I was planning on writing my year end blog tonight, but I'm now saving it for a few days so that I could write about this great documentary I saw yesterday.

Yesterday I was invited over to some friends' place to watch the documentary We Live In Public. It's dubbed the story of the greatest internet pioneer you've never heard of. The tag line does not lie.

We Live In Public is the story of an internet entrepreneur named Josh Harris. Josh Harris was a leader in the dot-com scene/ explosion in the end of the 90's. He started the first internet television network called Pseudo, but was obsessed with the idea of putting people's lives on the internet. He hit the hight of his obsession with two projects, or experiments as he called them, both with the title of We Live In Public.

The first "experirment" was actually called Quiet: We Live In Public. For this project Harris took 100 people and had them live in an underground bunker like building he specially built for a month. Inside the bunker he had set up pods for sleeping and hundreds of cameras and TVs that only showed what was on the cameras. The people were given free food, drink, board and even artillery (they had a shooting range in the bunker) in exchange for Harris being allowed to tape everything and probe for information from the inhabitants. The thing that was unclear to me was if this whole thing was streaming to the outside world on the internet, but I assumed it was given the nature of the man. It looks like it started off fun, but people eventually started to go a bit nuts with their whole lives being viewed publicly 24/7.

The second "experiment" Harris tried was just called We Live In Public. This was the first ever reality show almost. For this project Harris wired up his entire home with cameras and streamed the life of him and his then girlfriend to the world along with an interactive chat feature. Again, the pressure of being in the eye of the public 24/7 proved to be too much and his girlfriend left him and he eventually became frustrated with it and shut it down.

While these experiments on their own seemed really interesting, it was the commentary of the film and how ahead of his time Harris was that really struck me.

Today, social media is exactly like Harris' dream of what the internet would become. It's people talking about and sharing their lives with complete strangers via the interwebs. Through the use of blogs and Facebook and Twitter and YouTube and Flickr and other forms of web 2.0 we are all sharing our lives. Some more than others, but still enough of us that it's become almost the norm. Harris saw this happening over 10 years ago.

I don't want to ruin the whole film for you because I really think that everyone who lives and plays on the interwebs should see this film, but I need to give you one more quote from the movie. Harris makes a great play on Andy Warhols' famous "15 minutes of fame" idea by saying (and this may or may not be an exact quote as I'm working from memory), "people want their 15 minutes of fame... every day." I think that perfectly summarizes how some of us internet folk are everyday.

Yes, we do it for the social interaction and to share ideas in ways we couldn't 10 or 15 years ago, but we also do it for personal reasons. We all want to do something extraordinary and more than that, we want to be recognized for it. Even I'm guilty of this. In a world where we can be known around the world for something small, why wouldn't we constantly try to stand out?? Why wouldn't we try anything to be in the eye of as much public as we can if we have the means to??

The question will soon become though, like it did in the movie, how long can live our lives in public?? How long will social media be like it is?? How much of our lives can we share before we NEED to pull back??

Check out the trailer for We Live In Public here:

If you've seen the movie, leave a comment and let me know your thoughts about it. If you haven't seen the movie, see it, then let me know what you think. If you haven't seen the movie and don't want to see it, I'd still love to know your thoughts about living our lives in public through the internet, so leave me a comment and lets talk about it.

I'm by no means a big fan of politics. I pay attention enough to have some idea of what's going on here and there, but not much beyond that. But, like a large portion of the world I've become kind of enthralled by WikiLeaks. (I linked to a Google search because the web address for the site keeps changing)

While some of the things that have been released by the information leaking organization are chock full of interesting information about some of the most powerful countries in the world, I don't want to talk about that in this post. I don't want to talk about the continuing adventures of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. I don't even really want to talk about WikiLeaks specifically. What I do want to talk about is how from a social media slash PR perspective, the world was ready for something like WikiLeaks.

While some of the world has a certain perspective on PR people as "spin artists", those in the industry know different. One of the first things they told me in PR school was "don't lie." People want the truth. If you're going to give the public information about something, don't lie. There are certain ways to handle certain situations, but most seasoned PR professionals will tell you that lying usually comes back to bite you in the ass.

Then, In social media we talk a lot about transparency. Transparency is almost the exact same thing as "don't lie", but people in social media like to use it more. It also goes a bit beyond just don't lie and covers ideas like don't hide information, full disclosure and be accountable for your own actions. People now demand transparency from companies and celebrities and pretty much everyone in the world through social media.

If we demand these things from companies and people we look up to, why would we not demand the same from our governments?? The answer is we do, most people just wouldn't know how to act on that. Luckily though, some do.

