Oh man, I came back from a meeting to find out that Tim Russert, one of NBC’s iconic journalists, died in the NBC offices today.  I’m still processing it now, I grew into my political maturity watching Russert, a fellow Buffalo Bills fan (one reason I liked him I think), on Sunday mornings, and later, with the advent of technology and my inability to get up on Sunday mornings after a 5 a.m. crash time the night before, downloading “Meet the Press” to my iPod, spending part of the day walking Pickles (my dog) and listening to the show. Sometimes arguing with him or his guests, like any political junkie does I guess. (my neighbors must think Pickles and I had the strangest arguments)

I never understood a lot of the vitriol thrown at Russert from partisans on the right and the left.  To me, he always tried to call it straight down the middle, being fair, yet tough, to the people he had on the other side of the table. To me that was the epitome of fairness - when both sides were attacking you for your “bias,” that usually meant you were doing something right. Watching Russert, I tried to learn how he was able to dissect a complex issue and present it to his viewers, and his guest, in a way that was to the point. I can fault him slightly for not having the biggest BS-O’meter in the world, but on a personal, and a professional level, I respected his candor and tenacity.

Being a political junkie himself, Russert will at least be able to enjoy this election from on high, sharing a drink, and debating the presidential election with people like Edward Murrow.  (Not to mention trying to get that post-death interview with Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.)

The interview table got a little smaller today.  Via con dios, Tim.

As I mentioned a few blog posts back, I was debating whether or not to give up the pen name and start writing under my real name. After receiving an email from my friend Mark, he reminded me that I have already been blog outed in cyberspace. A while back Mark referenced one of my posts on the David Iglesias firing case, where I asked where the piles of evidence that Republican operatives out here claimed Iglesias was ignoring.

Without rehashing my post or the Iglesias case right now (I’m swearing off politics for the summer, hopefully) I realized what Mark was saying. Why be worried now? Plus I’ve been referring to this blog from my Facebook and Twitter accounts for a while now, so quite a few of you already know who I am. So why not just rip the bandage off and get it over with?

Here goes…

Name: Benson Hendrix

Rank: Futurist, trend watcher (as much as one can be from Albuquerque), videographer, movie maker, public relations specialist, media relations pitcher (batter up!), former rugby great (in my own mind), jazz and electronic music aficionado, blogger, social media maven, king of my world and all around good guy.

Location: Albuquerque, New Mexico

Serial Number: 666 (or something around there…)

I’m one of the PR guys for the University of New Mexico, a place that I’m proud to call my alma mater. I tend to focus more on social media/content creation, netcasting, crisis management assistance and media relations than traditional PR press release writing. Speaking of media relations, check here for one of my first press events after getting hired at the U of NM.

I’ll warn you now, although most of you who have been reading me for a while already know this, at times I’m snarky and sarcastic, with what I think is a heart of gold and a quickly developing BS detector. I wanted to come out from behind my pen name, because while I enjoy blogging it was getting harder and harder to blog in a stale, sterile voice and I wanted to put a little more of my passion and myself behind this blog, which I’m doing if I put my name on the line. And if I want to direct people about being true to themselves when engaging in social media, I should probably do this as well. 

What do I want to blog about? Well, some of the things that I’m passionate about:

The intersection of new media/social media and traditional communications, and how the Internet has impacted the media

Technology – I’m a geek at heart

Politics (although I’m trying to cut back on the political diet, because my blood pressure needs a break) – including a smackdown of both political parties, because both sides piss me off at times

The media

Public Relations and Advertising (it’s what I’ve made a career out of) and business

Albuquerque – home for my fiancée and myself for the foreseeable future

So what can I say?

I am Spartacus Benson.

P.S. To answer the question floating out there – Yes, I have a job. Yes, I have an opinion. One does not influence, nor should be connected to, the other.

P.P.S. It was pointed out that in my rush to get this up I had forgotten to include a photo credit, which I apologize for.  The pictures above were taken by my friend Mark Bralley at the 2007 New Mexico PRSA Fall Conference, which I co-chaired.

(Keep in mind this comes from a Windows fan…)

“Windows is a lot like the Democratic Party.  A loose coalition of things that don’t like each other working together.”

Paraphrased from Mark Hinton on an archived UNM Geek Talk.

I was reading Chris Brogan’s blog this afternoon (where anyone interested in getting better with social media should go) and found this post interesting.  Chris talks about ratcheting up your ability to get through information, especially when dealing with social media, faster and faster (think Ben Johnson on steroids, then crystal meth fast).

