Tune out the so called official news to discuss what more people care about

I used to track the press releases from data center companies. Get contacts from their PR firms. Have pre briefing of the releases. But more and more I found what was the new news wasn't that interesting.

Huffington post has a on Rachel Maddow choosing to tune out President Trump's tweets and her ratings soared.

“The question of how to cover Donald Trump has confounded many people working in the media industry since his election. There are so many areas of the president’s administration that warrant dissection that his near-daily onslaught of morning tweets started to prove something of a distraction from the potentially larger issues at hand.

So Rachel Maddow, host of MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show,” made a decision: tune them out.

“We developed sort of an informal, internal mantra … which is that we basically cover [the Trump administration] as if they are a silent movie,” Maddow told TheWrap earlier this month. “I stopped covering the Twitter feed and we started covering only what they do rather than what they say.””

— http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/rachel-maddow-stopped-covering-trumps-tweets-and-her-ratings-soared_us_58c6c5b3e4b0ed71826e4248?

I a going to start writing more, but not about the press releases.

Debating upgrading GreenM3 From Squarespace 5 to Squarespace 7

It’s been over 3 years since I switched from Typepad to Squarespace 5 for this blog.  Squarespace has upgraded from 5 to 6 and now 7.  There are some technical details on why I like squarespace 5 which don’t work on squarespace 7, but sometimes it is better change than hold on to hold habits.

Squarespace today announced its first major platform update in two years: Squarespace 7, adding new splash pages, templates and integrations with Getty Images and Google Apps.

The release advances the completely rebuilt codebase that arrived with the release of Squarespace 6 in 2012. Squarespace 7 will become available in waves to customers starting tonight. Customers can opt-in to the platform, or choose to hold off on upgrading during the early transition.

Will I change?  Most likely, but going to spend a few more days thinking about it.

DatacenterDynamics hires Uptime Institute's Bruce Taylor for EVP of North America and Consolidates from 9 to 3 events for 2015

As fast as the the data center industry changes it is ironic that the media/research companies move at a slower pace. 

What is one of the most interesting things to happen in the data center event/media/research industry is long time Uptime Institute executive Bruce Taylor is now Executive VP of DatacenterDynamics North America according to his LinkedIn profile

Also on Oct 31 DatacenterDynamics announced it is consolidating its US events from 9 to 3 with events in SF, Chicago, and NYC.

Starting in 2015, DCD Converged will shift from nine, one-day regional-market events to three larger-scale two-day conferences in the US. The revamped events program will focus on the three primary data center vertical classes: enterprise, internet and services.

The enterprise-focused event will take place March 17–18, 2015, at the New York Marriott Marquis in Manhattan. Meeting the needs of the enterprise data center community of end-users and operators, the New York event will place emphasis on the increasingly complex and heterogeneous mission-critical data center environment.

The San Francisco Marriott Marquis will play host to DCD’s internet-themed event, from July 30–31, 2015. The two-day conference will cater to the internet data center community of end-users and operators tracking the retail, wholesale and hyper scale continuum.

Services will be the main theme for DCD’s third and final US-based event next year, taking place Oct. 27–28, 2015, at the Chicago Hilton. The conference will focus on meeting the needs of the growing data center service provider community and how they provision next-generation services, from cloud to everything as a service.

2015 will be a competitive year for DatacenterDynamics vs. 451 Group/Uptime Institute vs. DatacenterKnowledge/DatacenterWorld vs. Gartner vs. 7x24 Exchange. 

For 2015 I’ll be at 7x24 Exchange and DatacenterDynamics.  I will not be at 451 Group/Uptime Institute given I am blacklisted from attending. 

Some media companies I have never talked to their executives or staff.  I regularly chat with 7x24 Exchange and DatacenterDynamics staff.  I guess that is part of the reason I attend their events is I feel like they listen to attendees and are open to change.

Do you tell Tech Media when they got a story wrong? Steve Jobs did

This past week I was at Intel Developer Forum in my media roll as a blogger.  I was able to catch up with some good writers who many of your read often.  At a business dinner I was commenting on a story written by one of the writers and their choice of a particular source.  We both agreed that a story’s use of that particular source left a bad taste in our mouth.  We were drinking a nice cabernet from Nickel & Nickel so taste was part of the conversation.

Nickel & Nickel winery, located in Oakville, Napa Valley, is dedicated exclusively to producing 100 percent varietal, single-vineyard wines that best express the distinct personality of each vineyard. Established by the partners of Far Niente in 1997, Nickel & Nickel is focused on producing single-vineyard Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon from the appellation's most significant AVAs.

Some read what is in the media as if they are facts.  Knowing who the writers are I read as if they are stories which are limited by who the sources are.

2

a :  an account of incidents or events

 

b :  a statement regarding the facts pertinent to a situation in question

 

c :  anecdote; especially :  an amusing one

3

a :  a fictional narrative shorter than a novel; specifically : short story

 

b :  the intrigue or plot of a narrative or dramatic work

4

:  a widely circulated rumor

NYTimes has a story on how he limits the use of technology in his house, and the story starts on something more insightful.

When Steve Jobs was running Apple, he was known to call journalists to either pat them on the back for a recent article or, more often than not, explain how they got it wrong. I was on the receiving end of a few of those calls.

I’ll regularly reach out to some of the writers I know well to help them research a story, and who I would contact for sources that are credible by peers.

Most people don’t know how to help the media tell better stories.  They have PR companies who manage the media. That is something that is another story, and can be discussed over a nice bottle of wine. :-)  

Can you see the choices made in the Media? Gives you insight into how useful their information is

DatacenterDynamics Seattle just on Sept 4, 2014 in Bellevue at the Hyatt.  It was good to catch up with Stephen Worn and one of the conversations I had is does he think people understand how the media companies that cover the data center industry work?  He and I know, but do others?  He agreed that OMG, yes.

Here is a study on traditional media companies.

Rowse found the charges of news bias to be valid--in selection, in display and in tone--on both political sides, but preponderantly in the pro-Republican direction. He concluded that, "with the possible exception of the New York Times, all papers--both Republican and Democratic--showed evidence of favoritism in their news columns in violation of their own accepted rules of conduct," and that "almost every example of favoritism in the news columns coincided with the paper's editorial feelings." This "would indicate that over 80 percent of the nation's newspaper readers may be getting their editorials with some Republican flavoring."

The conclusion of this study is to have media judge other media.

Rowse concludes his book with remarks on the problems of measuring bias. "The persons best qualified to evaluate newspaper fairness," he says, "are newspapermen themselves; yet they are unwilling to do this." He thinks that the next step is to set up regional panels of newspapermen who would meet periodically and rate each paper's performance.

This isn’t going to happen and last to change how we perceive media.  The above study was printed in 1957.

What is useful if you are going to read the media looking for data centers news is to understand how they work.

Too many people read the media and take what is written as gospel.  Many of us laugh when their coworkers quote a media publications article as if it is a fact.

Part of what I have enjoyed is being in the role of blogger and media is learning how media organizations work, and in the process making good friends.  These friends are people who because I know them and how they think and work allow me to refine my perspective on how to read their work.  It is kind of funny to think when I am in a media briefing with other media that I gain more insight on the writers, than the briefing.  Watching the flow of questions from media, what they ask, how they dress, what equipment they have, who they talk to before and after the meeting.  

Wow, just figured out that media briefings are a chance to evaluate the fairness of media.  Watch what is presented.  What is asked.  Then analyze what is written and where the bias is.  All the writers were in the same meeting, yet look at the range of coverage.