From Crisis Communication to Roman Ruins: Euromed PPRD Workshop in Jordan

My long experience in facilitating courses and workshops has taught me that no two audiences are alike, much less when you are moving into an entirely new country and culture.
The EUROMED PPRD SOUTH II program landed this past week in Jordan. A country rich in history tradition, sunshine but most of all in warmth from its people. As a Lebanese, I can assert that there is a special bond that always connects us Levantines with each other. We have shared history, geography, climate, traditions, family ties not to mention woes and troubles.
Jordan has always been one of the most welcoming places I have visited and I was extremely enthusiastic to be back there again, this time with the PPRD team.
In case you have not caught wind of what our workshops are about, they are part of a bigger effort to prepare mediterranean countries to face crisis and disasters. Our team addresses Communication in times of Crisis more specifically and helps countries create the awareness needed to build their communication teams and apply the right communication strategy for those difficult times.

The audience in Amman was similar in structure to what we had noticed in Beirut, in the sense that attendance extended beyond the Civil Defense forces to include members of various ministries and official bodies. We did however have members of the (official) press present with us like in Algiers.

Excellent Workshop with my Colleagues Laurent Vibert & Veronique Ruggirello

The Jordanian hosts' enthusiasm for the learning process was no less than their counterparts in previous workshops. Although hesitant at first, and not sure what to expect  from this workshop, they quickly got into the motion, with some taking-on leading roles among the group in various exercises, such as the simulated TV interview or the Social Media Crisis simulation.

The Civil Defense members extended their hospitality further by offering us an amazing trip into the ancient but well preserved ruins of Jarash, located roughly 45 minutes north of the capital. This trip was extremely exciting for me personally, as I am a big fan of historical sites. My previous shorter visits to the country had not left me enough time to go admire such beautiful pieces of history.

In our free time, we also managed to uncover beautiful parts of a city that is friendly, safe, vibrant and with a great potential for more achievements.
We left hoping that our visit helped bring valuable insights to the brave men and women of the civil defense and other public protection services with whom we managed to build friendship and camaraderie ties.

As for me, I can only say one thing: See you soon Jordan!!

Appeer Makes App Discovery Social

Those of us who are regular twitter users might have noticed when, a while ago, twitter started pushing updates that inform us about what some of the people we follow have been up to. I would wake up and find that A, B & C users have favorited a tweet, or retweeted user X, or followed user Y.
Although I initially had mixed feelings about this feature since I didn't really solicit that info, I grew to like it as it often offered valuable insights into interesting updates and users to follow.

Appeer does just that to the process of discovering interesting apps for your (Android) smartphone.
Once installed and activated Appeer will introduce the user to a community of...yes you guessed it...peers, who each would willingly allow the community to discover when they install an App in exchange of knowing what others are installing. After all sharing is caring as they say.

Using the follow and follow back approach, along with a timeline tab and a recommendation tab, one is definitely bound to receive custom tailored recommendation based on community interaction.
The app also allows the user to export their own list of installed apps as well as bookmarking of interesting suggestions for later review.

I joined their beta community and I must admit that in spite of being still in beta and several bugs being reported, the app seemed already mature enough. Of course large scale adoption might bring to light more user requests or bugs surfacing but that's just the nature of the beast. The team behind the app seem dedicated and responsive enough to ensure smooth sailing.

Appeer is the sort of app that you probably never knew you wanted or needed but that would succeed in surprising you once you start using it. The app is due to go live for the public on March 6^th 2015

Below is the official release statement:

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Appeer Announces The Launch Of Its Recommendation Platform, Aims To Provide Users With Personally Crafted App Recommendations

- Appeer will give users an unprecedented insight into the world of apps based on their own app inventory and the personal network of people they follow.

- Using an algorithm based on app inventory and social connection to build a tailor-made list of app recommendations, Appeer improves on the current app discovery process.

-“This app bypasses so many of the issues that consumers have when trying to discover the next great app. Apps can now discover you.” — Co-Founder and CEO Jason Allen,

- According to Nielsen, users spent an average of 30 hours, 15 minutes on their apps in Q4 2013, a full half-day more than the 18 hours, 18 minutes spent in Q4 2011. However, this rise in use does not mirror the average number of apps used, which only increased from 23.2 in 2011 to 26.8 apps per month in 2013.

March __ 2015, Austin-based Appeer announces the launch of its app recommendation platform, aims to provide a personalized app discovery experience for its users.

Available March 6, 2015 for free via Google Play for Android devices, Appeer will give users an unprecedented insight into the world of apps based on their own app inventory and the personal network of people they follow.

Designed as a sleek app recommendation engine that is both user-friendly and powerful, Appeer app looks beyond paid app ads, review sites, and “popular app” sections of app stores to pair its users with the perfect app or game.

Utilizing an algorithm that automatically follows people on behalf of a user in order to build a tailor-made list of app recommendations, the Appeer improves on the current app discovery process.

“Within 30 seconds of opening the app for the first time Appeer offers dozens of personally tailored recommendations that will update regularly,” says Appeer Co-Founder and CEO Jason Allen. “This app bypasses so many of the issues that consumers have when trying to discover the next great app,” he adds.

The app’s suite of features include push notifications that allow users to install a recommended app directly from Google Play, a viewable timeline of recommendations, and the ability to export the user's app inventory to four different formats.

“Additionally, users will be able to bookmark recommended apps so they can check them out later, even if the recommendation comes to them through a push notification,” says Appeer Technical Co-Founder Komra Beth Salo. “If they really like an app, users can share the recommendation via Appeer to their contacts or friends on social networks,” she adds.