While I don't believe some information should go out, such as releasing the names of spies or anything that really puts lives at risks, there are some things that people wanted to know their governments are up to. Sometimes governments do things that are morally wrong and more and more people are starting to stand up against this. There is no way to make them stop if we don't know about these things. The release of this information helps to hold people accountable for their actions. This is what the majority of people demand today.

Of course the people involved in the information released are upset, but that's what happens when dirty secrets get out. It's no different from when anyone's secrets get out. And when secrets get out we (usually) call people on them and want them to be accountable for their actions.

When companies do things that are immoral we call them out for it. To think that the same shouldn't be done with governments is just silly. People always want more information and when they find things that are wrong they want people to take responsibility for it. WikiLeaks has helped to bring some of that information to light for people to see.

That's why I think the world was ready for something like WikiLeaks.

I wanted to get this blog out a little while ago, but I lost the key component. I've found it now, but it's a little crumpled up, but at least I found it. So, without further ado, here it is and the blog post begins...

So you think your company needs to get more involved with social media, but they're not willing to? How do make them understand? The best answer I've seen from many other social media people is to show them what's going on online involving the company.

A few weeks ago I was speaking at something for the Ontario Government about social media and I met William Young, a senior issues analyst for the cabinet office. He showed me a little report that he makes up every week for his office he calls "Blog Watch."

Every week William puts together a report that highlights some things going on in the social media space that relates to his specific office. He splits it up into three sections:

• Featured Blog Topic of the Week: Here he writes about the most prevalent issue he found being talked about in the blogosphere or the one he thinks is most important. He gives a breakdown of what was being said and a couple quotes.
• Weekly Blog Report: In this section William takes other subjects being talked about in blogs and gives a brief description of each.
• Social Media Themes: In this last section he highlights issues from Twitter.

Your can always switch around the categories in these types of reports to focus on areas most relevant to your company.

I like the idea of doing this in a report for a couple reasons. It's much more professional looking than just telling your boss. It separates social media areas to show just how many places the talk could be going on. Most importantly, it shows specific examples.

I think if you can put something like this together your boss may just see what you're talking about.

What do you think of this idea? Do you have a better idea for getting your higher-ups to believe you that you need to be more involved in social media?

A few weeks ago my friend Melissa asked me to help her out with some videos she was making for her work. She was interviewing "experts" about different subjects that they specialize in.

She tapped me as a social media expert. Who knew? Someone thinks I'm an expert at something.

Doing the interview was fun. It was very casual and I had a little bit of fun with it. It didn't hurt that I also knew everyone in the room at the time and we're a bunch that likes to joke and fool around. I think the lightness of it though makes the whole thing work.

Anyways, after a few weeks of patiently waiting, they uploaded the video. Bellow you can find me being an expert on something.

After you watch, please do me a favour and leave a comment letting me know what you think. This was my first time being an expert on anything and I'd really appreciate some feedback.

No, Weird Al isn't really dead. Your geeky mind can rest at ease.

I was having a conversation the other day about Weird Al with a couple friends about how we used love him. He was a huge part of so many of my friends' childhoods. But, where is he now?

He's still putting out records (he had one last year. I looked it up on Amazon to be sure), but how many people are listening to them? I was surprised to even see that he's still doing music (No offense Al). How many kids these days know the genius that is Weird Al? Probably not a lot. Why do you think this is? I'll tell you why: the internet.

Back when Weird Al was a big deal, things like music sharing and YouTube didn't exist. Weird Al got a record deal for being the best parody artist around. He was signed to a real record label and had world-wide major distribution of actual physical products (remember when music came like that?). This is how music got to the masses not too long ago.

The internet changed all that. Now any yahoo with some kind of device that records can create a parody song and upload it to the interweb for the whole world to see. You don't even need musical talent anymore. People are making funny songs and putting them on the internet at an alarming rate. It's hard for anyone to really stand out amongst the crowd of "parody artists" on the net. Something that's hilarious one day is old news and forgotten the next. Remember this one:

Probably not. But that's my point.

Songs don't even need to parody other songs anymore. They can parody real life situations caught on tape now also. Look how popular the "bed intruder" guy is! This song is iTunes for gods sake:

The point is old channels of distribution are dying. Everyone talks about paper is dying because of the internet, but it's not the only thing. Everything that used to get distributed physically is completely changed due to the internet. And if they haven't, they better or they could get left behind.

The days of the international parody artist may behind be us, but I am enjoying all the little stars that pop up every day.

Also, I still love you Weird Al!

"Weird: The Al Yankovic Story" from Aaron Paul