The Sony Kinect and the Future of Viewer Measurement

You sit down to watch a show at 9 after a long day at the office, you turn on the TV, select a program that seems promising, and settle in with your tablet to check up on your social media network and the news. After a while, you shift slightly on the couch seat and put the tablet to the side and relax your posture. After another 30 minutes your head nods slightly to the side and you catch your thoughts straying gently into a dream. To traditional media measurement you are a dedicated viewer paying rapt attention to 1.5 hours of broadcast television while the reality is you were asleep.

The recent development of the Sony Kinect has the potential to change this dynamic. The Sony Kinect is a camera interface developed to record player's motions and translate it into action on the screen. Without getting too far into the technical details it converts the image human figures into a stick diagram and interprets the motions. Someday this will give us the Tom Cruise Minority Report type interactive displays, but for the moment it has a number of serious applications it can be put to. The Kinect also has a very active aftermarket Hacker community working on repurposing the device for a multitude of uses meaning we haven't even started to see the full potential of the device.

This technology has the potential to enhance, and also disrupt, todays broadcast media measurement. Today's technology relies on viewer diaries, set top box measurement, or tracking of online streaming. Each presents special limitations on data and are imperfect in their measurement, but all have room for improvement. The Kinect presents three distinct areas for improvement of media measurement.

1. The Kinect can measure viewer motion in the home, and therefore, estimate behavior. In the example above it can tell media measurement companies the number of people using a second screen during their viewing. It also would let the measurement company know that people get up to use the bathroom or make a sandwich during How I Met Your Mother re-runs but stay riveted in their seats during Sporting Events. It can also tell us that viewers tend to fall asleep during mid day airings of the price is right.

2. The Kinect can solve the longstanding problem of measuring large audiences in a public place. Measuring audiences in public venues has been difficult due to inability to measure who is in the room. It's unlikely that with current technology it will be possible to measure viewer behavior at a granular level, but it will provide a directional view on how much motion their is in the room.

3. More accurate measurement of viewer identification. The diary measurement system offers us an approximation of viewership and demographics which is imperfect. The tracking of people coming and going could be a quality control tool to improve demographic mesurement diaries.

he potential downside is the creepiness factor of being watched while watching TV. However, if the device was targeted at specific sampling of viewers already disposed to sharing information in Nielsen diaries, it may be an easier sell. Additionally, as it's only tracking motion and not photo realism the intrusion is not as great. Still, many privacy concerns would have to be addressed to prevent a 1984 style Big Brother is watching you dynamic.

The technology of the Kinect is still in it's infancy and the ideas presented above are just a starting point. It represents a potential land shift in how media markets work in the future.

SPHR Certification

I recently completed my SPHR exam and I thought it would be worthwhile to share my thoughts on the exam and the certification process as a whole. I know I did alot of due diligence searching the web before I registered for the exam and was thirsty for knowledge from those who had sat for the exam. There's a healthy amount of information out there published by the Human Resources Certification Insistute (HRCI) but there's gaps in the conversational level details. I think pursuing the certification was a valuable use of my time and I highly recommend it to other HR professionals.Here's my contribution back.

My background is in safety investigations and inspections, and more recently as a generalist for a small international business with a widespread workforce. This left me well prepared for the OSHA and safety questions, but my generalist experience was the most helpful in giving me an understanding of all the test areas.

The learning systems out there are probably worth it, would seem to formalize the steps I took. Since I was self funded I avoided the costly prepared solution and forged my own review plan. Below I've stepped out the methods I found most helpful.

Self Directed Learning

-Anne Bogardus PHR/SPHR Certification Study Book

-Long Term Exposure to Information - look at it regularly and for a long period of time

-Apply the material you have reviewed to a real world situation you are facing

-When an HR situation arises, reference the Bogardus book and see what it has to say on the topic

-Make flashcards for each section of the book from a stack of index cards and refer to them regularly, I kept them in my car and reviewed 2-3 before I went into the office each day

-Find your workplace HR posters, read them and pay attention to the numbers in them, one week later, scan them, repeat until test day.

Books/Websites I Read:

David Ulrich - HR Transformation, HR Value Proposition - Gold standard of HR guidance, exhaustive study of modern HR structure and how it should work

Bill Conaty/Ram Charan Talent Masters - Textbook GE practices, good source for the tone of idealized HR practices

Kris Dunn - HR Capitalist(Blog) Irreverent look at day to day realities of HR, good change of pace from normal, somewhat dry HR reading.

Becker/Huselid/Beatty - The Differentiated Workforce: Transforming Talent Into Strategic Impact

For me 6 months was adequate preparation, any shorter and it would have been rushed, anything over a year I would have started to lose the thread on some of the details of the laws. In the end I'm happy that prometrics test centers are in my rear view mirror for the near future, and very happy that I spent the time pursuing the certification.

