In this instance, sadly, I must say that my dear HNIC has missed the mark in its quest to be “more 2.0.” Like a few million other Canadians, I have been watching CBC’s playoff coverage (which is the best there is, by the way – honestly) over the past week-and-a-bit. This year HNIC has introduced a confusing and awkward new feature that runs during intermissions – something they like to call the HNIC “idesk.” It must be innovative if it starts with a lower-case “i,” right?

The HNIC idesk hosts promptly proclaim – with pride to make you think that HNIC had just been voted as being more inovative than Apple – that they are live blogging. Live blogging is defined by PCmag.com as, ”reporting a live event, such as a conference or trade show, on a blog.” Unfortunatly, live blogging loses its value when you talk about the content of your live blogs during the broadcast of the event that is the subject of your blogs.

Of course, live blogging has its place. For those not watching the game on TV, I can understand why they might be interested in reading the live blog. In this case, however, the hosts discuss blogs written about the event that the viewer is currently watching. It’s like simultaneously watching the same game on TV while listening to it on the radio.

Unsurprisingly, HNIC took the step of setting up Twitter accounts for each of their major reporters as well. It’s a good try, but here you have people who clearly would not otherwise be using Twitter, encouraging viewers to follow them. Their updates consist, largely, of banter between and about eachother. The audience that HNIC and the CBC are trying to engage with their foray into the 2.0 world can undoubtedly see right through this vain attempt.

This tale is nothing other than a lesson for any person or organization new to the 2.0 world and its tools – the use of the tools must have a clear purpose and benefit for the consumer/customer/client. HNIC gives the impression that someone in their marketing department heard that having a blog and Twitter account would make them hip and so decided to roll-out their idesk and Twitter accounts the next day.

One example of a TV broadcast that has jumped on the 2.0 bandwagon a little more grace is the Business News Network’s Market Call with Michael Hainsworth. Market Call is a show during which viewers email or phone-in their requests to have a financial analyst speak about the security of their choice on air. In this case, having Hainsworth setup a Twitter account and allowing viewers to Tweet their requests makes sense (ie there is a clear purpose and benefit for the viewer).

To more “traditional” outlets like the CBC/HNIC who are thinking about going more 2.0, keep doing just that – thinking about it. Think long and hard about whether there is a clear purpose and benefit to the use of whichever tools – blogs, Twitter, etc. – you may be using. If there is, then, by all means, go for it. If not, don’t force it.

If what you’ve heard about Twitter is characterized by headlines like, “Ashton Kutcher challenges CNN to Twitter popularity contest,” I can understand why you’re either tired of hearing about Twitter or simply don’t understand what all the fuss is about.

This article from Ad Age is completely refreshing and intringuing. It reminds us that Twitter is useful for more than simply learning about what Paris Hilton has been doing while on vacation. From reading the article, I am reminded that few people, let alone companies, have been able to see Twitter for its full business potential.

The article describes how Organic Inc. (a leading digital communications agency) has harnessed Twitter as a powerful business tool. At Organic Inc., social networks like Twitter are a critical peice of the company’s recruitment strategy. Around 75% of their online recruitment relies on social networks. More importantly, they are already seeing positive results after about 9 months of increased social network recruitment.

Given that mainstream media has pelted its subscribers with stories that don’t do justice to Twitter’s potential to be more than just a (insert generic, insulting characterization of Twitter here), stories like Ad Age’s look into Organic Inc.’s use of Twitter deserve more of our attention.

The Google Street View vehicles are kicking up dust traveling the streets of cities across the world. They are also stirring debate. The Google Street View feature of Google Maps allows users to see street-level panoramic photos of citiscapes and countrysides. To obtain images for the feature, Google parades its Street View cars down streets and highways, snapping photos of nearly anyone and anything that crosses the lens of its camera, which is mounted on the top of the vehicle (see picture).

