End of an era.... Xitter no more

When you find yourself tweeting/retweeting like I did this morning the very real evidence of civilizational collapse all around us, maybe it’s time to do something different with those minutes and hours and days.

Today I closed my last Xitter account after 17 years of daily use.

SEVENTEEN YEARS!

I’ve had a few accounts, but this was the holdout account and it’s formed the content of my KIP sensemaking framework for the past five years. (That’s okay, it’s just the end of a chapter since the framework and the data still exist and can be used, and await other editors, curators, contributors, and researchers.)

Closing the channel of the best news and opinion I’ve ever enjoyed with my carefully vetted lists of the best civic participators

Closing this particular social media account and ending my association with that platform is a great loss for me since it’s been my lifeline. I’ve just closed the channel of the best news and opinion I’ve ever enjoyed with carefully vetted powerhouse lists and follows of the best civic participators and my custom search and consumption practices that have consistently generated sharp, expert, early insights into current events.

It was my lifeline to the best news and opinion I’ve ever enjoyed due to my carefully vetted powerhouse lists, follows, and my custom search and consumption practices that have consistently generated sharp, expert, early insights into current events.

I guess I’ll just head over to LInkedin…where I see we’ve breached 7 of 9 planetary boundaries, and we’re past the point of national-scale mitigation. The dire immensity of this moment is a lot to take in.

However I’m eager to partake in the different pursuits that open up for me with the new-found time and attention. Especially because community resilience, local survival plans, and protecting each other is the only way forward.

“I’m eager to partake in the different pursuits that open up for me with the new-found time and attention. ”

— Especially because community resilience, local survival plans, and protecting each other is the only way forward.

TBT: I applied for a patent for social discovery on a short form mobile streaming platform

When I was a cofounder of a mobile streaming platform called Second Screen - later we called it “10 Block” to represent the blocks of 10 minute video it could stream to social viewers on our platform - our final chapter was an M&A journey. To document our novel idea, we applied to the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office in 2019.

As the chief operating officer of our early stage startup, I led the initiative to create our patent application with a patenting law firm. The project had unusual demands, as entrepreneurs so often face, and faced budget restrictions as well.

“I found a Vietnamese-speaking entrepreneur who could interview the tech team in Vietnam and produce a technical sketch of our system.”

— With her example I sketched the rest of the drawings to complete our application.

My work on this initiative included producing technical sketches of the system. This particular challenge involved locating a technically-minded entrepreneur familiar with patenting who could speak Vietnamese to interface with the development team in Vietnam who built the platform long before I joined the company. The sketches never existed, and the team had never produced a sketch.

Thanks to Gigi Wang at UC Berkeley’s School of Engineering Sutardja Center, I was able to connect with a local founder of a technical company who just graduated Berkeley with a PhD. She’s a brilliant woman who is currently CEO of her own startup addressing cognitive impairments with light and sound. Mai Nguyen had the skills and experience to be able to capture an accurate first sketch after just a half an hour call with the development team.

I’m not a technical person but I’m creative who can learn from a model and replicate it so once I had the first technical drawing I was able to produce all the rest of the drawings needed to make our patent application.

Our provisional application was filed in January 2020 with fellow 10 Block inventors Marc Lopez and Jade Gabriel.

TBT: I produced a planetarium exhibit about dinosaurs for a pioneering astrophysicist

When I was living in Kuala Lumpur, I produced a Planetarium theatre show for Malaysian Ministry of Science, Technology & the Environment.

In 1996, an astrophysicist chose me to explain what happened to the dinosaurs.

Dr. Mazlan Othman, director general of Malaysia’s Space Science Studies Division in the Prime Minister’s Department, chose me to produce an educational exhibit for schoolchildren of this newly industrialized nation in Southeast Asia.

I researched and wrote a script on the astronomic demise of the dinosaurs as found in the geologic record (it’s that iridium layer!), then supervised a staff of 20 scientists to produce the presentation.

I reported directly to Dr. Mazlan, a pioneer in Malaysian space exploration whose next professional role was to direct the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) in Vienna, and then to set up the National Space Agency in Malaysia.

