No Spin PR

21st Century communications

Tribes – or what you can learn by reading fiction

The news earlier this week that Sherman Alexie had won the 2010 Pen/Faulkner Award for his novel War Dances reminded me that I’d been meaning to blog about the wonderful passage from his National Book Award winning novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. The fact that the book is for young adults didn’t bother me a bit, especially when I came upon such a vivid illustration of what’s meant by tribes – digital or analog.

It’s so very clear when you engage with social media that we’re all members of many tribes. I’d love to see graphic illustration of tribes and how we connect with folks on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn etc. based on our interests. Haven’t seen the app for that yet, although I’m betting there’s already one in the works.

‘I realized that I might be a lonely Indian boy,’ says Alexie’s protagonist, Junior, ‘but I was not alone in my loneliness…. I realized that sure, I was a Spokane Indian. I belonged to that tribe. But I also belonged to the tribe of American immigrants. And to the tribe of basketball players. And to the tribe of bookworms.

And the tribe of cartoonists.
And the tribe of chronic masturbators.
And the tribe of teenage boys.
And the tribe of small-town kids.
And the tribe of Pacific Northwesterners.
And the tribe of tortilla chips-and-salsa lovers.
And the tribe of poverty.
And the tribe of funeral go-ers.
And the tribe of beloved sons.
And the tribe of boys who really missed their best friends.’

‘It was a huge realization,’ concludes Junior. ‘And that’s when I knew that I was going to be okay.’

Whenever I think of this passage I immediately want to start listing tribes to which I belong. So I thought I’d give it a shot. Feel free to list some tribes to which you belong in the comments.

I’m a member of

the bookworm tribe
the feminist tribe
the WASP tribe
the Echo tribe
the PR tribe
the writer tribe
the social media tribe
the quilting tribe
the Canadian tribe
the Southern Alberta tribe (at the moment, anyway)
the Anglophile tribe
the Austen lovers tribe
the foreign film lovers tribe (my one regret about not having cable is the inability to get a dose of Bollywood once a week – don’t ask me why, I can’t explain it)
the Fitzgerald lovers tribe
the Salinger lovers tribe
the Eric Rohmer and Wim Wenders lovers tribe
the ‘why?’ girls’ tribe
the knitters’ tribe
the quilters’ tribe
the Six Feet Under tribe
the fast-talking Easterner tribe

That’s all I can think of at the moment. How about you?

March 27, 2010 Posted by | Social media | Leave a Comment

Key messages on climate change

This morning I read a rather – as the English would say – bolshie piece from Sharon Begley, Newsweek‘s Science Editor, headlined ‘Their Own Worst Enemies: Why scientists are losing the PR wars.’

Bora Zivkovic, Online Community Manager at Public Library of Science, didn’t think much of the piece (at least that was my conclusion from his preface to tweeting it, which was ‘Hrmph…what do you think?’)

Here’s what I think: Begley generalizes and dances around the real issue. She lets a certain amount of frustration with some of the scientists she’s encountered seep into her piece. She makes some very good points regarding successful communication (that which is both clear and persuasive) when she talks about cultural differences between the US and the UK (although I don’t think she nails them precisely – that thing that happened in 1776 really was both the War of Independence and the American Revolution).

She gets closest to making the point implicit in her article explicit when she says, ‘Like evolutionary biologists before them, climate scientists also have failed to master “truthiness” … which their opponents – climate deniers and creationists – wield like a shiv.’

Having just finished Ian McEwan’s Solar, which I’ll be reviewing on my personal blog, I think the issue is both more complex and yet more clearly understandable. Read more »

March 19, 2010 Posted by | key messages, media relations | , , , | 2 Comments

   

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