Earlier in the month, residents of Buckinghamshire in the UK, chased one of the cars out of the village (see this article). Buckinghamshire resident Paul Jacobs was one of the less-than-content locals: “My immediate reaction was anger; how dare anyone take a photograph of my home without my consent? This is an affluent area. We’ve already had three burglaries locally in the past six weeks. If our houses are plastered all over Google it’s an invitation for more criminals to strike. I was determined to make a stand, so I called the police.”

UK residents’ reaction is similar to those in other regions of the globe. Needless to say, Google has received countless complaints and experienced considerable “civilian resistance.” Residents of Toronto, however, are in somewhat of a gleeful frenzy over the opportunity to see or be caught on camera by the Street View car. Perhaps they have been inspired by the Waldo sightings in France, Italy, and London.

The Toronto Star has been encouraging readers to comment on or Tweet about any Street View car sightings in the city. The excitement has street performers and members of the general public prepping for an opportunity to get in front of the Street View camera.

Google’s photography of any and every face and object in the city has not aroused gleeful excitement in all Torontonians. For better or worse, however, the Street View car’s arrival has aroused greater excitement than any professional sports team in Toronto has in quite some time (with the exception of one).

Contra-Happiness: Feeling Pizzled

You may not know the word, but you probably have felt pizzled before. Actually, you probably have felt pizzled at some point today. Stolze explains that feeling pizzled is an adverse effect of our Web 2.0 world: “People sometimes forget the hierarchy of communication. An example of disregard for the hierarchy is ignoring a face-to-face conversation to communicate digitally. For example, you are having a conversation with someone, but all of a sudden they are looking at their Blackberry, or answering ‘very important’ phonecalls. When the person we are talking to does this we feel pizzled – both pissed off and puzzled.”

Pro-Happiness: The Web as the World Wide Window and a Global Campfire

“In my research nearly all respondents answer that the Web has enriched their lives in two ways,” said Stolze. “The first one being that they consider it their window to the world. There’s no doubt that the democratizing of knowledge has had a positive impact on the way people go through life. From deep thoughts on philosophy to things like finding a restaurant’s phone number or looking up a user review on IMDB. The second reason is that the Web is a perfect place to find people who are like you – to set up a discussion without the risk of being judged by your looks, skincolor or clothes. We are a social species and we have this deep need to be part of a group. The Internet has become the perfect place to gather around this new global campfire.”

 Debateable: We have fewer deep, face-to-face realtionships because of the Web

The other side of the “ease of interaction” coin is concern over the extent to which we carry out relationships online, as opposed to face-to-face. Stolze doesn’t discount this concern: “There is a disconnect between our number of ‘friends’ and the number of deep connections we have. This is called friendship inflation. Simple economic law says that when there is more of something, the individual value decreases.” Stolze does agree, however, that while an abundance of Web 2.0 friendships will cause some of us to disregard the importance of deep, traditional friendships, an equal, if not greater, number of us will use the Web to strenghten existing strong ties and develop new ones. In referring to online communication with close friends, Stolze says, “The best emails are the ones that say: ‘Hey Jim, let’s have lunch this Friday. Same place?’”

Contra-Happiness: Information Overload

The Web provides us with more, and cheaper, information than ever before. Stolze is finding that perhaps we have access to too much information, and that it might have serious negative effects. He says, “We mistake information for inspiration and think more is better. The result is that we spend hours of surfing, lurking for information. If you search Google for the word ‘information’ you get over 3 billion results. Constantly being presented with more information than we have the ability to look through can cause stress, which contributes to depression.”

The Conclusion…

Stolze’s book, How to Survive Your Inbox, will be released, in Dutch, this coming June, but he gave me a preview of the conclusion: “In my research, I found that I was not able to prove, scientifically, that the Web makes us happy. I would say that the answer is no, given my results. What the data does allow me to say is that not being connected to the Internet makes you unhappy. It’s kind of the new hygiene.” 

While too little Web action makes us unhappy, there certainly is a point where, well, too much is too much. Fortunately, Stolze provides guidelines for keeping our Web consumption at a healthy level. Check out his TED presentation on 5 Ways the Internet can make us happier and his answers to my questions on responsible use below.