To utilize the domed space theatre best, I designed surround-sound effects and music, supervised the sound recording, and oversaw the programming for a 20-projector system.

For the first time, the observatory’s suite of Minolta multimedia operations was used. I optimized and modeled its use in the program, and advised on needed upgrades.

I wrote a study guide for schoolteachers to accompany the permanent exhibit, which ran five times a day in two languages.

TBT 2011, 2013: false cosmopolitanism & brand mismanagement on social media

The Bellyflops of Social Media Mismanagement

I posted this in 2013 on my Medium page.

On the precipice of war, overreaching false cosmopolitanism continues. Plus, parents plan for unsustainable digital abstinence.

Today the Kenneth Cole Twitter account tweeted something thoughtless about “Boots on the ground” or not, don’t forget about sandals and loafers.

Nope.

Boots on the ground mean soldiers going to war possibly to be maimed or killed, and to wreak havoc on the lives of others. The precipice of war is not an opportunity to remind people you make loafers.

Feels like deja vu for Cole. Because it is. The brand flopped just like this in 2011.

In 2011 I made the connection between global mishaps of high profile brands and the false cosmopolitanism we’re all suffering.

There was Groupon’s SuperBowl ad fiasco, when the company attempted to mix consumerism with sensitive political, environmental, cultural, economic and social issues, and the Kenneth Cole Twitter debacle which appeared to make light of unrest in Cairo.

I wrote about earlier instances of the phenomenon of false cosmopolitanism in 2010. See links to that, and my influences below.

Access to the worldwide web makes us imagine we’re global thinkers. But most of us aren’t. Not even close.

In order to truly be global thinkers, we’d have to be xenophiles, actively and constantly bridging cultures, immersed and knowledgeable about multiple worlds.

Most people hang out in “like-minded microcosms” and when we cross a boundary online the new light shed on everyone’s prejudices and assumptions can take us by surprise.

This “xeno-confusion” is happening more often in the virtual realm, with higher and higher stakes.

Today’s other big story of social media mismanagement has been swiftly answered by Alexandra Samuel of Love Your Life Online. It falls into the category of unsustainable digital abstinence to solve problems that may crop up in the future.

“Don’t be scared to Facebook your kids,” she responds to Amy Webb’s piece at Slate “We Post Nothing About Our Daughter Online.”

Samuel writes: “Parenthood is such a central experience that there’s no way to cut it out of your online life without profoundly compromising your own ability to have authentic, meaningful connections online.”

That’s exactly right. Plus, digital abstinence doesn’t prepare you for the world your child will grow up in.

How are you preparing yourself for a wider world?

Conceiving of an Expat Harem inspired streaming series

Stealth project, defunct. Revolved a return to the cultural thread, in international streaming, if the time is right. (It wasn’t, 2022 and 2023 earthquakes and bombings changed the landscape, in a heated election year.)

Pitchbook for streaming series concept, 2022-2023

Expat Harem-related projects won't quit. The book is still for sale, and people are finding it like an actress in London who discovered it in a bookshop in London and sent it to a TV producer in Istanbul.

In 2022, at the request of that TV producer in Istanbul, I co-developed a streaming series concept inspired by the book "Tales from the Expat Harem" and its associated blog.

Collaborating with another writer, Katherine Belliel, whose Haze appeared in the book, and who coedited the sequel book Expat Sofra, we crafted a unique series that reflected the themes and stories from the original literary work.

This involved extensive research into the rights landscape, and entertainment legal agreements. We then pitched the concept to an international streaming service, leveraging our creative vision and strategic communication skills to present a compelling case for the globally accessible series.

The project demonstrated our ability to adapt literary content for a new digital medium while managing complex logistical and legal aspects.

Cassandra Awards for our news and information mapmakers

“Our news & information landscape has changed. Our mapmakers have changed. ”

— Announcing The Cassandra Awards for civic participators/participatory media/Fifth Estate content creators, dot connectors, and sense makers in our networks

Image: Using AI voice generation for an audio script of numerous quotes from my curated KIP (“Knowledge is Power”) sources on Twitter/Xitter which begin to tell the larger story of this moment, all in 5 minutes. Read the whole transcript here.

Image: This is the conclusion. I announce The Cassandra Awards. You’ve just heard words from some of my nominees.

