Using Twitter to follow the NFL

The NFL is by far the most popular, and profitable, professional sports league in the US (except, perhaps the NCAA, but that is a discussion for a completely different venue), and because it is both popular and profitable, it can do two things with every kind of mass media, force competing media outlets to bid for the right to carry the games, and limit access to their products.

The most sought after product is their live games. If you happen to have a favorite team in your local media market, catching all the games on radio or television is easy since just about every game will be broadcast in the local market. However, if your favorite team is outside of the local market, you may only have a few opportunities to see or hear them on free broadcast media.

Of course, you can always pay for the privilege of watching them play by paying for premium cable channels like ESPN and NFL Network on cable, or for even more high priced options like NFL Sunday Ticket or NFL Red Zone.

Best smartphone option - Twitter plus sports.yahoo.com
However, if you are desperate, cheap, or broke, there are a few free options you can try that will give you at least some of the flavor of a live broadcast. If all you have is your smartphone, go to Twitter just before kickoff and find the hashtag that will work best for your team. Usually the team nickname is the easiest to use, and is much better than the city name. For example, if you are a Dallas fan, #cowboys probably works best, and #dallascowboys may also do it for you.

If you are a stats freak, you can bounce between Twitter and Yahoo, specifically sports.yahoo.com. They post updated stats from all the live games, though your Twitter stream will probably be updated more quickly than Yahoo.

On a laptop or desktop? Look for an online radio station too
Most teams have a live radio broadcast of their games that you may be able to catch online. The team's web site typically has a list of the radio stations that carry the game live. Most radio stations have online audio streaming, though some may block the stream for NFL broadcasts, especially stations in larger cities. You will often have better luck with stations in smaller towns far away from big cities. Just keep trying stations until you find one that works.

You probably only want to try this option on a laptop or desktop for several reasons. The biggest one is convenience. On a regular sized display, you can probably open two or three windows at once, or at least toggle back and forth between windows or tabs, as you check Twitter and Yahoo while listening to the radio station. Also, the radio stations typically have popups for their streaming options, and many smartphone browsers just can't handle that.

The crash of Asiana flight 214 and the Don Lemon Test

As many of you know, in addition to writing about SEO and social media, I've had a long career in aerospace, including time as a flight test engineer in the US Air Force, and a safety engineer at Boeing. Early in my professional career, I had the experience of having some of my research work in a study I coauthored featured in the New York Times newspaper on November 1, 1991.

The next day, I had the experience of seeing the findings of the research twisted for a cheap laugh on Saturday Night Live. That led to my first lesson in the power of the media when it comes to aviation safety. It also led me to the concept of the New York Times Test.

The New York Times Test
As I described in a 2009 post on this site, The New York Times is a major new media publication that has influence on other news outlets and on society at large. Based on this first experience with being featured in the newspaper, I came up with the "New York Times Test."

The test is a simple one, you can pass the test if you can answer the following question with a resounding yes. If your words or your deeds end up being featured in the New York Times, could you deal with it? Specifically, could you deal with the kind of scrutiny that happens when your family, friends, colleagues, coworkers, and millions of total strangers suddenly take a keen interest in your work?

Would you be prepared to handle criticism, whether it was deserved or not, whether it was honest and fair or mean-spirited and destructive? Did I mention emotional responses like ridicule and jealousy? Also, don't forget about maybe being lampooned on national television.

The New York Times Test doesn't have to involve the New York Times. Any major and influential media outlet will do if the result is a significant amount of follow-on attention. I can say for certain that I've taken the test twice, the first in 1991, and the second after the ditching of the US Airways A320 in 2009. On that occasion, USA Today provided me with a New York Times Test. A page on the AirSafe.com site discussed the history of intentional ditchings involving large jet airliners, and information from that site was prominently featured in a USA Today article, which it turn generated significant attention and online traffic for AirSafe.com.

The crash of Asiana flight 214
Earlier this month, a different airline accident led to a completely different kind of media experience, one that deserved to have its own name. On Saturday 6 July 2013, Asiana flight 214, a Boeing 777, crashed while attempting to land in San Francisco. This crash, which killed three passengers, was noteworthy and newsworthy for several reasons. Among those reasons were the fact that it was the first fatal crash of a Boeing 777, it was the first fatal US crash of a large jetliner in almost 12 years, and the crash occurred in a major US media market in broad daylight.

Normally this kind of plane crash results in nonstop coverage by all the major cable news outlets, and when this happens I typically receive multiple media requests for comments or interviews within minutes of a crash. I didn't find out about the crash until about 90 minutes after it happened, and checking my phone, I was quite surprised to see that no one in the media had made any calls or sent any emails or text messages since the crash. I suspected that it was due to the crash happening in the middle of a long weekend.

