Interview Me: Grace Carter (Invoke Media)
I have really good taste in friends, I really do. My friend Grace Carter is one of the people whose company I enjoy the most and she works really hard with the Invoke Media team. I also know that she’s associated with Vancouver Is Awesome (something that I actually think is super-awesome). A few weeks back I mentioned that I’d like to interview her (I’ve done other interviews but this particular one is a continuation of a meme that Keira-Anne sent me a while ago – here are my responses to Dr. Beth Snow’s questions). And below you will find the answers to my questions to Grace. I loved them, Grace! Looking forward to seeing you very soon!
1. Your profile says that you were a journalist in a former life. What made you change careers?
An oft-asked question. I had a great run with journalism, working at a well-known magazine in New York, and then as a freelance writer based in Los Angeles. If it sounds glamorous, well… it was. Journalism was magical–it provided me with a constantly expanding education and fantastic perks.
When I moved back home to Vancouver, however, I needed to pay the bills, and journalism’s a much smaller industry here than in those big cities in the States. Hence, I set aside time to dream about what I wanted to be in my second career. During the course of a couple writing projects I’d done for Nike Running, I’d worked with two digital agencies. I realized that more than anything, I wanted to be an Internet strategist–and here I am. The skillset from journalism is remarkably transferable. The approach is the same: seek to understand, and then to be understood.
2. Being a journalist demands a certain code of ethics. Do you see new media/emerging media/social media having that kind of a code of ethics?
This is a tricky one. Any content provider should have a responsible code of ethics. Naturally, not all do. The fear with emerging and social media is that there are sometimes no checks and balances to ensure that a code of ethics is in place as there are with traditional media formats–fewer editors, no producers.
The good news is, that with the emerging media, the general public is empowered to take on those roles themselves. Is everyone in the general public as experienced as a formally trained and employed editor or producer? No. But many people subscribe to the belief that the voice of a multitude can be far more powerful than that of an individual. At present, anyone can put their opinion into the public sphere more easily than at any other time in our history, and similarly, anyone can respond. Under the best circumstances, information put out over emerging and social media channels is of high quality because it invites the public to become a participant, a policeman, an opponent, a fan, or something we haven’t even thought of yet. Most people reading this can probably conjure a plethora of examples of this–Wikipedia, the success of sites like Digg, Yelp, NowPublic….
I’m a relativist. To me, it always depends on the context of the particular situation. But frankly, my opinion doesn’t matter. Emerging media and social media are now, unequivocally, part of the information delivery system we use. Whether or not there’s a code of ethics at the moment, one will evolve.
3. You are being sent to Paris on a covert mission. Who do you take with you and why?
I take a powerful and wily accomplice, Mr. Jon Cartwright, the most resourceful man I’ve ever met. Once, in Oregon, he fixed my motorcycle with some electrical tape and a bolt he found on the ground in a parking lot, and I rode it all the way home. (In fact, I still haven’t switched in the correct part.) He builds furniture and masterful marketing plans. He’s tri-lingual. He also has Jedi-mindpower. And despite his spy-like prowess at just about everything, he’s exceedingly humble, an admirable quality indeed.
4. What’s your favorite sport figure and why?
Raul, this is going to make me sound arrogant, but I don’t watch sports. I play ‘em!
5. Social media and web 2.0 are all about the conversation. How do you see web 3.0 evolving? What is the next wave of social media trends?
A while ago I watched a TED talk on these interactive computing blocks called Siftables. The blocks couldn’t do much on their own, but together they could create interactive experiences–creating math games, storytelling, blending paint colours, and even producing music with fades and gradients of sound. Alone they were cute. Together they were REMARKABLE.
Then today I read this story theorizing about how Netbooks could impact the future of the print media. It described new Netbooks which used the open-source operating system Linux, and posited a future in which, in the face of diminishing sales margins, hardware companies produced devices less as monolithic COMPUTERS and more as multi-purpose media machines. The kicker of a sentence for me was this: “Consumer-hardware companies increasingly have to become media companies, and vice versa.”
Both these news items made me think about how constrained we are, at present, to our particular computer, or our iPhone, or our newspaper. I think the WSJ put it best. Web 3.0 is “the complete integration of computing into every part of our lives in a way that is seamless, ubiquitous and, ideally, dead simple.” The possibility exists for greater interaction between devices themselves, and with the advent of cloud-based softwares and services, more ubiquity, speed and accuracy. Overarchingly, the social mediums we use will increase both in terms of software and hardware. It’s an exciting time to be a part of the Internet!
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That’s my sista and she’s SPLENDID!!!
Great interview.
I like your discussion of the presence of a code of ethics in new media a lot. Near the end of that section you state that, whether or not there is a current ethics, one will develop in time. This is rather more positive a view than most people have, and I suspect it is a much more useful view. I wonder precisely what forces give rise to an ethics in the first place, and what precise forces will give rise to the coming ethics of new media. There are some other great interviews on these subjects with major journalists at http://www.ourblook.com/component/option,com_sectionex/Itemid,200076/id,8/view,category/#catid69 I have found them very useful.