LISTEN TO THE BIGGER PICTURE

You can listen here or read the transcript with credits here

“You’ve just heard words from some of my nominees.”

— I invite you all to check their receipts.

With The Cassandra Awards and other information interfaces for you to engage with, my passion project KIP aims to re-educate the entire population in digital media literacy, information literacy, digital civic literacy, and help de-program those who have fallen victim to disinformation.

Until we learn to be better information consumers, we'll keep falling for disinformation

The day after the 2024 US Election.

Related data points in my timeline:

A certain personality type is found to most readily fall for poor information.

Also, news- information- digital- and media-literacy are teachable and learnable.

We need to help people be better information citizens.

That fact has never been clearer. It’ll help people be better voters, better neighbors, and better able to collectively work on our biggest issues, all the way to the climate crisis. It’s why I keep looking for ways to bring KIP, my passion project of the past 9 years, to the world.

Click on any of the tags below to see my previous posts on these topics which millions are now waking up to today. Click on the headline of each post to open it and see continue clicking on the tags in each post to dive deeper.

Let's recap

I nominate Stephanie LB @LincolnsBible Black for a Cassandra Award.

Here’s the summer before. 2018.

“Treason is the reason for the season, someone said on Twitter.

I shared it on my Instagram along with contemporary Tweets from Louis Neufeld who was very early on many germane threads that drive our headlines today. Her 2017 threads deserve a receipts challenge. I nominate her for a Cassandra Award.

What should journalism do to reveal the state of our democracy?

Here come the CONTENT CREATORS - 400 million impressions at the Democratic National Convention

I feel quite vindicated this month. The central contention of KIP, my passion project of the past decade, is hitting the mainstream. Everybody sees it!

A journalism society talked about feeling insulted this week. Meanwhile, journalists in the mainstream media had their lunch eaten last week by 200 ‘social media influencers’ invited to the Democratic National Convention who reached 400 million impressions (4x what cable news generated) for a media value of $800 million.

What a masterclass in disinter-media-tion. The Democrats went straight to the people.

The mainstream ‘journalism’ hits keep coming, with Dana Bash of CNN recycling racist Trump taunts as if it’s legitimate journalistic work in the first cable news mainstream media interview of the HARRIS WALZ team. Don’t waste our time!

I cannot help but notice these are the very same social media contributors I've been talking about as the non-traditional bridge media we need to connect to traditional journalism, and I conceived a framework to do that with my passion project KIP.

Journalists, it’s long past time for you to stop feeling insulted and get to work connecting with the people who are bringing news to us. They could use your rigor and training and experience, and we will all benefit from it. Democracy demands it.

By the way, I have a plan for that. Take a look at the KIP framework to connect journalists with content creators (I call them the Fifth Estate) and trusted independent parties to vet, frame, and generate discussion, games, research, education and commerce using current events.

Crazy Rich Asians & the impact of my work: I helped save an architectural gem in Southeast Asia

Remembering the time when I conceived, pitched, wrote, sold, published a three page story in a top newsweekly magazine out of Hong Kong that highlighted a historical building at risk from nearby development to 93,000 elite members of government, business and the arts.

The article had impact.

The year after the article was published, the building won a newly created UNESCO Heritage Award.

To promote the conservation of the greatest diversity of the region’s built heritage, in the year 2000 UNESCO inaugurated the annual Asia-Pacific Awards for Cultural Heritage Conservation, a program designed to respond to the question: “Within the realities of contemporary, fast-track development, what of the built heritage do Asians value and want to preserve from the past to inform the region’s place in the global future?”

• quoted from TheSiamSociety.org Lessons from the UNESCO Asia-Pacific Awards for Cultural Heritage Conservation: International Best Practices in Thailand

  Richard Engelhardt, Montira Horayangura Unakul and Julia Davies

In 2018 you saw this historic property in the film Crazy Rich Asians, which used it as a setting.

You know it from Crazy Rich Asians. I championed its story in 1998.

Video retrospective of GlobalNiche, my remote skills edtech startup 2011-2013 and beyond...

