The Travelogue (in addition to being the title of albums by both Joni Mitchell and The Human League) is one of the great traditions in writing. From ancient sagas, through to Kerouac’s pseudo fictional ‘On the Road’ and Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman’s ‘Long Way Round’ (and Down), travel stories have always been a part of our culture. They capture the imagination and take us as virtual passengers on epic journeys.  The Travelogue is journalism in its true sense, it is a journal or diary of events; one that educates and informs.

It seems to me that a blog provides us with the perfect platform for travel writing.  Not only are we privy to the grand tour but the immediacy of the blog means that we can follow the trip as it happens.

I have two colleagues writing Travelblogs as we speak; one in Russia and the other in New York.  You can follow Liz Dewhurst’s adventures on Madison Avenue here at PR Media Blog.  Michael Cooper and his mate Scott are telling Slavic tales at Mike and Scott’s Russian Blogski.  These are two modern takes on a great writing institution.  No pressure then guys.

I posted yesterday about the efforts that the Democrats/Google are making to facilitate ordinary bloggers at the Democrat National Convention in Denver. There is a huge resource called the Big Tent, sponsored by Google, complete with broadband access, editing kit and access to the politicians. 

Guardian have posted a cracking video report from inside Google’s Big Tent. Its 4 minutes+ so it won’t eat up too much of the day.  Last year I had a press pass for the Labour and Lib Dem conferences, so I spent a lot of time inside the facilities they provide for the UK mainstream media. Their bloggers tent is a 5 star hotel versus our political parties’ version of Fawlty Towers!

I often talk about how politicians can use new media to connect better to Party members. Here’s an enterprising Tory who has set up Tory Radio, an online radio station dedicated to doing just that. In the spirit of Tories online, here’s Iain Dale  interviewing him on Telegraph TV.

The eyes of the world’s media are trained on Denver, the scene of the Democrat National Convention (DNC), where Barack Obama aims to show everyone that he can hold the most powerful (elected) role on the planet. You would expect it to be a media circus but lets peak behind the curtains a bit.

This race has seen relations with the blogosphere professionalised in a way that holds many lessons for corporate and public bodies over here in the UK. Here’s an example. According to the Wall Street Journal, Google is investing big in a media centre for bloggers at the DNC. Highlights;

 Google Inc. will help set up a two-story, 8,000 square-foot headquarters for hundreds of bloggers descending on the Democratic convention in Denver next week, and it will offer similar services at the Republican convention in September, as new media gain influence in politics.With its financial support for the “Big Tent” blogger facility at the Democratic convention, Google stands to gain exposure and goodwill from 500 or so bloggers who paid $100 for access to the facility, run by a coalition of bloggers. Google’s software and services will be featured, including a kiosk in the public area of the tent where anyone can post videos on YouTube. “Four years ago, YouTube hadn’t been founded yet. Now, it will have booths at each convention to help delegates and bloggers upload videos taken on the floor or at events around town.

“It’s an amazing opportunity for us. You don’t get all these people in one place but every four years,” says Robert Boorstin, director of corporate and policy communications in Google’s Washington office and a former Clinton administration official.

Not only will bloggers have Internet access, workspaces and couches for napping in the “Big Tent” headquarters, they will be provided food and beverages, Google-sponsored massages, smoothies and a candy buffet. On the final night of the convention, Google is co-sponsoring a bash with Vanity Fair magazine for convention-goers and journalists that has become one of the hottest party invites.

Google will offer similar amenities for bloggers and new-media reporters who attend the Republican convention in St. Paul, Minn., company officials say. It will demo a variety of new political tools next week, including a search function on YouTube that will offer almost real-time keyword searches of convention speech videos.

The fascinating bit is that McCain’s team actually have set up base just a few blocks from the convention centre to counter the messaging! What does that involve? Well, you hire a big venue, invite all your mainstream media chums (don’t really have to invite - they’ll come automatically once you tell them where you’re gonna be), give bloggers free hotel rooms, and make sure you’ve got big trucks with satellite dishes on them.

Also bring along a few protestors who have some beef with Obama (either they’re “pro-Hillary” or “pro-life” or something or other), and then bring a few far left anarchist protestors as well (just to spice things up). Then go around the city and shake hands and kiss babies, making you look like the man on the street, and the black guy is made to look like an elitist rock-star.

They’ve set up this site as a focus for the ‘counter-messaging’ (great American-type term that will inevitably surface here!).