On a four-day weekend the media is on holiday
Because the July 4th holiday fell on a Thursday, the following weekend became a four-day weekend for many in the US, including apparently many in the media. After I found out about the crash, I spent the next half hour reaching out to many of the media contacts in my phone, and it took a while before I got any responses. As it would turn out, the four-day weekend and lack of available on-air experts gave me an opportunity to get on the air, something I had done numerous times in the past, and if the past were any guide, I'd might even have a few minutes of air time on a major cable or broadcast network. I was right about the opportunity, but was completely wrong about the magnitude of that opportunity.

Face to face with the anchor
My typical on-air appearance on a national network show is from a remote studio far from the network's headquarters. In my case, I had a call from CNN, and since I was in New York and CNN is headquartered in Atlanta, I expected this to be the case. I figured I'd be in and out in 30 minutes or less and get maybe two minutes of air time. When I showed up, I was first told the anchor was Don Lemon, and I wanted to know where I'd be doing the remote shot. Then I was told that Don wasn't in Atlanta, he was in New York, and I'd be at the desk with him.

Hearing this, I thought I'd get maybe five minutes of air time before I'd be asked to leave and have some other on-air expert would take over. Five minutes turned to fifteen, and fifteen turned to thirty, and it was clear to me that there were no other experts coming to the studio. Six hours later, I finally left the studio, having had a completely new experience, and a new test named for Don Lemon

The Don Lemon Test
The Don Lemon Test has three elements. The first part is that it is a New York Times Test, a situation where your words or deeds are on on display through a very high profile media outlet. When it comes to major plane crashes, few are higher than live hours-long coverage of a major disaster by CNN. The second part is being live for an extended period of time, which means one has to not only prepare a few relevant comments ahead of time for a few minutes on the air, but to come up with such comments on very short notice, and to do so many times not over a period of minutes but over a period of several hours.

Because of the amount of time I was in the studio, most of which was spent waiting patiently for the action to move in my direction, I was doing something I don't normally do, which is to check email and the web on the set. Normally I cut off my phone to keep from having what I thought was a silenced phone surprise me by ringing at just the wrong time. However, I didn't have that option. I needed to keep up with constantly evolving information about the crash to help me anticipate what issues I may have had to respond to on the air. I could only do so because the last element of this test was in place.

The third element of a Don Lemon Test is that you have to be in the presence of a truly professional communicator like Don Lemon, someone who can deftly present breaking and tragic news to a world audience, while at the same doing so in the presence of someone whom he had never met and who was also not a professional journalist.

My job for those several hours was to remain in a of state of high focus so I could perform the role of an on-air expert and actually say the appropriate things when called upon. That job wA at times stressful, but it was inconsequential compared to what Don Lemon and his crew were dealing with during my six hour stay, and I commend them for a job well done.

It's not about Don Lemon
The Don Lemon Test isn't about Don Lemon, but about the situation. You can pass the test if you can answer the following question: Are you both willing and able, with the help of a team of media professionals, to have your words and deeds scrutinized by a national or even global audience, and do so in a way that will be beneficial to the audience? If the answers is yes, then you pass the test. Having done so once, I would recommend that if you have the opportunity, do plenty of preparation before taking the test, and be ready to deal with the unexpected once the test begins.

Using Google Trends to choose your words

Anyone who has online content know that being found by search engines is the key to generating traffic and building an audience. However, having good results for a few key words is not enough. You have to use other words as well that are related and that are commonly used by your potential audience.

The following example is for the fear of flying content on AirSafe.com. The site already scores very highly for the phrase. However, other related aviation terms related words and phrases like "turbulence" and "plane crash" get much more traffic, as the following output from Google Trends suggest.

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Comparing the terms "plane crash," "turbulence," and "fear of flying"

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One way AirSafe.com takes advantage of this is to put links to the fear of flying content on pages related to turbulence and plane crashes. Another thing that is done is that these highly used search terms are also included in the fear of flying content on the site.

Taking this idea a bit further, fear of flying is related to psychological terms like "anxiety" and "panic." As the following chart shows, the terms "anxiety" and "panic" are used far more frequently than "fear of flying."

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Comparing the terms "plane crash," "anxiety," and "panic"

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As you can see, "anxiety" and "panic" are much more popular search terms than "fear of flying." Based on this kind of data, it would make sense to review text content on AirSafe.com related to fear of flying to include key words associated with the psychological aspects of fear of flying, words that someone may use when looking for insights into their reaction to the flying experience.

