Around Des Moines

KCCI gets it!

April 9th, 2008 · No Comments

The new game for the under 30s is connection and networks, and KCCI gets it.

Powerful institutions are sometimes the last to understand and employ new concepts. Not so with KCCI. They get it. They understand new social media.

Speaking for myself, I’m a little old, I’m a little slow, and quite often I don’t pick up on things right away. Some of you older folks may understand when I say, “I have an analog mind trapped in a digital world.” When I was little, I listened to the radio, my dad read me the funny papers, we didn’t have a TV until I was 11, and my mother was always after me to read more books. I’ve made my living being traditional (might be a little boring too) - went to school, used print libraries for information, got degrees, got a job and stayed in it for 35 years, and felt a little anxious when I thought I didn’t know some fact or process I should. Ho-hum. Bo-oring!

The Purple Wren on the other hand is sometimes a little quicker on the uptake. She is quite insightful, intuitive and definitely less conventional. If you wait for traditional methods of proof, you’ll always be about a decade behind her. Case in point: she came home from a business seminar a couple of years ago talking about blogging, new social media, business transformation, and networks. Oh brother, I thought I’d never hear the end of it.

If you’re over 40 and look at politics, the world, business, and communication today and think, “What is this? What is happening here?,” I would suggest that new social media, networks, and blogging are part of it. Sandy Renshaw is the expert here, not me; she has written a chapter in The Age of Conversation, but I will have a different perspective.

Let me name a few applications of new social media, some of which are huge, transforming institutions, and one is more modest:

When you are around younger people (like college students), you find that they are members of multiple extended groups that share information. The other night after a community meal several of my students went to their Facebook sites and showed everyone family pictures. Their family albums sprang to life in an instant. (Note to self: watch out for grandparents carrying laptops.) They stay connected to family, high school friends, college friends, and classroom peers.

But getting back to KCCI and playbook, doesn’t every kid want to feel valued, to be part of community, to gain a sense of recognition, to know that their school is a fine place to be? KCCI has that figured out and has linked Des Moines and Central Iowa to a larger internet community called high school playbook and attached it on their website; high school playbook is a device of Hearst-Argyle Television Inc., the owner of KCCI. If you go to the Hearst-Argyle website you will recognize the theme song for a lot of television stations that they own or manage.

If my count is right KCCI has linked over 140 Central Iowa high schools to a network where individual students can upload information (data, text, photos, graphics, messages and other materials), start conversations, and view content posted by others and by KCCI. Listen to Andy Garman explain. The Hearst-Argyle stations including KCCI even provide video camera and software, and this is explained from Greenville, SC.

Congratulations to KCCI for success in building a new community.

Guest Writer: James G. Lindberg (Jim) is the Purple Wren’s sweetie and is a visiting chemistry professor at Grinnell College and retired from Drake University.