Conversation Agent - Valeria Maltoni

Making Headlines with the Wrong Story

Instead of investigating the funneling of Euroscepticism into Brexit and the reasons why Britain, once a land of ambitious colonizers, is descending into a dramatic spiral, The Economist decides to make fun of Italy. Perhaps cucumber on pizza (must be a British thing) can paper over the Government's embarrassment for the ridiculous twists and turns of the last few days. But the resignation of a Prime Minister is an opportunity for introspection. Ridicule may be entertaining, but it's rarely productive. According to the weekly report, Britaly is “a country of political instability, low growth and subordination to the markets.” The... Read more →

How Disinformation Became Part of the Current Narrative

Genuine two-way communication is not just dissemination. Information doesn't equal indoctrination. There's a line between getting attention and agitprop. Providing proof or evidence is not the same as the truth. Truth is a conclusion the other person gets to make. These were some of the principles I discussed in a conversation at Web 2.0 On November 19, 2009. You can see the visuals I used at the link. I cautioned communication professionals to exercise some self-awareness: Is what I'm saying true? Have I presented my client or product in a fair manner? Am I still listening? Have I made my... Read more →

Is the Internet a Significant Break from the Past?

And if so, how should we think about what we do with it? Innovation is not a single thing, a eureka (Greek for I have found) moment. There are many factors that go into taking a discovery to making an impact. Bringing something new to the world means standing on the shoulders of giants across generations and working with many people. Rather, innovation is a process where you match the right kinds of questions and the right strategies or resolve. But we should not confuse the objectives with the issues we're actually ready to tackle. As it often happens when... Read more →

What if Ordinary People had Actual Power in Social Media Platform Decisions?

If it were up to me — and many other people who love using Twitter to find ideas — Twitter lists would have been a much better product. Better than hashtags, Twitter lists are a simple way to signal interest and focus. The image above in just a small snapshot of the lists other people put me on. List inclusion depends on the topics and themes you write about and the content you share. I use lists to group topics, industries, and interests to accelerate my research. When Twitter lists first came out, I described them as a new mainstream... Read more →

Does the World Need New Storytelling?

“If all you offer is money, all you get are mercenaries,” says Frederik Gieschen. Incentives shape behavior. Wall Street may indeed need new storytelling.# Michael Lewis says the system is stale and needs a breath of new imagination. When a story gets stale, the business attached to it is stuck. Perhaps Wall Street's story is stale. But “the game of markets is as interesting, challenging, and alive as it has ever been.” The “work has become more challenging and interesting because the world is more complex and the game much more competitive.” Perhaps its the whole narrative that is stale.... Read more →

Design of Story, the Sensual Way

This photograph by Helmut Newton for Pirelli, the Italian group famous for its iconic and sensual calendars, never made it to a calendar. If the project had come to completion twenty-one years ago, there would be another prize out there for icon hunters to chase — the first, and only, Pirelli calendar made in Italy by Newton. Pirelli Italia asked Newton to envision the Calendar in the spring of 1985. The company didn't place any restrictions on his creativity, asking only that Pirelli the product appear in the shots. This was a new development, not just for the renowned photographer... Read more →

Language and the Media Narrative

“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world,” said Ludwig Wittgenstein. Most people prefer the use of known and simple words, to cover a lot of ground. Yet when we learn more words, we expand not just our verbal tool set, but also our mind and thinking. Yes, too many words can complicate things, but too few can get you stuck. Too few words limit your ability to tell a story. Fewer stories and you lose an important narrative. In history as in business culture, language matters. How language has changed In 2016, Umberto Galimberti, a contemporary... Read more →

Reclaiming Personal Power

“Look, part of the whole technique of disempowering people is to make sure that the real agents of change fall out of history, and are never recognized in the culture for what they are. So it's necessary to distort history and make it look as if Great Men did everything — that's part of how you teach people they can't do anything, they're helpless, they just have to wait for some Great Man to come along and do it for them.” Noam Chomsky said no qualifications are necessary to observe what's going on. In fact, anyone has the intellectual capacity... Read more →

Social Media Bubbles

Social media algorithms determine what you see when you search and scroll the platforms. Not your friends. Due to their serving tech companies business model, these algorithms are always changing. The changes can be difficult to measure for subsets of industries, never mind individuals. But these changes affect your business, if you rely on them. So from a business standpoint, you could view the rules of the game set by Facebook and Google as constraints. The Australian government seems to think so. They're looking to limit the scope of these arbitrary changes (NYT gated content): If the bill passes in... Read more →

A Conversation on Unvarnished Business

In March 2010, Patrick Prothe hired me to speak at the Fall User Conference he put together for the software company where he was working at the time. We've been in touch ever since. I was delighted to be guest No. 6 on his Unvarnished Business podcast. We talked about domains where I've built quite a bit of experience over the years: Community building–from the lessons learned grades sixth through eighth in Italy, to the ups and downs of a pre-social media online network run on a listserv and grown organically to an impressive referral and learning engine. Communications–from the... Read more →