On Responsible Use

Perron: Does a Blackberry belong in the bedroom?

Stolze: Surely not…Don’t take your Blackberry or your iPhone into the bedroom.

Perron: How do you know when you have reached an unhealthy level of online activity?

Stolze: When you’re Twittering [aka Tweeting] from the bathroom.

-Many thanks to Jim Stolze for his time and insight.

In searching (the Web) for thinkers who have given thought to a correlation between happiness and our use of the Web, I found Jim Stolze‘s Virtual Happiness Project. Stolze’s research question – Does the Web make us happy? – is the focus of this post, the first of two on the topic of the Web and human happiness.

Stolze postulates that our romance with the Web (which has only grown stronger with the level of interactivity that characterizes Web 2.0) is fuelled by our need to interact with others. Stolze observes that, i) being social makes us happy; ii) the Web facilitates social interaction; and iii) unsurprisingly, we have readily adopted the Web.

If the Web facilitates the social interactions that make us so happy, does the Web itself make us happy? I realize in full that this is an incredibly simple, broad, and highly ambitious research question. It is, however, a question that deserves contemplation and serious academic attention, particularly since any child born today will likely grow up online, bathed in bits, figuratively speaking.

Immediately, a number of examples pro (a CBS report on internet addiction) and contra (an earlier post on how the power of the Web is being harnessed by therapists to treat clients) the Web’s ability to elicit happiness come to mind. 

Is this a debate that comes to the common, but anticlimatic, conclusion, “like anything, it can be good in moderation?” Or will we able to say, conclusively, that humans are happier living with the Web?

Read Part Two

Unable to pinpoint all the barriers to widespread adoption of EMR, I got in touch with Dr. Nadine Gebara, Resident, currently at University of Toronto. I asked her why our health care institutions have been so slow in digitizing their info - something libraries started doing almost 20-years ago. I quickly learned that the barriers to EMR are greater and more deeply engrained than I had imagined.

Initially, I suspected that resistance on the part of physicians had something to do with hospitals’ slow move to EMR, but Dr. Gebara’s experience suggested otherwise: “I have seen very little resistance on the part of health care workers. There’s actually some frustration among physicians about not having adequate EMR systems. Overall, attitudes towards electronic records are overwhelmingly positive given the clear benefits to efficiency and ease of access to critical information.”

While EMR promises clear long-term benefits to efficiency and quality of care, government is reluctant to spend on the technology. The investment in EMR is seemingly a no-brainer. Sure, it’s expensive in the short-term, but soon enough we’ll see increased efficiency, more care to more people, and health care providers happy not to have to sift through piles of paper records to find critical information.

The “no-brainer” status I assigned to an investment in EMR was challenged as I continued to explore the issue with Dr. Gebara.

“There are a handful of companies offering EMR products and platforms [like this one and this one, or just look here for a comprehensive list]. Hospital A, for example, might use one platform, but Hospital B down the street uses a different one. It’s great that they are using EMR, but the problem we run into is that you generally cannot share data between the two systems,” she said. 

The fact that different platforms cannot be integrated creates uncertainty around what the outcome and ROI of any wide-scale (and expensive) EMR initiative might be. Inability to clearly estimate and articulate the benefits of EMR hampers efforts to secure government funding. And, quite simply, ”lack of funding is the greatest barrier to universal EMR.”

One (partial) solution would be for government and health institutions to select a single platform so that data can be shared in any hospital in any region.  But, if the government selects one service provider, do they not create an illegal monopoly in the industry?

Without government intervention, leaders in EMR technology will just have to emerge over time. With fewer players in the field and more hospitals adopting the same platforms, scalability and the ability to share data between hospitals will increase. In turn, the case for EMR funding will strengthen. Unfortunately, this implies simply waiting for the fittest platform to emerge. If that’s the case, then we shouldn’t hold our breath waiting for universal EMR. 

Adoption of Wikinomics principles on the part of the health informatics industry (referring to companies building and providing EMR platforms and services), however, would speed the journey to easily integrateable platforms. My guess is that the first company from within the EMR space who breaks down silos and produces a platform that integrates with others will be dominating the field when EMR arrives in full force – sooner, rather than later.