The problem starts up when you don’t know where to look for information.  Like me, sometimes I finally find out what’s going on only to turn around, write a brilliant masterpiece you have all come to know and love ( ), get something online and find out I’m still behind the curve.  It’s like the saying goes, sometimes you get the bear, and sometimes the bear gets you.  It’s just a matter of not getting caught off guard too often.  Two questions are, how can you get the information synthesized fast enough, and in this day and age of instant online media, how can you get faster?

P.S. Chris, if you have any ideas on staying up to speed, I’d love to hear them.

(We break into your regularly scheduled PR and business news to give you… crickets!)

Good morning ,at the crack of 121 in the am.  I was finishing up reading a couple of blogs before bed and suddenly stopped to realize that, for the first time in a very long time, the sounds of crickets are dancing through the air.

Between the crickets chirping, and the cool breeze cutting the 80-degree heat out of the house, I’ve just realized that spring has firmly ensconced itself in Albuquerque.  Now let’s see how long it lasts before the 100-degree days hit this year. (”Gee there’s no such thing as global warming…” My ass!)

When trying to get the media interested in your story, don’t send a blanket email out to every reporter you can find an email address for.  Because the reporters are starting to push back and not only block those email addresses, they are also posting the worst offenders online.

Hat Tip: my friend Peter Shankman, creator of the excellent Help a Reporter site.

Earlier today I was listening to NM political blogger Joe Monahan as part of a media roundtable. He was a decent member of the panel, making a few good points about social media, but at the end he really blew it. He was asked about the future of blogging and he said that blogging had reached its heyday a couple of years back and that blogs would start to fall by the way, much like some of the mass media outlets that have shuttered their doors in the last decade – the market would decide which blogs will survive.

Joe’s looking at the story of blogging as an independent source of revenue, he had discussed advertising on blogs, or blogging independently as a career – like he does. He’s not thinking about the use of blogging and other social media in a business setting. That’s the future of non-independent, non-hobbyist social media use.

While some people are blogging and making some money off of it, you’ll find very few who have crafted a career out of their well-penned pieces (look at the Daily Kos, or Hugh Hewitt, or Dooce.com). The growing future (and I disagree with Mr. Monahan, we are still in the early adopter/early majority (from a “Diffusion of Innovation” angle) of blogging) is in a corporate setting. Keeping corporate bloggers on staff to communicate with the online community is important, especially if your organization has a lot of pushback from those communities.

It’s a necessary evolution of communications in general, and corporations more specifically. A lot of corporations are still not willing to get engaged with their target audiences, and they treat blogging just one more way of pushing their message out, instead of a way to draw in an audience and engage with those audience members. The communications model isn’t just one-way anymore – people “out there” expect to have a say in the conversation, and those companies engaging in social media need to be responsive to those in the audience. (the “pull” vs. “push” model of communications)

Your organization’s “spokesblogger” can’t just be a mouthpiece for the organization. They need to be more than a member of the marketing/communications team. They need to become kind of an “online ombudsman,” not just engaging in the conversation about your organization but trying to improve your organization when you get those negative responses. What the NY Times was trying to do with their online editor. Granted that was created more as a response to the Jayson Blair scandal than for any altruistic reason. But think about the goodwill your organization will foster with the online community, and your online detractors (which is one outlet where the mainstream media is picking up stories) if you are not just conversing with them but are actively trying to help correct problems (as much as you can).

In addition to the important goals of content creation, and developing online relationships, or reading blogs and recording podcasts, one of the futures of corporate social media isn’t in freelance advertising-paid blogs, or in repeating the same message your PR department is sending out in a press release, it’s engagement in the online community, pro and con, and representing those detractors back to your organization when a change is necessary. It’s a lot like Corporate Social Responsibility, and as a social media professional, you can’t forget it’s more about the “social” part than the “media” part.

What can I say?  I’m convinced…

Because starting May 26th, you could be arrested and thrown in the dock in the United Kingdom for misrepresenting your company as a consumer (Walmarting Across America comes to mind here).

The legislation is already in practice in Europe, the UK is just getting into the act a little (fashionably ?) late.  On one hand this can be good because it’s going to cut down on the amount of BS astroturfing that companies and their PR firms do.  It’s a kind-of enforced authenticity.