They’ve posted the reaction from Fox News’ Brit Hume on the home page:

“What’s interesting about this to me is I have never seen the campaign that is idle, if you will, during the other candidate’s nominating convention have as much of an impact before, and I think it owes something to the phenomenon of these what we call ads, and I guess in some broad sense they are. But what they really are, are Internet videos that are being published to the Internet and they spread around in this day and age very quickly and are probably as good as paid ads and I guess there’s some paid advertising going on. But, this is, wouldn’t you say Carl, from your experience, that this has been remarkable the extent to which the McCain camp has succeeded in intervening, so to speak, in this convention?”

Spent the bank holiday at the Edinburgh Fringe. Me and the wife go every year. She’s a financial journalist and is invited as a guest of Intelligent Finance, who have a press trip comprising of about 20 financial journalists plus partners:)

The brand link is through IF’s sponsorship of the fringe comedy awards, which used to be the Perrier awards and are now the IF.comedy awards. Great idea to link to something that could be described as a very popular niche! IF are a Scottish based company, owned by HBOS, and this kind of hospitality is a fantastic excuse to get their core, largely London based media away to a weekend on their home patch.

They always take us to see a top comedian on the Saturday night after a slap-up dinner at the Scotsman hotel and the evening culminates in the IF.comedy awards ceremony at the Jamhouse. Its a good way to finish off the evening - drinks, canapes, VIP section, Neil and Christine Hamilton (?!). But the awards themselves lasted about 15 minutes and were basically a 5 minute bite of last year’s winners announcing this year’s winners. They could have done so much more with it. Made it a real event that everyone wants to be at regardless of any free drinks.

I actually spent the whole weekend thinking what I’d do with the fringe for the benefit of my clients. I know, I know its sad but I blame too much creative stimulation and the coffee and toffee muffins at our basecamp, the excellent Chocolate Soup.

Ok, so what would I do if IF were a client? Why not involve your customers in the brand and get them to rate a group of up and coming comedians via YouTube? Budding comics would post 5 minute demos of themselves on an IF.comedy channel.

This thing would be worth doing because all the finalists would end up doing a turn at an enhanced IF.comedy awards evening. with stronger press profile (great for the brand) and possibly televised via the web, attracting traffic to an IF branded web presence. The IF.comedy site is great but could have more ongoing interaction. There is a Facebook group but its got barely 200 members and again, not a lot regularly going on that would incentivise you tell your friends. Is there any blogger outreach?

Whenever we’re at the Fringe we always disregard the official brochure. Its a doorstop and picking shows is the proverbial needle in haystack job. So you ask other folk. People in the same hotel, people who were there last weekend. Or you walk up and down the Royal Mile, chatting to budding producers and performers. But there still hundreds of shows and fresh talent that you’ll miss. Surely this is screaming out for a Tripadvisor type service, where folk post about acts/shows they’ve seen and other people can agree/disagree? Well promoted this would attract critical mass and you could plan your w/end well in advance.

I Googled but couldn’t find one. Can anyone let me know if I’ve missed it before I put my life savings into starting one (that’s a joke, Boss:))  

Other highlights:

- A drama called Borough High Street - dark drama about two gay students and cocaine addiction. Acting, direction and writing excellent! What drew me in? It was well promoted by the flyers, guys who were chatting to us on the street and the chalk outlines all over town pointing towards the venue.

- Chocolate and cinnemon soups at Chocolate Soup.

- RANDOM EXCLUSIVE: Got talking to a source ‘extremely close’ to Simon Fuller who says that Fuller and David Beckham plan to buy a US soccer team when Beckham retires and basically use all of their combined stardust to create an international football hub that competes in the Champions League……

There’s a lot of hesitation when it comes to joining in conversations online through blogs, forums etc. Questions I get asked include - are there enough readers to make it worthwhile? will we get a barrage of abuse from other commenters?

An organisation I occasionally work with is the Centre For Cities, a think tank spun out from the IPPR. Their media strategy is innovative and I often natter to Claire Hibbit and Rosi Taylor, who head up their PR team, about innovating in new media channels.

The last couple of days has seen cities policy shoot up the agenda thanks to the Policy Exchange’s, ahem… contraversial report suggesting some Northern cities be closed down and the population bussed down to the south east.

The reaction of Centre For Cities was interesting. They responded via traditional media, as you’d expect. But they were also savvy enough to realise that opinion is influenced via online discussion. You can reach your opinion leader audience by joining discussion online, just like meeting up for coffee or speaking at a conference or being interviewed on the Today programme.