“Her groundbreaking concept of building an online professional presence as a way to advance business objectives for growth and sustainability… came long before companies understood the marketing potential of online social media, and began to hire social media managers in large numbers. And long before people understood why and how to use existing tools for effective remote work.”

— Tanya Monsef

I founded GlobalNiche in Istanbul with Tara Agacayak after evolving my 2006 cultural book to a 2010 global citizen blog to an online skill building business, and Tanya Monsef joined us when I moved to San Francisco. Here’s what Tanya, the Dean's Executive Professor of Management in the Leavey School of Business at Santa Clara University for the past decade, says about GlobalNiche in 2024.

Watch a quick retrospective, excuse any missing media.

"Anastasia’s groundbreaking concept of building an online professional presence as a way to advance business objectives for growth and sustainability… came long before companies understood the marketing potential of online social media, and began to hire social media managers in large numbers. And long before people understood why and how to use existing tools for effective remote work.

Tanya recalls how I took my knowledge and prior success using book publishing’s “author platform” concept to reach the public with content marketing, branding and community outreach (that’s Expat Harem!), and combined it with the heavily-online techniques a serial expat like me has relied on during my overseas experiences, and then how I created a way to teach it to others, and then to scale it.

"GlobalNiche was a forward-thinking leader in digital solutions and thought leader to a global cohort of founders and business women, as well as organizations serving female innovators.”

This reminds me that Tanya and I continued to deliver talks and workshops well into 2014 and later, working with the Women’s Startup Lab in Mountain View, Turkish Women’s International Network in Menlo Park, and a women executives group at Cisco in San Jose, and I’ve guest lectured to her business students at Santa Clara University for several years.

““Ten years before Zoom became mainstream, GlobalNiche were already conducting live web video group meetings (using chat, recordings, etc) showcasing an ability to foresee trends and implement innovative solutions to increase opportunity. ”

— Tanya Monsef

"Ten years before Zoom became mainstream, GlobalNiche were already conducting live web video group meetings (using chat, recordings, etc) showcasing her ability to foresee trends and implement innovative solutions to increase opportunity,” she says.

"GlobalNiche was awarded Top Instructor by Udemy in 2013 as the most enrolled course.” You’ll see in the quick video above that Udemy noted we enrolled students from 17 nations in 2013.

Tanya recalls our 2013 win of an innovation challenge to connect 5 million women by national and international gender equality foundations, global health nonprofits, and academic leadership centers.

The multi-year strategic change initiative of San Jose State University, Public Health Institute (PHI), World Pulse, the Global Women's Leadership Network, Monterey Institute of International Studies, and the Global Fund for Women recognized GlobalNiche's pragmatic, resourceful plan to use free web technology and collaboration tools for connecting and transforming communities world-wide.

“In 2013 GlobalNiche won an innovation challenge to connect 5 million women, recognition of a pragmatic, resourceful plan to use free web technology and collaboration tools.”

— Tanya Monsef

ON CONTRIBUTING TO THE FUTURE OF WORK MOVEMENT

In 2014, I looked back on the workforce pioneering I’d done during GlobalNiche, and noted how awareness and adoption was coming for people who hadn’t yet felt the need for this online survival method:

“I’m proud to have added definition to, contributed to & participated in the movement toward every-day entrepreneurial thinking and acting and creative entrepreneurship as a solution for everyone, the incorporation of location independence and lifestyle design in populations beyond expats, travelers and life hackers, a new seriousness around digital identity, personal branding, digital footprints and online social networking in general for personal and professional development, reinvisioning the future of work with online collaboration and cocreation, the adoption of global communication best practices, the absolute tidal wave of online content marketing, the rise of the transformational consumer.”

Academic review of my anthology highlights gender themes, the hamam stories put people on planes

Now you can listen to KIP's Emerging Narrative...thanks to AI voice generator

Consider this audio a companion to the Bigger Picture video of various quotes I’ve collected rather than a mirror image…there’s more to this multifaceted story.

“A unique curation of emergent voices describing this moment we find ourselves in.”

— KIP

This is my first experiment with AI voice generation using a script made from individual quotes from civic participators I’ve been tracking for last past 7 years, describing this moment we find ourselves in. Quote credits in the images below and a full list to come.