“Our competitors are being paid to recommend apps to their users. Appeer only gives organic recommendations because our focus is on providing the best recommendations for our users,” explains CEO Jason Allen.

As the adoption of smartphones continues to rise on a global scale, so does the overall time we spend using apps or playing games. According to Nielsen, users spent an average of 30 hours, 15 minutes on their apps in Q4 2013, a full half-day more than the 18 hours, 18 minutes spent in Q4 2011. However, these figures are not mirrored by the average number of apps used, which only increased from 23.2 in 2011 to 26.8 apps per month in 2013.

With thousands of new apps being developed everyday — a large number of which are available for free — it is hard to look beyond these numbers without seeing a real need for a powerful and dynamic

app discovery tool like Appeer.

Aiming to change the way we discover new apps, Appeer moves beyond the “Top App” charts highlighted by the App Store and Google Play, and places the focus back on the individual user.

About

Founded in 2014 by Jason Allen, Komra Beth Salo and Milan Cubic, Austin-based Appeer is a new Android app, which aims to change how users discover great new Apps and Games. The Appeer app creates personally tailored app and game recommendations based on a user’s profile. Recommendations can be viewed in the app or received by the user via notifications on their device.

Contact 
Name: Eddie Arrieta


Phone: 1-646-480-0356

Email: eddie@publicize.co

You Are Not A Strategist

Up until recently, I had been using "Digital Strategist" on my Linkedin headline. No more!

No, I did not lose faith in my capacity of devising a strategy for operating a business in the digital realm after 15 years in the field, nor have I done a major career shift away from this. I have just grown weary from the constant abuse of the word Strategy and its derivatives.
The amount of occurrences where these words were used to describe people who operate a certain basic, less-than-tactical function online has exponentially skyrocketed over the past three years.
Try repeating this: "Digital Strategist, Social Media Strategist, Online Sales Strategist, Digital Marketing Strategist, Senior Digital Marketing and Online Social Media Strategist...."

This has become frustratingly boring to the point where I thought to write a code snippet which would generate a title with the words: Online, Digital and Strategy in it and publish it online for companies to use when hiring someone.

What most of you out there are calling strategy barely falls under the terminology for tactics if we really want to give it any importance (a great deal I would call merely secretarial work...ehm...sorry, executive assistant work).

• Posting Status Updates with pictures of fluffy cats on a tech site is not strategy
• Putting a roller coaster picture on an ISP page is not strategy
• Asking users to like if they agree and comment if they don't is not strategy
• Buying Facebook/Google/Twitter/LinkedIn  Ads is not strategy
• ...

Strategy usually involves a solid analysis of the market forces in play be it online of offline, the use of existing data to determine trends and behaviors and then calculating the risks associated with charting a path that leads to a market position that you would like to acquire. 

I seriously doubt all of the social media gurus, namely all the fresh grads who have taken a course in their overly expensive college about social media, have even come close to grasping that. 

It is largely the fault of HR people and line managers who just replicate techno-babble without any real understanding without forgetting all the wannabe media that usually aggregates and repeats the same stories you see on The Verge, Mashable and other similar sites.

At one instance a global agency that had hired us to "devise a social media strategy" for one of their clients was confused because when we delivered them the 30 page strategy study they could not find the list of tweets they expected us to prepare for them daily for the next 90 days!

The best to summ up the point I am trying to make is if we revert back to the military root of the word Strategy.  You do not need to know about "Art of War" (Sun Tzu not Wesley Snipes) to understand that your fresh recruit cannot and should not be entrusted with deciding how you move your army on the battlefield, even if he or she (along with their posse of hip friends) decided to self-attribute the title: Major General.

The Miniature Book Version of Art of War

The Eternal Return...A Tale Of Social Classes

When I set out to write this post, I tried to remember how I came to conceive this flowchart of social human interaction and I realized it I was perhaps in my late teens when this hit me for the first time.
The people in my inner circles have probably already heard me layout this theory with more details than what you can see below. Although a picture is worth a thousand words, I think there is the element of story telling that will remain missing here, but I am not going to become a video blogger for the sake of this one post.

I was never (and never will be) a professional in sociology, psychology or any of the human sciences. I am just an avid observer of Human Nature. I find that one can usually find more valuable insights by observing people rather than by engaging them. But that's just me perhaps...

The following diagram is a very rough representation of what my observations have revealed as to the futility of human pursuit of wealth and transition to upper social classes. Do not get me wrong, I am no Dalai Lama and I will certainly go for the proverbial kill if opportunity presented itself for me to transition to the more "decadent upper classes".

The post is not condemning people for being rich or poor. It's also not promoting one way of life over another. This is a statement of facts as seen from my narrow angle into the human society and the multitude of souls trying to make it out there. There are irregularities in the model and I have highlighted some of them (dashed lines). Other exceptions are simply in my opinion what confirms the rules of my observations (in the society I have observed at least)
Occasionally, we will see someone break out of a lower class due to a conjunction of talent (genetic predisposition) exceptional drive and opportune circumstances (randomness) in any random order. The rare possibility of similar factors to align once more is what keeps the door shut for the majority left behind.
The downward spiral is much more common yet so less interesting to document: alcohol, debauchery, overconfidence... you name it!

Large Size Version

Does life subscribe to what Nietzsche and Schopenhauer discussed in terms of Eternal Recurrence?
Is it all a comedy farce like Bill Murray's "Groundhog Day" character or a tragedy like Jean Cocteau's 1943 movie adaptation "L'Eternel Retour"?
Personally, I think this is all one big prank that life plays on us all: The Mother of All Trolls!