4 Reasons to Develop a Narrative and use Storytelling to engage an audience.

1) Immersion - Engage Audience and Maintain Interest

The human attention span wanders naturally, from under 1 minute of attention to online videos and presentations, to a longer time window for slower media, notably books but also seen in plays and movies. Part of this is due to self selection, books don't work without engagement, online videos can be 1 of 6 windows open on a laptop screen.

Part of this is due to the nature of books and other long form media. They have to tell a story that keeps our interest over an extended period of time. This long form engagement can be a critical component of building brand engagement by keeping consumers interested over a longer time horizon.

2) Attach Meaning to Facts

Facilitates a way to develop insights into dry facts or data points. Infographics and data visualization can be a great help in this area, providing a concise visual punch that draws the eyes to key points and keeps the reader moving along.

3) Create Desired Emotions

There is nothing new under the sun. Pick a story that communicates the emotional color you are trying to portray and dissect the elements. Manipulate it into a framework or use it for creative inspiration to develop a story charged with the emotion you want to impart to the reader.

4) Springboard for the future...

Provides a natural starting point for the next installment. Just like an old serial novel, you keep the reader waiting for the next installment and development in the story.

Rory's Story Cubes

I love Rory's Story Cubes. I find them to be a great catalyst for pulling together a storyline, they provide a spark of inspiration without being constraining. I generally use the 9 dice and break them into subsections of 3 each for the intro, development, and climax/resolution.

I use them for telling on the spot stories for the kids, developing ideas for written stories, and also for more abstract concepts. When looking at a set of data and trying to tell a story with it, I find the dice to be helpful when I put the images in some sort of context with the data. It's not a perfect fit but it facilitates the process of building narrative.

Currently only the mainline set story cubes are available in the US(available from Amazon) I came across the other sets while in the UK. I find them to be marginally more useful, particularly the actions ones as they are the best blend of abstract but definable. The other 2 sets, actions and voyages, are available for mail order through the designers website.

http://www.thecreativityhub.com/shop

Power Outages = Brand Affinity

We had a six day power outage across a wide swath of South Connecticut following Hurrricane Irene. Most of the residential areas north of Stamford were affected by wide spread power outages. It took over 6 days for CT Light and Power to restore electric power to the houses. A result of this, as most homes did not have generators, nor the experience to stock up with dry ice, was extensive food spoilage. What I noticed walking around the stores the first Saturday afterwards was that the freezer sections, especially the ice cream, were hit pretty hard. The selection was limited to odd flavors and other unpopular choices. I was also surprised to see that Heinz Ketchup was completely sold out. Though hardly scientific it made me realize that there are certain brands that people view as essential and are the first to replace. With a solid history of purchase information from customer loyalty cards I’d like to think someone from the Brand’s research division overlaid the data with events such as wide spread outages to see the rebound shopping that occurs. Should help the brands ID those that the consumer has a high affinity for, and to ID the duds that weren’t purchased as an alternative. Those left fully stocked on the shelves(and require refrigeration) have to ask themselves what’s up.

Ten Rules for Visual Story Telling

By Mindy McAdams

"Rule 1: Include basic factual details as needed for credibility. These might appear at the end of a linear presentation (video or animation), or below or beside a still image or graphic.

Another basic difference between journalism and art is literal truth. Whether the camera is shooting video or stills, the journalist behind the camera must not direct. As soon as you tell people what to do, you’ve changed the scene from fact to fiction. Portraits are the exception; they usually require some direction from the photographer.

Rule 2: Any reasonable assumption a viewer would make must be true. When we see a portrait, we assume it was posed. When we see someone jumping, falling, or raising a flag, we do not assume it was a re-enactment.

Where does the storytelling come in? It is possible for one image to tell a story, but it may be useful to think of the single image as an iconic work (think of the World Trade Center with dark smoke billowing, or Eddie Adams’s famous image in which a Vietnamese general shoots a man in the head) — a symbol, a condensation of meaning. A child who sees Adams’s photo today sees only one man shooting another — not the whole long tragedy of the Vietnam War.

Rule 3: A visual story requires more than one image.

In his chapter about photo stories, Ken Kobré wrote: “How does a picture story differ from a collection of pictures on a topic? A picture story has a theme. Not only are the individual pictures in the story about one subject, but they also help to support one central point” (Photojournalism: The Professionals’ Approach, 6th ed., page 232).

Like Kobré, I encourage students to write a headline for their visual story even before they go out to shoot. I go further and urge them to include a subject, active verb, and object in their working headline. “Scenes from the life of a medical student” is too vague to make a good story. “Medical student confronts all-night cram sessions, microscopes, and corpses” assures me that this story has a chance to be interesting.

Rule 4: Know what the story is before you start making images for it.

