Author: Christopher Carfi

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…And We’re Back

The Coastside got pounded today with an amazing storm.  Nine hour power outage; everything’s coming back on line now.  So, while the power was out, we built a robot.  Will have pix in a bit.

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Positively Certifiable

Pamacertifmarkmed
The great thing about social media is that it really is applicable across nearly every industry. As a result, the Cerado team gets exposed to a lot of interesting things along the way in domains that we normally wouldn’t experience in our day-to-day lives.

For example, did you know that the mechanics who work on aircraft do not need to be certified in order to do so? I bet you didn’t, and I wouldn’t be surprised if your opinion surrounding this area has now changed due to this revelation. Now, whilst they may not need to have a certification to work on the maintenance of such aircraft, they will almost definitely need a maintenance stand, that can be found at places like Platforms and Ladders – https://www.platformsandladders.com/aircraft-maintenance-products/model-15f1900-b1-maintenance-stand/ – to help them reach all areas of this mode of transportation to complete the job at hand. This will also maintain their safety at all times too which is very important in this industry. Whilst the mechanics don’t need a certification, it’s important to note that aircraft mechanics who are not certified must work under the supervision of a certified mechanic who can sign approval of the work before the aircraft or its equipment is considered airworthy. But still. I didn’t know that either until we started working with the Professional Aviation Maintenance Association (PAMA) last year, in helping them bring a new aviation maintenance certification to market. This certification will enable employers in the aviation industry to have a baseline from which to know which of their technicians actually have “the right stuff” and will also enable those in the industry to have a verifiable way to show their skills and separate themselves from the pack.

Although the PAMA certification journey is just starting, there’s already a ton of great stuff going on. PAMA is already:

Brian Finnegan, who is the Director of Certification Programs for the SAE Institute (PAMA’s sister organization) and the former President of PAMA itself, completely “gets it” with respect to what “conversation” means. The blog accepts unmoderated comments, and the JetBlast! Network accepts unmoderated postings. Of course, in an industry that is sometimes resistant to change (and where the “new” planes are sometimes 20 years old), Brian takes a David Sifry -esque approach to dealing with the issues that are raised in those areas of the community. (For example, here’s a good case study of how to handle criticism from a community member.)

So, the next time someone scoffs and says that this whole blogging / social media / community thing is just for geeks, point them over toward the PAMA site and show ’em how it’s being done in the real world.

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It’s Mine, All Mine(d)!


  Miner Headlamp 
  Originally uploaded by Mickipedia.

A brilliant, go-read-it-now post from Michael O’Connor Clarke brings up some great points on how he feels the various walled-garden social networking systems (e.g. Facebook, Spock, LinkedIn, etc.) are overstepping their bounds.  Clarke states his case:

"Hardly a day goes by without a handful of invitations to new social
networking services landing in my inbox. The e-friend machine du jour
seems to be this Spock thing. I’m
getting 3-4 ‘requests for my trust’ per day. And if it’s not Spock,
it’s Trig, or ECademy, or MyRagan, or Quechup, or some other Ning-based
abomination.

No offense to any eager YASNS developers out there,
and I really do appreciate the invitation, but frankly, I’m just
getting really tired of all these Web 2.oh communities that want to lay
claim to all of the content contributed by their users."

He then continues:

"Of course, the problem is not limited to Spock.  Facebook has pretty much the same rotten garbage in its ToS [Terms of Service], as does LinkedIn.

Here’s a use case: my Facebook profile
includes a sort of mini-aggregator. At some point, before I stopped to
think about these things, I plugged in a little FB app that reads my
RSS feed and republishes my blog posts inside the Facewall (to use Doc’s excellent phrase).

Outside
the Facewall, those blog posts live a carefree, pastoral existence –
roaming happily through the wilds of the Net, mostly unworried by
issues of ownership. Once inside Facebook, however, they become
potentially commercial objects – part of the giant content mill,
churning away in the never-ending quest to build a better advertiser
magnet.

Outside the Facewall, they’re mine and freely distributed to the world at large, under simple CC licensing provisions.

Once inside, though – now who do they belong to?

Still
me, I guess, but I’ve also unwittingly given the Facebookkeepers ‘an
irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid,
worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly
perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in
part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose, commercial, advertising, or otherwise,
on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare
derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User
Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing.’"

(Seriously, go read the whole thing if you haven’t already.)

So, how does this all shake out?  Say, for example, an excerpt from The Economist (ok, fine, The Onion) gets posted on my blog.  Say, then, some app or Facebook Beacon or the like hoovers my content into the walled garden.  Does what may have been "fair use" outside (on my blog) get its rights transmogrified once it gets pulled into another system in this way?