Matt Fitzgerald's blog

Over a hundred brave humans signed up for our Big Listening 101 webinar to get an introduction to the concepts and methods that have animated our work here at Upwell for the last three years.

Whether you were able to join us on Thursday or not, we're happy to announce that you can now live, or relive, the magic as you see fit courtesy the Upwell YouTube channel.

For even more Big Listening we recommend the following:

• Peruse the #biglistening hashtag
• Follow our handy Twitter list of Big Listening 101 participants
• Check out (or even contribute to) the Big Listening 101 collaborative notes

 If you want to go even deeper, you can give our 2013 Pilot Report a read, or kick the tires on our recent State of the Online Conversation reports on ocean acidification and on overfishing.

What big mission or movement are you listening for? Tell us in the comments or on Twitter by using #biglistening.

So long, and thanks for all the fish!

On Tuesday, March 3rd at 11am pacific we'll be gathering online for The Overfishinar - a webinar about using the internet to raise awareness and drive action on important overfishing and fisheries issues. 

If you talk about overfishing or fisheries online, or if you're just overfishing-curious, join our crew of activists, scientists, bloggers, journalists, super-tweeters, and nonprofits to discuss how we can change the online conversation about overfishing in the best way, together. 

During the Overfishinar we will:

• Share findings from Upwell’s new Big Listening report on overfishing and fisheries online conversation
• Provide tips for increasing the volume of overfishing mentions online to drive attention and action
• Answer your questions and discuss your takeaways, with an eye toward supporting each other's work

Sign up now to reserve your spot (it's free)! 

For those of you who are Twitter inclined, we'll be using the hashtag #overfishinar to share the proceedings.

Happy internetting!

Today we're happy to announce the release of our latest Big Listening research on critical issues of ocean and environmental health.

Ocean Acidification: The State of the Online Conversation

This report is the result of crunching more than 30 months of online data to distill insights and takeaways for ocean-loving communicators, scientists, campaigners, funders and anyone, really, who wants to use their internetting for change. 

Take a look, and let us know what you think. We're all ears. 

Executive Summary

Full Report

Ocean Acidification Communications Cheat Sheet (new)

We'll be sharing and discussing the findings later today on the #Acidinar webinar (11am pacific / 2pm eastern). We'll post the recording once it's done. 

Onwards!

This morning I watched the marketing keynote from Salesforce’s Dreamforce conference. What follows is a grab bag of implications for nonprofits, activists and the social impact field in general. Let me know what you think in the comments or @fitz350. 

• The corporate world is moving to quickly integrate all marketing channels. While the “customer” experience has been cross-channel for years (think of using your phone to price-check something in a store, or to look up the yelp review of a restaurant you’re standing outside of), marketing data has mostly been siloed. Websites, and now apps, will increasingly deliver content that changes based on your behavior on other channels (email, web, social, even internet-of-things). 
• While individualized content has the potential deliver more of what we want, and less of what we don’t, there’s a real benefit to anonymity and the serendipity that results from unplanned interactions with the world. 
• We (still, and now more than ever) need strong protections for individual data. Complex algorithms could easily become black boxes of automated discrimination. You should have the right to see (and contest, and remove) the information being stored about you.
• Salesforce is betting heavily on the idea of putting the customer at the center of the experience, of building (or shifting toward) companies that are customer-centric. If you haven’t mapped out the various “journeys” (to use Salesforce speak) that your clients, supporters, donors or constituents go through when they interact with your organization, you’re definitely going to miss opportunities to improve their experience, let alone enhance that experience through individualized support or engagement. 
  
  
  
  
  A screenshot of the Journey Builder dashboard in the Salesforce Marketing Cloud.
  Each series of events can be triggered by a particular customer or constituent's actions (or lack thereof). 
   
• These “journeys” are the building blocks for customizing campaigns within Salesforce’s marketing

Ocean advocates and champions of science won Shark Week this year.

But oh, how the mighty have fallen.... As we explained in an earlier post, Discovery's Shark Week took a massive dive this year, losing nearly half its online conversational volume. This is a big deal for the 27 year-old television and new media empire - the kind that gives rise to groan-inducing headlines about Shark Week (and Discovery) jumping the shark.

Those who don't know their shark-jumping history are doomed to ill-fated waterski trips.

We here at Upwell pay close attention to Shark Week because it's the Internet's Super Bowl of sharks - or for that matter, anything ocean-related. Each year, across the web, viewers (and bandwagon hoppers) take to social media to share their reactions to the shows and, well, to sharks. Thankfully, most of those people are shark fans.

Because we f@$%in' love sharks, and recognize the danger they're in, for the past three years Upwell has brought the shark conservation community together through our Sharkinars (seriously!) to share tips and make plans to take advantage of the Megalodon-size opportunity that Shark Week presents for bringing new supporters to the cause. (Note: Megalodon, while real, is also extinct, and has been for millions of years).

This year Shark Week followed up its fake 2013 documentary on Megalodon with not one, but two fake documentaries. And on top of that, a host of shows that misrepresented the work of scientists, shared incorrect facts, and inspired fear where fear wasn't due. 

Thankfully, Team Ocean stood up and called out Discovery for abandoning their mission to air nonfiction content, and tarnishing the Shark Week legacy that inspired so many young shark scientists and fans. (And, admittedly, probably a lot of dorm-room stoners.)

Shark Week lost 9 million viewers in the process. Nine million. Let that sink in.

This hasn't been a good year for Shark Week but it's been a fantastic one for the shark lovers of Team Ocean.