Dealing with factual corrections during live TV interviews

I've been an on on-air television expert discussing airline safety topics for over a decade, serving as one of those aviation safety experts who show up on camera whenever there is a major newsworthy event involving aircraft and danger.

On-air experts like myself are typically seen only in the studio, and photographed with a head-and-shoulder shot. The term for this kind of guest is a talking head, and I do my best to be the best talking head I can be. Like most talking heads, I've never had any formal training in how to be a talking head, and every time I get the chance to be on the air, there is something to learn, often because of unexpected issues that happen when I am on the air live.

Last week, I was a guest on CNN's HLN channel discussing an air traffic control situation that occurred 31 July 2012 over Washington, DC. It was a relatively minor incident that received significant media national media attention in the US primarily because it was reported by the Washington Post newspaper, and because the highest levels of the FAA had to respond publicly to the incident.

Typically, a show's producer wants me to provide the viewer with some context about the event, and my goal is to use the short amount of time I have to give at least one good bit of information.

In this particular interview, the HLN anchor Isha Sesay introduced me as a retired pilot. When that happened I faced a bit of a dilemma. While I am a pilot, I've never been a professional or military pilot of any kind, and I'm also not retired. I had two choices, ignore the mistaken introduction and go ahead with the interview, or take time to correct the anchor on-air.

Given that I would have less than 30 seconds of air time, I immediately decided to take the first option and go ahead with the interview. In the second or two that I had before I had to start talking, I concluded that calling me a retired pilot was incorrect, but it wasn't worth taking up limited air time with a correction and running the risk of not being able to provide the audience with useful information. Also, I wasn't introduced as a retired airline pilot or military pilot, which would have been very misleading to the audience. Had that happened, I would have immediately corrected that error.

In retrospect, one way to avoid this problem was to confer with the producer ahead of time about how I should be introduced by the anchor. However, even if I had done this, the same mistake may have happened. Live television is a very fluid situation, and everyone who is on the air has to do their bit to keep things moving. For all I know, the anchor knew the introduction was wrong the moment it passed by her lips, but like me, she had to keep the conversation moving.

The two things I work hard to avoid while on the air is silence and wasted words. The silence would have happened if I took too much time to think before I start talking, and the wasted words would have happened if I said things that were not relevant to the task at hand or got in the way of my goal of providing useful information.

While I always strive for on-air perfection, the two goals that I always have at the top of my mind are to encourage the audience to keep watching and to get invited back for future talking head opportunities.

How to keep technology from taking your job

In highly industrialized regions of the world such as the North America and the EU, one of the byproducts of rapid innovations in the worlds of high technology and online communication is that more and more tasks that used to be done by people are being outsourced either to technology or to lower wage workers.

While the trend is most pronounced in wealthy industrialized countries, as the cost of computer and Internet-related technology continues to decline, the trend will inevitably make its way into any country that has relatively easy access and low cost access to the Internet.

For many kinds of work, the Internet has allowed employers access to a much wider pool of potential employees, often in countries that have much lower wage scales. While hairdressers and gardeners and other kinds of workers who have to be physically present to do the job may be safe from low cost long distance workers, engineers, accountants, doctors, and others who have skills that can be effectively outsourced will likely see much more competition from workers willing to accept lower wages.

When it comes to high technology, which can take various forms such as artificial intelligence, cloud storage, or remote databases, many jobs can have some or all of their functions done with fewer people, people who don't have to be at a particular location, or without using people at all.

For example, 20 years ago if a company used a common database to keep track of clients, vendors, transactions, payroll, and other information vital to the operation of the business, it was typically located in a computer or a set of file cabinets that were physically located in the office if it were a small business, or in one or more dedicated location for larger businesses. It also meant that one or more employees were needed to manage the file cabinets, computers, software, and other resources needed to keep the database up and running.

Today, businesses large and small can pay relatively small amounts of money to a vendor to have all of their databases needs managed remotely, often eliminating the need for many of those employees that they would have used in the past.

The future is not completely bleak for those whose current jobs may be at risk. There are some things that are difficult or even impossible to do with technology or with remote employees. Workers who have the following kinds of skills will likely have no trouble finding gainful employment (though they may have to be a remote employee):

• Mathematical reasoning: While even the simplest computer can crunch the numbers far better than any human, it takes the kind of intuition that comes from experience to understand what questions can be asked, how to ask those questions, how to interpret the results, and how to communicate both the questions and the answers to an audience.
  
