought nothing would surprise me. Been there. Read it. . And then, PRNewswire slammed a release on my screen that got my attention:

“Men With iPhones Are More Attractive to Women”. People with way too much time on their hands apparently conducted a survey of 1500 women that suggests that men who own the Apple iPhone handset are more attractive than those who do not. 54 % of women will date you quicker when you have Apples cutest… and iPhones owners are luckiest in love. There, I said it.

The study used topnotch techniques to come to quotes as “if he has an iPhone then he’s obviously intelligent and well-off.”

Now look, it took us, men, a gazillion generations to judge women on their intelligence, humor, wits… and not on the length of their skirts. And now some heavily paid marketing bonobos discovered that those women judge and label us on the size of our… phones?

But I’m not giving in. Let’s get an #equalphoneday right after #equalpayday until all men will be treated equally by women, independent on the status of their phones.

It has to be said: I can appreciate a good old trend from time to time: a certain continuity that clearly shows life is going on. Rambo, 1, 2, 3; The Godfather I, II, III; Windows 2000, 2005,… But trop is just too much… Lately people use the word generation a bit too eagerly.

First there was Generation X, and then came the fully connected web-designed smart kids of generation Y. Here @ Heliade towers, we’re still trying to figure out what those Y-ers eat (lactose free bio vegetables?) and there comes Randstad with a new label: Generation R.
According to a study conducted by Randstad, a human resources group, Generation R describes a whole generation (there you have that word again) frustrated professionals who have survived the recession. Yep: the R stands for recession.
Many companies had to downsize (rightsize, optsize, lay-off or fire) a lot of staff, leaving those who stayed with much expanded roles. These survivors had to shape up and take on roles above their job titles and pay-checks.
Needless to say that these people progressed way faster in this lean and mean environment: skills and experience were injected and generated Red Bull-fueled progress.
Now that the economy stops sputtering a bit, and some slow traction can be perceived, Generation R wants to be rewarded: upgraded, refitted and boosted. And we’re talking paycheck, title, and career path. If they do not get what they want, fast… they leave, to cash in their new status elsewhere…
I guess the keys of all those lonely Audi R8’s and Porsche GT3-RS’s that were slowly gathering dust after the financial bubble, will be tossed to Generation R now.
Heck, I’ll have to ask mom what generation I am….

So you are on Twitter. Good. It’s reassuring to see that the Prime minister of this gorgeous little Belgian country is up to date and up to speed with modern technology. Not that I would have doubted that you, as an avid user of Blackberry, would miss any opportunity to stay informed, connected and on top.

And you have tweeted close to a hundred times by now, to the delight of your almost 2000 followers (not too shabby by the way, for a rookie ). It puts you ahead of @svengatz (just under 500 followers) and in pursuit of Minister Q (@VincentVQ more than 3000 followers).

In your latest post, you apologize that you’re still learning Twitter. You should. Contrary to some of your tweeting political friends you’re still mostly in broadcast mode. Sharing what you are doing, thinking, and doodling is fine. But it will not get you a lot of brownie points. It’s meant for “conversation”, you see?

So start following some interesting people (you follow nine now, which is not at all in balance with your followers ratio), interact with more people (I know you tried a couple of times), and get a conversation going.

Heck, this is wild suggestion, I know: but follow some national and international politicians, journalists, and web communicators. Look how they are using Twitter, and you can interact with them.

Dear Yves, do not make the mistake to use Twitter as a broadband broadcast tool. You have your newspapers, blog, website and co to do that. You’re a busy man, I realize that. But take the time to use Twitter to dialogue with people who care about you, this country, politics and life in general. You’ll see, it will give a complete different feeling at the end of your endless workday…

All the best, let me know if I can help…

@dannydevriendt

Cladoselache.  You got to love its handy fusiform, it’s torpedo streamlined spindle-shaped body and its sharp, multicusped teeth. Meet the shark, the silent scream or adrenaline boosting predator that gives surviving divers something to talk about.

And with the Cladoselache Digitalis Mother Nature’s most able fighting machine has a new variety: the digital shark. These are the hungry dark forces of evil that lurk in the swimming areas of the digital decade,the merciless soldiers of fortune that hunt for inappropriate content, revealing pictures, stupid career quotes or private life threatening remarks.

I’m still flabbergasted how younger people carelessly share all of their thoughts, pictures, movies and views… unprotected and online.

I admit. With my grey hair and old bones, I’m not exactly the role model of the digital native, and maybe I am growing too ancient to understand. But if I look at what some people share on their Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and tutti quanti my heart just misses a beat. Do they know I know? Do they know I can see? Do they know that, if I can  so can the whole of west-Timbuktu?

Sharing thoughts and nice moments is fine, as fine as snorkeling in the Blue Lagoon. Just be careful…. Old Bones is telling you it’s a jungle out there.

And what you share can be used… there is a difference between a digital native, and a digital naive…

Since people follow me in (in? through? on?) Social Media, life becomes increasingly complicated. O yes, facing multiple ethical dilemmas here. I do like interaction, sharing and even cynical or ironical snowball fights.  But would it be wrong to employ an expert hit-man to deal with all of the lunatics on social networks? I hear they come cheap these days.

Honestly, I’m not interested in adding to your barn in Farmville, and your fish in Aquarium really would be better off in sushi. I did not receive any complaints about my reproductive hardware, and do not need a system upgrade for that. I have followers by the thousands, so am NOT interested in buying half a Pondukuriststan province into following me (buying followers, you’re joking, right?).

The 350 million dollar you want to put on my banking account would just get me in major trouble with my ego and the Belgian tax authorities. I am not into renting exotic beauties either… I hate anything that smells like TrueTwit, and if your golden formula to get rich is working, why do you still bother bothering me?

So I’m looking for a Cyber Rambo willing to root out the evil accounts, bots and tweeps that dirty my online existence. There is good money to be made