When I was about 5 years old, my school library kept track of its books using little cue cards stashed by the hundreds in tiny drawers (you all know what I’m talking about). All of my book searches since kindergarten have involved a computer. Am I to believe that our libraries did, almost 20 years ago, what our health care system is starting to do now?

The CBC article tells us that, “Digital networks help to bridge staffing gaps at Canadian hospitals.” It is true – hospitals in Ontario (and the rest of  Canada) have only recently started the move towards EMR. If the digitization of, say, written communication made headlines, people would be wondering how they ended-up back in 1994. Imagine reading the following headline today: “Canadian companies use electronic mail to cut-out time spent waiting for letters to get to Europe.”

It seems unjustifiable that our health care system has not made better use of technology. I see little downside in using technology that we’ve been using for years in countless domains, to get care to people (eg Northern Ontarions in need of a radiologist) who have been waiting far too long.

My criticism is tempered by knowing that there are political, social, and financial barriers to the widespread digitization of medical records that don’t exist for libraries, for example. But do they justify the almost 20-year technology lag? It seems unforgivable, given that our health care system could have been benefitting from increased efficiency through EMR years ago.

What the barriers along the path to EMR are exactly, I’m not sure. I can only imagine that they are significant, as they have imposed a 20-year technology lag on our health care system. Part Two of my look at the state of electronic medical records in Ontario will seek to unveil these barriers. Watch for it next week and do chip-in with any insight you have on the barriers to EMR.

For anyone not familiar with the idea, it is, simply put, “pay-what-you-want” dining. (Radiohead recently applied the concept [not for food, of course], allowing fans to decide what to pay for their new album). At the end of the meal the customer decides how much it was worth, and pays accordingly.

Menus at Zesty’s Deli in Guelph, Ontario list a question mark beside items instead of a dollar figure. Tony Salamone, owner of Zesty’s says, “I have great faith in the people of Guelph.” The participatory pricing approach could clearly go a long way in keeping businesses honest, but the benefits aren’t one-way. For sure, customers win when they are empowered by the policy. At the same time, honest, and good quality businesses will win too - having customers reflect appreciation in the prices they choose to pay.

The owners of Barrie, Ontario restaurant Oscar’s echo Salamone’s message, “We are so confident in our kitchen and the food that we put out. And we are confident in our front of the house staff, our service is some of the best in the city.” Their message emphasizes the fact that business owners who apply participatory pricing aren’t operating charities – they believe that they will be more successful when they turn the price-setting power over to the consumer.

The first pay-what-you-want restaurant was the international, UK-based chain, Little Bay. According to reports, Little Bay is actually enjoying increased revenue since giving customers the power to decide what meals are worth.

More power to the consumer and an imperative to operate honestly for businesses, with increased revenue for those offering the best food and experience - participatory pricing is win-win.

I’d be interested to learn of experiences others have had with participatory pricing and in which industries you think it’ll have the greatest impact.

Ticket Master redirected fans to the site TicketsNow for tickets to an upcoming Bruce “The Boss” Springsteen concert when tickets were sold out on the Ticket Master site. The issue: tickets on TicketsNow were marked-up by up to 1000-plus dollars, not to mention the fact that Ticket Master owns TicketsNow and receives 15% of its revenue.

The collaboration that fueled the massive suit was lead by none other than The Boss himself. Speaking to fans through his website, Springsteen said, “We perceive this as a pure conflict of interest. The abuse of our fans and our trust by Ticketmaster has made us as furious as it has made many of you.”

Cudos to Springsteen for using the Web to bring fans together to call Ticket Master for this blatant foul on their customers.  The company was sued in both New Jersey and Ontario. Ticket Master settled the New Jersey suit, agreeing to pay $350,000 US to the state. In Ontario, the matter is yet to be resolved.