You just have to understand the media you are dealing with. Rosi was monitoring discussion and offering the expertise of Head of Policy, Adam Marshall, to contribute insight to the discussions. Adam is genuinely an expert here and has done some high quality work but he remembered that this was a conversation. He was using accessible language and then linking off to an epolitix article for anyone that wanted a more in-depth analysis.

By posting, quickly, here, here, here, here and here, many MPs, councillors, journalists and policy wonks (ie their target market) have quickly got Centre For Cities on their radar, what their expertise and knowledge is and that they are responsive.

Just thought it was worth sharing as its an example that can be applied in any area…..

Marketeers looking for a crash course on social media could do much worse than reading over the list of 12 Historical Social Media (Marketing) Moments compiled by Julian Cole of Adspace Pioneers.

He’s asking for other great moments to add to the list. Cue the discussion, disagreement and inevitable project defining the moments that will make this era of marketing memorable.

Still hungry for more? You can download and read 20 free eBooks about social media as noted by Chris Brogan.

Enjoy your homework. I expect it on my desk first thing Monday morning!

Hat tip: The WOMMA Word

At the moment, the blog I most look forward to checking out when I get in in a morning is the excellent Todd Defren. This post builds on two themes close to my heart; profiling individuals, which I love, in terms of championing causes, profile opps in the nationals, op-eds; and use of content in social media.

At Staniforth Towers we are having a really interesting debate about content standards for different media. We know that video that can be used by bloggers won’t need to be ITV quality and every image won’t need to be David Bailey but its knowing what is expected by publishers and what is still expected by clients. We’re pushing boundaries all the time and its the right debate to have.

There’s an argument to say that the quality standard is also dictated by the situation you are in and the demands of deadline. Todd uses the example of exploiting a speaker opp with a busy CEO….

• Interview the CEO in the car on the way to the event, with your Flipcam.

• Hustle the CEO into a quiet conference room for an impromptu podcast.

• Document hallway chatter and interview the conference attendees before/after the CEO’s keynote speech (“What are you hoping to hear today?  Did the speech meet expectations?”).

• Film or livestream and/or liveblog/tweet the speech itself… while monitoring and responding to other tweets by fellow conference attendees.

• Share this content all along the way, and monitor responses; interacting directly with users; answering questions, etc.

Would your CEO be happy to have an interview syndicated that is done via your mobile phone? Would love more views on this issue…..

                                                                                                                                                                      Tory Diarist and lobby corr. Jonathan Isaby is to join Conservative Home, the specialist site for Tory members and supporters. Funds btw come from YouGov mogul Stephan Shakespeare. It enjoys excellent mainstream media coverage and influence within Tory HQ. 

Guido sums it up nicely.

Social media is constantly changing. Well that’s what we all thought with the migration of MySpace to Facebook but what if the online tools we’re using today could actually develop at the same pace as our attention span?

Maybe it’s me, but it feels like Flickr, Digg and Twitter have been around for so long, I can’t remember life before them!

On the anniversary of the launch of Facebook Platform, the company has announced on its blog a whole host of improvements coming soon. Many of you will have noticed the change in profile layout, something that I think is a massive improvement allowing me to find the most recent information quickly. More importantly, I’m no longer being distracted by all those apps I added a year a go.

The most interesting part of the post for me is the upcoming Facebook Connect:

“Facebook Connect is a new way to use applications, on the open web and not just on Facebook. Soon, you’ll be able to use your Facebook account to login and connect on websites throughout the web. Imagine never filling out another profile at a new site, or having to find your friends all over again. Facebook Connect will help make this a reality and allow you to use Facebook to share information from all over the web with your friends.”

So that’s my personal information following me around wherever I go on the web. Is it ok for me to be intrigued and scared at the same time?

I’ll be fascinated to see which sites sign up for this and what benefits there are for web developers in the short term. For advertising I can see huge benefits in terms of personalisation.

Flash forward to a point when facial recognition becomes common place in CCTV cameras and that personal data is not only following me around the web but down the street.

Now exactly when should I start to regret putting all that personal information about myself on Facebook? Perhaps when I have billboards shouting out at me?

Once it’s up there, it’s not just going to disappear, even if you ‘delete’ your profile. We’ve put into action a chain of events where information is the currency of the technology age. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.