Visual stories can transport us — not only to another place, but inside another person’s life.

Visual stories often leave out a lot. This is part of their power, part of what makes them so effective. The best visual stories are compact, visceral, evocative.

Visual stories should be able to stand alone and make sense on their own. That does not mean they must be complete. I think this is one of the hardest things for journalism students to negotiate. If they try to cram in too much information, the visual story stalls, dragged down by the weight. If they fail to supply sufficient information and context, the story floats loose, inconsequential, pretty but meaningless.

Rule 5: Edit ruthlessly to pare away all that is unnecessary to the essential story.Background and context can be supplied in a linked text, in other separate components.

Rule 6: Ensure that the story makes sense if it stands alone. This does not mean it has to tell everything or “show both sides.” (I put that in quotes because it’s a huge fallacy to assume there are only two sides.)

Sometimes a visual story needs illustrations, charts or graphs, maps, diagrams. One of my favorite examples of great visual storytelling is a story from National Geographic and MediaStorm that integrates still photography, video, and information graphics in a tightly edited video format: Ivory Wars: Last Stand in Zakouma. Specifically I recommend the animated map sequence that starts at about 5:33. I think you will realize this as the map animation progresses: Nothing else, in any format, would tell this segment of the story as effectively.

Telling a story entirely with graphics is different from telling a story with photos or video. This too can be journalism.

Rule 7: A visual story does not require a camera.

When I was watching a 25-minute news program a few days ago, I experienced a small moment of sheer delight that was purely visual. It keeps coming back to me. The reason the three-shot video sequence was so successful was because first it showed me something appealing (a child’s face, at 14:25), and then a fuller view of something that seemed very familiar (a kiddie Ferris wheel, at 14:30), and then it surprised me by showing something unexpected about the same subject in the previous two shots (at 14:35).

Recently I watched the film The Story of the Weeping Camel, and I noticed how often a new sequence started by showing a close-up of someone’s hands or feet (or even an extreme close-up of a face) before cutting to a wider shot that revealed what was going on. In a quiet story set in a remote rural area, where not much happens, this technique worked really well to hold my attention.

Rule 8: Show things the viewer has not seen before, or show things in a way that is unfamiliar to the viewer.

Rule 9: Keep changing what the viewer is seeing. The visual brain will become bored if the image stays the same. Vary the angle and the distance — especially if the subject remains the same!

Finally, what makes a story a story? It has to move along an arc. If it’s flat — if it’s just a sequence of images and/or facts and/or events — it does not have the shape of a story. The shape is a mountain on which we travel upwards. The storyteller conveys us up that mountain, and when we reach the top, there has to be something there for us that made the journey worthwhile.

Ira Glass calls this the moment of reflection — when we stand on top of the mountain and see something.

For me, this is a hell of a lot more helpful than telling students their stories need to have a beginning, middle, and end. What does that mean? Every person’s day has a beginning, middle, and end — that doesn’t mean there’s a story in it!

The story must start with something (a strong visual) that makes us want to go up the hill. That’s the open. Then the story must hold on to us to keep us moving up, up, up (see Rule 9, above). Ira Glass says we do this by raising questions and answering them, one after another, until we reach the top. This question-and-answer process can be done visually: Show us something that’s not usual or typical (question; see Rule 8, above) and then show us a fuller or more complete version (answer). For video, the Five Shot Method provides a template.

The top of the mountain is the climax of the story — but it’s not the end. Don’t cut us off suddenly — don’t throw us off the summit! Make sure you leave us with a sense of satisfaction, a feeling of conclusion. Bring it to a point. The closing image should make us feel like we have really reached an ending. It can give us hope, or it can convey a sense of hopelessness. It can make us feel like this story continues, or the chapter is closed. It should leave us with a feeling of some kind.

Rule 10: Tie a single string from the beginning to the end. Pull it taut and high just before the end. Then release gently, stopping at the firm final knot."

How to use social media networks

From Pam Moore

How I use each of the following:

"Blog: Provide the best possible content I can to inspire and connect with target audiences.

Twitter: Enables me to reach a large network of folks who enjoy and share my content with their friends. Also enables me to build communities that are taken offline and on to other social networks for further nurturing.

LinkedIn: Where people validate what I do, what I have done and who I am.

Facebook: Enables me to more intimately connect with people via my personal Facebook page, business page and private groups.

YouTube: Similar to my blog but in video format. It was a key success contributor while in startup mode.

Google+: Similar to all of the above but enables me to connect with my most favorite, geeky friends."

She left out Tumblr which is a great place to place and view graphics and videos. Definitely the place to share a visual statement.

Quora is also a great place to dive deep into a topic and receive and leave expert opinions on topics.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/haydnshaughnessy/2011/12/08/how-to-be-a-social-media-power-influencer-and-why/