Bloomberg.com reported that as a result of the pressure from customers, “Ticketmaster  issued an apology Feb. 4 for having steered Springsteen fans to TicketsNow and vowed to refund them the price difference between the face value of tickets and those purchased inadvertently through the reseller. Fans also will no longer be shown a link to the resale market unless the artist agrees.”

Chalk up another point for consumers coming together to demand better behaviour from companies, and give assists to Springsteen and Wikinomics on the play.

Their approach has been a critical part of Southwest’s success (and WestJet’s as well). One organization who has certainly attempted to duplicate the Southwest/WestJet approach is public transit organization GO Transit. GO Transit operates train transportation through a number of commuter routes in a 100 kilometer radius of downtown Toronto.

I have recently taken note of their new approach to engaging with their customers. On the GO Train, communication with passengers occurs over a PA system. It used to consist solely of monotonous reminders of upcoming station stops (eg “Hamilton this station stop…Hamilton”) and safety reminders (eg “Please stand clear of the yellow line…”). Then, suddenly and strangely, GO Transit ‘Customer Service Ambassadors’ (that’s the new title of the GO Transit employees who speak over the PA) came to life. It was clear that they had been given permission to stray from the old, scripted recitals and to try cracking jokes about travel delays or the weather. The trouble is that in Canada, living in -20 degree Celsius whether is something we’re proud to say we do, but not something that we find funny.

As a frequent GO Transit traveller, I really wish that this was an approach that fit. But it doesn’t. There are two key reasons why GO Transit’s use of “engaging” Customer Service Ambassadors (analgous to flight attendants) is ineffective and, honestly, unpleasant for the customer:

1. When Southwest and WestJet attendants engage with customers, customers have the opportunity to engage with them. In the case of GO Transit, Customer Service Ambassadors are visible to only the passengers seated near them (I’d imagine less than 5% on the average route). Because of this, their attempt at engaging with customers varies little from the one-way PA broadcasting of old. Unlike on planes, GO Transit customers cannot see or talk to Customer Service Ambassadors.

2. Most people do not want to be on the GO Train. Most experience the same route twice per weekday. Southwest and WestJet  benefit from the feelings of novelty held by their customers. For many of their customers, a flight is exciting and to be remembered. Because the same cannot be said of GO Transit passengers, Customer Service Ambassadors have little to speak jovially about. The result: vain attempts at making light of circumstances that passengers really don’t find amusing.

GO Transit would do well to reevaluate its customer service approach. It isn’t Southwest, nor is it WestJet. Yes, engaging customers should always be a key consideration for most any firm. However, as GO Transit has shown me, attempting to engage the customer cannot be done for the mere sake of it. Before tinkering with the customer experience, firms need to ask whether their service truly lends itself to an opportunity for enhanced engagement.

What led me to this consideration was a conversation I recently had with a friend. Actually, it was more of a gleeful demonstration. In the midst of an ordinary conversation, my friend, holding his iPhone yells, “Oh yah check this out! 37 days, 17 minutes, and 5 seconds without smoking! Woo!” I’ve seen people excited about their phone’s latest trick, but this was different. And I’ve never shared in someone’s cell phone glee as much as I did on this occasion. It wasn’t because he had shown me the greatest or even most innovative app in the history of mankind/mobile communication. All he had shown me was a very simple app that read, “You have been a non-smoker for 37 days, 17 minutes, and 5 seconds.” This simple app had had a clear and profoundly positive effect on his life. Would he have had the same results had he written his goal to stop smoking on a post it note? I don’t think so.

This is a simple example, making use of some simple technology. But this story is a tidbit of evidence contrary to any notion that cell phones are nothing more than “annoying toys” (the readers of Wikinomics aren’t likely among those subscribing to this viewpoint, but we can all name 4 or 5 people who do).

Health care is already putting our digital companions into action in a number of innovative ways (the field of health informatics is a shining example). My friend has used a simple cell phone app to help him improve his health. The bottom line: thinking of cell phones as merely devices for playing ‘pointless games’ or calling loved ones from the grocery store completely limits their potential to be invaluable tools in areas like health informatics and health care.  