Is this a good thing?  Isn’t it better if people know that a company isn’t communicating authentically of their own accords?  The press, and other bloggers, are more than happy to shine a light on the astroturfing efforts of those corporations and PR firms.  Isn’t that the way it should be?  Online news organizations, like the newly created New Mexico Independent or well-established PR Watch, are sprouting up to watchdog various organizations and report the news without fear or favor (if not partisanship).

And another question I’d like to ask is, for activist groups throughout Great Britain - do these rules apply for them as well?  Will the same group of activists who misrepresent themselves as a greater number of people (think about the blogger equivalent of a phone bank calling talk radio shows to comment) be subject to the same rules and punishment?  Ad Age explains the law as applying to “Brand Owners” and Greenpeace, or the Sierra Club, or the Christian Coalition, or Wake Up Walmart are all brands and should be subject to those laws as well.  All things being fair and all that.

What this means is that companies and organizations should be authentic and true in their online communications.  A lesson to corporations, activists and PR firms around the world: if you represent themselves truthfully when dealing with online and social media communities, they can avoid a lot, if not almost all of, these kinds of problems.

It will be interesting to watch Great Britain in the upcoming months and see what happens.

Hat Tip: Ad Age

I’ve been trying to keep up with the stories about people who are still having problems with Windows Vista.  Some of the problems appear to be people with Vista on their new computers, which is understandable since it’s Microsoft’s first OS upgrade in a long time - understandable but still a pain in the ass, because Microsoft should not have overpromised and underdelivered on Vista.

(as I’ve said before, Vista has been a pretty solid OS for me.  I haven’t baby’d my laptop either - it’s my main computer and I’m usually running a handful of video, audio or web editing software on it and it trucks along.  Not as fast as XP, but Vista is Mike Alstott to XP’s Warrick Dunn.)

Some of the people bitching about Vista haven’t tried Vista yet, but read some of the negative comments about it and added gas to the fire.  Or saw Apple’s innovative ads poking fun at Vista (Steve Jobs’s gratitude for Bill Gates bailing him out and saving Apple a few years back, but I digress)

And some of the complaining seems to come from people who have tried to install Vista on that cutting-edge 1996 computer they just can’t seem to get rid of, for some pack-rat sentimental reason.  Microsoft, instead of subtly nudging people into upgrading their computers so they can run on Vista, decided to shoehorn Windows users into getting Vista - and worse, getting them on computers that won’t run Vista properly.

This has caused quite the PR kerfluffle within the computer world.  This isn’t “the good ole days” when Microsoft released XP.  Nowadays detractors have media outlets to complain to (or with) that were not available with the great XP unveiling - blogs and other social media. (Ha!  I knew I could tie blogging into this somehow!) MS should have been a little more savvy to the segment of their consumer base that isn’t ready to,  or capable of, adopting.  Now Microsoft has opened itself up to some deserved criticism as the end of life date for XP looms closer - Microsoft is really not going to cut off service to millions, if not tens or hundreds of millions, of XP users are they?

Some savvy computer makers (Ok, right now it’s just Dell, but expect other’s to follow quickly) have stated they will continue to install XP Pro on computers after the cut-off deadline, thanks to a loophole that allows them to offer XP Pro to those who purchase a computer with Vista Business or Ultimate. Microsoft should offer the same kind of deal.

Listen up Ballmer, I’m going to tell you how to turn this into a PR, and actual customer, win.

Since there is already an outcry for Microsoft to save XP, the corporate team in Redmond should jump at this show of evangelism towards one of their products.  Instead of cutting XP off in a couple of months they should have a “change of heart.”  Tell your customer base that you are going to keep working on XP until Windows 7 - for the people who either don’t want to, or don’t have the compu-power to switch over to Vista.  In fact, offer one more Service Pack for XP, to incorporate one or two Vista features into XP to give the computing public a taste of what Vista can offer them.

In exchange for keeping XP around a while longer, Microsoft then needs to take a lot of the legacy crap out of Vista.  Stream down Vista’s code as much as you can so it’ll run on computers made in the last couple of years or so, and tell those people who have older computers that might not run Vista that they have an option.  Vista wasn’t made for your 2002 Inspiron 2000 or your millenial cutting-edge Toshiba.  And that’s fine. XP is a solid OS for those computers.  Eventually those computers will go to the great E-Cycling bin in the sky.  Then the next computers they buy will have Vista, or Windows 7, on them.  Either way, people will be using Microsoft products, just down parallel tracks for a while.