davidjmclare

Is the quantified self selfish?

In a recent post on One More Life Hack I discuss the ‘quantified self’ movement in the UK and consider whether we are being selfish with our body data.

While the title of the post is intentionally provocative, the issue is important; if people, in their millions, are generating data on their bodies, then withholding this from scientific research is a selfish act.

Read the full article on One More Life Life, where I also put forward the concept of a Creative Commons for body data.

Giving up my birthday for Charity:Water

This year I have decided to forgo birthday presents and instead ask people to make a donation to Charity:Water. This is a charity that brings clean water to those in need, mostly rural African villages. Clean water not only makes people healthier, but it improves a person’s entire life, with better education and more employment opportunities as a result.

My birthday is one of many. I will have plenty of opportunity to receive presents in the future and thankfully I can afford the things I might have asked for as birthday presents (so long as I don’t ask for a car!) The villagers in Ethiopia, where the money I raise will be going, also do not care about birthday presents – because they don’t even have clean water to give to their children. But they do care that Charity:Water ask people to give up their birthdays in return for donations.

Read more about why I am doing this and find out how to donate on my blog.

Streamlining the social media footprint

As a digital PR consultant you can imagine that I sign up to a great deal of social media platforms, simply to test them out, learn how to make the most of them for brands and as an individual and experiment a little. What this does though, is create a messy social presence with too many accounts to manage and an increased amount of old information about myself on the web.

I have recently given a lot of thought to how I should manage my social presence and which sites I need for this. It is part OCD when it comes to clutter, whether that is real world or in the digital world, and partly to solve the problem of out of date information.

Read more about the streamlining process on my blog.

What is the quantified self?

The quantified self is a growing trend in the UK and worldwide. It is the act of tracking one’s own body, mind and lifestyle to learn from their activity, finding opportunities to improve and then track to see what the effect of change was.

There are many ways people may track different elements of their life and plenty of people are doing this already without realising they are quantified selfers.

Find out more about the quantified self, what it is and how to get involved, in my article on Anywhere Working.

PR students become more active in social media

Social media is a powerful skill for any PR student to have. However too many students are not investigating social media enough, assuming their knowledge from using social platforms will be enough. This is certainly not the case.

Using social media for personal relationships is not the same as using it for professional relationships, nor does it relate to how a brand may use social media. There are also different layers that are uncovered once you begin using social media for brands – apps, pages, integration into websites; all elements you do not come across as just a mere user.

As I kick off the social media feature on Behind The Spin, I discuss why it is important that students become more active in their use of digital platforms.

How the London Coffee Festival could become a social event

I love the London Coffee Festival and attend each year – an annual pilgrimage of sorts. With the UK’s best independent coffee makers all in one room, you’re guaranteed to experience your best coffee ever, only to be beaten minutes later. The caffeine overload shakes shortly follow.

However the festival is not very social. And by that I mean digital media social, because people are very friendly at the event. Each year the opportunity for integrated digital campaigns, using channels such as Twitter and Foursquare are completely missed. Which is why I blogged my suggestions on the 33 Digital site.

Read the blog post here.

PR Week Power 500 out of touch

Recent research by myself and Emily Cagle found that only 22% of the PR Week Power Book 500 are on Twitter. This seems a little low for the industry leaders, which poses questions – chiefly, are the ‘power 500′ out of touch and is digital being take seriously enough?

Read more on PR Week’s blog post and join the discussion in the comments.