There’s no question that homeless youth, like mainstream youth, see a cell phone as a necessity. I’ve spoken to youth shelter workers who have told me that they receive countless calls from bill collectors. Why? The only contact number the youth have to give their service provider is the number for the front desk at the shelter.

What’s interesting to consider is that a cell phone might be far more important to a homeless youth than mainstream youth. Consider being in a job interview and not being able to provide a number at which the potential employer can reach you. Would you want to give the number for the shelter you’re staying at? That probably won’t help you land the job.

There are clear benefits in terms of accessing health information as well. A street kid probably isn’t getting the same health info (for example, STI awareness) as is the kid who gets that spiel at school, not to mention being able to Google any health concern to find a wealth of info on the topic of choice. Shelter operators may consider building a database of the phone numbers of past and present shelter users. The operator could easily text or send a service announcement (of sorts) to hundreds of in-need youth within seconds. The content of the message might be related to anything from STI education, to who in the city is looking for manual laborers, to a notification of when the next meal will be served at the shelter.

Beyond these day-to-day messages, a cell phone could prove to be an important life line, connecting the youth to emergency services. We all proclaim the safety benefits of carrying a cell phone. Who is more likely to be in an emergency situation that requires police or ambulance? The typical middle-class person, or the street kid who is faced with a myriad of health risks and surrounded by a culture of drugs and violence?

Food, clothes, and shelter are clearly any street youth’s top priorities. But let’s condsider how health, safety, and employment outlooks might be augmented by realizing the benefit that basic cell phone technology can have for homeless youth.

Please do share your perspective and related experience!

To see what a leading anxiety disorders specialist thought about our use of online health sites I went to Dr. Randi McCabe, Psychologist-In-Chief at Hamilton, Ontario’s St. Jospeh’s Health Care. Part of her anxiety disorders research has examined the extent to which health-realted sites provoke anxiety. She was able to put the dangers and benefits of online health info searching into perspective for me.

“For peope who can critically evaluate the information that’s online, it’s great. For people who continuosly doubt their health, people with health anxiety in specific, these sites often make matters worse. On (a site like Patients Like Me [mentioned here and here]), a health anxiety patient might hear about a side effect of their medication. That will provoke anxiety and from there the patient might get to such a high level of anxiety that he or she will stop taking medication or stop going to counselling. In that case, the info online can have indirect, negative health consequences.”

What I took away from my conversation with Dr. McCabe is that for people with moderate-to-severe health anxiety disorders, online health info can provoke extreme anxiety. But for anyone who is not “health anxious” already, the Internet is generally a helpful health resource.

So let’s stop prepetuating this rumour of a cyberchondria epidemic, continue to be responsible consumers of information, and recognize legitimate online health communities as genuine sources of help and support.

Why not? They rely on an archaic and inefficient mode of teaching.

Prison education (personal development courses, GED, and post-secondary courses) rely on correspondence via travel (by educators to correctional facilities) and old-school postage. Computers are rare and the use of the Internet, or even Intranets, is prohibited.  

This story suggests that decreased funding for prison education in the United States makes it increasingly  difficult to successfully implement prison education via traditional correspondance. It explains that efficient, interactive prison classes – in which the students and professor interact through live video feeds – have the potential to vastly increase the odds that an inmate will start and complete courses or even an entire degree.

Open University (OU), a largely online-correspondence UK institution, has 1,400 student-inmates in 148 prisons. Officials from the school are calling for greater adoption of technology by prisons to facilitate the inmates’ learning. Anne Pike, Teaching Fellow in OU’s Offender Learning Program believes that, “If (inmates) are going to be rehabilitated into the modern world, offenders must access modern technologies. It is necessary for employment as well as coping with the fast pace of life. ” (Read the rest here).

If we wanted to use modern, common technology to provide enhanced education to prisoners we could (after cutting through all of the red tape). It could be done efficiently and at a high level of quality. The question is, do we want to?

