Managing the message

I've been in the tech industry for almost 10 years. Yes, I am that old... and I have the grey hair to prove it. Although, just thinking about my time in the tech industry over the past 10 years has been enough to give me grey hair: I went through the bubble and the burst, and the times I have been laid off come close to exceeding the number of years it took me to get through college. I understand concepts like "crossing the chasm" and "the long tail." I readily admit to asking things like, "do you have enough bandwidth for that right now?" and get giddy at the prospect of learning how to use the word "sudo" as a joke (hint, it's a Linux command). I also have more "web 2.0" tools to keep up-to-date than I care to name: Twitter, Yelp, Facebook, De.lico.us, my blog and I'm sure I've missed a few.

So it goes without saying that I understand the culture, nuances and water cooler gossip of the tech industry and subsequently, doing PR for the tech industry.

What I find fascinating, however, is when other industries tackle the tools the tech industry has wholeheartedly, and sometimes foolishly, embraced in the name of eating its own dog food. I've previously made comments about how impressed I am at Obama's grassroots online campaign. In that same vein, I ran across an L.A. Times article today about the L.A. Fire Department's incorporation of 2.0 technologies into its PR activities: from a Twitter feed with incident reports and a tech-savy blog, to a You Tube channel and Flickr account showing the LAFD in action.


Clearly, the LAFD is readily providing the media with the tools needed to tell the story they want told. Valor, heroism, community service.

While firefighters certainly embody all of these ideals, the possibilities the Internet and "web 2.0" tools allow for managing the message much more than ever before, whether for benevolent causes or not, are mind-boggling.

1984, anyone?