• Solving open ended problems: These kinds of problems by their very nature can be quite difficult address since the first big challenge is often to understand what the problems or issues may be, as well as framing the problems in ways that can be understood. This is a set of skills that often require a subtle and extensive understanding of the context of the situation and the people who are involved.
  
• Managing people: While technology may eliminate the need for most managers by eliminating the need for most employees, the reality is that so long as there are at least two people involved, at least one person has to be engaged in managing that relationship. So far, no computer has come close to being able to do that, and in some situations it may be best to have the manager located in the same place as the people being managed.
  
• Writing and communicating: While algorithms can work wonders with basic communication, more complex interactions, by spoken or written word, are still beyond the technologies that will likely be available in the next several decades.
  
• Sales and marketing: While technology often provides vital tools for much of the process, the sales and marketing process often needs skilled practitioners to persuade the customer or client to make a particular decision or take a particular action.
  
• Anything involving intimate human contact: There are wide range of activities, from child rearing to nursing to live entertainment, where even if the technology existed to perform those tasks more effectively than humans, the customer would accept it. Sometimes it would not have to involve direct physical contact. For example, it is possible to fly aircraft remotely, or to even program an airplane to fly autonomously, but few passengers would willingly choose to fly in aircraft that didn't have a highly trained pilot at the controls. Oddly enough, that same passenger would likely have no problem riding an automated train between airport terminals.
  

Sharing ideas and resources from South by Southwest (SXSW)

If you have heard of South by Southwest (SXSW), you may have heard of it as a giant convention of musicians, movie makers, and technologists that takes place every March down in Austin, Texas.

There are in fact three very large conferences that overlap each other for 10 days in March. The only one that interested me was SXSW Interactive, a five-day conference that featured emerging online technologies. This was my second time there, and unlike many of those attending, the wild parities lasting until the wee hours and the free beer and wine available starting sometimes before noon were not a big attraction for me, but the chance to interact with thousands of Internet professionals of every stripe was well worth the visit.

A lot of the fun of SXSW is running into big ideas worth thinking about. There were many things to take away from SXSW, but four things that I think are worth sharing are an inspirational talk, a novel use of science fiction, my observation of what technology will have a lot of near term attention and development, and some recommended resources for budding technology entrepreneurs:

• Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think: A talk by Peter Diamandis, Chairman and CEO of the X Prize Foundation spoke rather passionately about the role that technological development will play in overcoming many of the daunting problems facing the world, from clean water, to population growth, to medical care. Many of the ideas were also in his TED talk from early 2012. I also recommend his new book Abundance, which goes into much greater detail. While you are at it, check out what he is doing at Singularity University, an institution he founded with Ray Kurzweil.
  
  
• Using science fiction to advance technology: Brian David Johnson, a writer and futurist at Intel, has been involved in bridging the gap between science fiction and science fact by promoting the use of science fiction writing by actual engineers and researchers in order to better understand the impact that an emerging technology may have on society. If this sounds at all interesting, I recommend visiting Intel's The Tomorrow Project where you can download an anthology of science fiction stories from the likes of Cory Doctorow ans will.i.am. You can also reading one of his technical papers on using science fiction to help computer science students understand computer security,
  
  
• The role that smart phones will play: If I had to judge where the near term action will be by the number of presentations, the amount of exhibitor space, the level of hype, and apparent venture capital interest displayed at SXSW, it will be the role that smart phones will play both as tools that more people will use to go online and as places where much money will be invested and where many young minds will toil. I won't bore you with the numbers, but I will say that the number clearly show that where there is explosive growth of Internet access in the developing world, it has been through the spread of smartphones in areas where there were barely even telephones 10 years ago. In the rest of the world, when was the last time you saw consumers stood in line to buy something that was not a smartphone or a tablet?
  
  
• Useful resources for a startup company: There were plenty of pitches from new companies looking for funding and other backing, and I saw many of them in the Startup America area of SXSW. It was very, very clear that smartphone apps that emphasized social media in a local context were all the rage. Startup America was also clearly funding by many tech heavyweights, and were quite generous at giving out freebies, from candy, coffee, and wine, to a rather interesting book from Steve Blank and Bob Dorf called The Startup Owners Manual. At SXSW, they were free and were practically thrown at people like Mardi Gras beads. However, if you are at all serious about starting an Internet related enterprise or working with a startup company, check out the book. It will be worth whatever Amazon is charging.
  

P.S. If you're thinking about going to SXSW next year, book your hotel early, and be prepared to have some very long and interesting days.

LinkedIn answers coupled with Reader