For the inmate on Death Row guilty of the type of crime we try not to think about, the use of a computer or Internet is a priveledge lost, and deservedly so. But think of the marginalized 18 year-old serving a 3 year term for a robbery - a robbery that he committed, perhaps, to get cash to pay for food or health care bills. Assuming that this 18 year-old enrolls in some educational program in prison, should he receive an inefficient and expensive “snail mail education,” or should he have the opportunity to develop himself through an efficient and relevant education that harnesses the power of common computer technology?

I look foward to hearing your take on this issue.

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HNIC used to be North America’s sole source for televised hockey games. For Canadians in particular, Saturday was synonomous with one thing: HNIC on CBC. But for years, fans have been asking, “What’s so special about Saturday night?” After all, basic cable broadcasts 2-3 games a week, and if you’re still looking for more, you can purchase the NHL Network (or a team-specific channel like LeafsTV), and watch hockey 7 nights a week. CBC clearly faces a challenge in maintaining the popularity of HNIC. So how exactly are they promoting their product?

As Andrea Bettello wrote here, many fans were outraged when the CBC sold the rights to the HNIC theme song in 2008 (for anyone outside of Canada, the HNIC theme song probably rivals ‘O Canada’ and ‘Happy Birthday’ as the tune most widely recognized by Canadians). But maybe CBC was on to something. After selling the theme song, they held a contest asking Canadians to write the new HNIC theme song, actively engaging thousands of fans in the process. But surely there are further steps CBC could take to engage and retain viewers. (Obviously they have taken such steps or this post would never have been written).

When I sat down to watch the Toronto Maple Leafs get beat by the Philadelphia Flyers on HNIC last Saturday night I wasn’t expecting any Wikinomics-related content from the CBC. But then I was struck by a commercial for ‘Hockey Night MashUp‘. On the Hockey Night MashUp site (which has been in operation since the start of the season), fans can create a mashup highlight reel using a selection of clips from HNIC broadcasts. With the application, fans can choose clips specific to their favourite team. Clips are even categorized (e.g. ‘Goals’ or ‘Celebrations’). Now, this may not seem all that cutting-edge. But, believe me, for HNIC, whose main draw for the past 20 years has been 74 year-old former NHL coach Don Cherry, this is innovative.

I’ve been watching HNIC since I was 3. There were no other games televised, at least in my cable-free home, at that time. Needless to say, HNIC is close to my heart and has special meaning. But in order to resonate with anyone who doesn’t have a deep-seated connection to their broadcasts, HNIC must engage viewers in innovative ways. They indeed seem to be doing so, and not without the help of Wikinomics principles.

(Also note that HNIC has paired with Tim Hortons [sic] on their ‘Every Cup Tells a Story’ campaign [as written about by Jude Fiorillo here], to introduce ‘Stories From the Rink‘).

We’ve all heard about how technology, namely the internet, is ruining lives in a number of different ways. Personally, instead of resisting and complaining about the fact that we live in a “plugged-in world,” I’m more interested in how digital interconnectedness can directly improve quality of life. One field that is important to quality of life that could benefit from embracing innovation is mental health counselling.

Traditionally, mental health counselling is delivered behind the closed doors of health care institutions and the private offices of the professional delivering the treatment. This represents a significant barrier to care that is particularly relevant to NetGeners, who can be reluctant to access traditional, face-to-face counselling (particularly in instances of social phobia or agoraphobia). 

In this article, I learned that psychologists seem to be picking-up on the need to make changes to the traditional model of counselling in order to provide more help to more people. What exactly are they suggesting be used as a tool in counselling NetGeners? Social networking sites, namely Facebook.

Online counselling (or e-counselling), is not entirely new. (The Wikinomics Playbook [p. 31] actually discusses how wikinomics principles can be applied to mental health treatment). However, more engaging e-counselling models are foreign to many mental health professionals, particularly for use with NetGeners (although check out this grief-counselling site for teens).

It is promising to learn of mental health professionals who are “reaching out” by adopting new modes of engagement in order to meet the needs of NetGeners. The full potential of social networking sites as counselling tools has obviously not yet been realized. However, to provide the highest level of care to the greatest number of people it will be necessary for health care providers to tap-into these channels.