Pay very, very close attention to what’s going on at CBC Unplugged. If you’re active in the field of labour relations, that site may just be a crystal ball into your future.

It’s the latest project from locked-out CBC producer Tod Maffin (whose name appears so often on these pages partly because he’s produced my pieces from time to time, but mainly because he’s doing such fascinating stuff). At one level, it’s a blog aggregating the voices of CBC employees… and, admirably, CBC management as well:

And, since some people have asked, this is my own personal blog. I’m trying to provide balanced coverage. This site is not a production of either the CBC or the CMG.

But CBC Unplugged is also the home for a wide range of podcasts by CBC staffers — and ground zero for a revolution in bargaining communications.

Studio Zero is one such venue for all that sidelined CBC talent to carry on their craft, communicating on behalf of the employees. The result is a well produced, engaging show with a lot of familiar voices.

The show isn’t limited to the Internet. A number of independent, co-op and campus radio stations are broadcasting Studio Zero as well. And between the podcasts and broadcasts, the employees’ message is reaching a lot of ears. Tod reports:

The CBCunplugged.com podcast feed is now among the top-ten of all podcasts in Canada (iTunes.com). In one day, nearly a thousand people downloaded the Vancouver podcast by clicking from my site alone. This does not include the people subscribed on the feed or who downloaded from the CMG site. Today, 6,253 ���unique visitors��� visited the blog -��� about a third were returning visitors. I have never seen traffic like this.

Here are two interesting things about all of this.

One: These employees have realized just how central they are to the CBC’s brand. The individual on-air personalities, the recording expertise, the production prowess — they’re all key to the distinctive CBC sound, not to mention the quality of CBC’s programming. Obviously the union doesn’t have the kind of resources the corporation has, but if the lockout persists, and sponsors start lining up, Studio Zero could have real legs… and might well outlive the dispute that spawned it. Other unions may well look to this experience to see ways where they, too, could supplant the employer in case of a lockout or strike.

And two: this isn’t an official union production. The Canadian Media Guild certainly isn’t unhappy about it, and is allowing members to apply time spent on Studio Zero against their picket line duty. But the content isn’t vetted beforehand, and not every minute is on-message; one streeter includes a comment from someone who’s perfectly happy with the CBC’s current management-only programming.

For that matter, Tod’s site feed includes comments from CBC management, a link to the corporation’s e-mail newsletter on the lockout, and criticism of both sides:

To get this thing resolved and put the programming you’re used to back on the air, we need your help. Both sides need to get back to the table. Both sides claim they would if they other will. It’s silly. It reminds me of grade three.

What does all of this mean for labour communicators?

For one thing, while management will continue to have the luxury of speaking with a single voice, that may prove increasingly difficult for unions. Individual members will increasingly use blogs and other forums to publicly express their views on bargaining strategy, lockouts and strikes, and not all of them will be working from talking points. (A group of Radio-Canada employees have already started their own French-language podcast; the first episode is available here. And it’s not just audio. An Edmonton CBC host is presenting Lockout Blues, a video report
on the lockout.)

In high-profile situations, the media will be looking for deviations from the union line, and their initial impulse will be to report them as a sign of division — an interpretation management will be happy to encourage and exploit. Antagonistic reporters and commentators will also scour those blogs for inflammatory rhetoric they can use to characterize the union as extremist and unreasonable. Unions will face constant demands to issue condemnations, clarifications and rebuttals; if they accede, they’ll be on the defensive and off message. That’s new and difficult terrain to navigate…

…but exciting terrain, too. Here are just a few reasons why this is good news for labour communicators and unions:

1. This new environment will put a premium on engaging honestly and constantly with members and activists — which effective unions already know how to do well. That, in turn, will help them develop messages and strategies that resonate more powerfully with members, and strengthen the union’s voice with broader audiences.
2. For some members who have felt uncomfortable speaking up in traditional settings — those who are intimidated by public speaking, for example — blogging offers an appealing route into involvement with union issues. So does participating through comments in blogs set up by other members. And participating in that kind of discussion is a step closer to more active participation in the union itself.
3. Let a million flowers bloom. Of course there will be disagreement; the democratic nature of the labour movement is one of its greatest strengths and its strongest appeal. There will also be plenty of members who want to blog about their agreement with the union’s position — and they can do so with a level of personal authenticity that management can only dream of.
4. There is a growing broader public within the blogging world, one that is suspicious of institutional voices but open to talking and listening to individuals. Your members’ blogs can be a key channel to that audience.
5. Member blogs provide one more way for the union leadership to engage with members. Joining conversations in comment areas will require a certain amount of judiciousness, but can be very fruitful — not just in responding to member concerns, but in gaining a richer sense of some members’ opinions and ideas.

As the reach of blogging grows, organizations’ communications efforts will soon look less like a seamless gleaming whole, and more like an atom — a tightly bound nucleus of disciplined messaging at the centre, surrounded by a diffuse cloud of electrons: members, supporters and activists, all communicating in their own (sometimes conflicting) ways.

But don’t think for a moment that means abandoning the strengths of a traditional communications strategy. A compelling message, careful research, a well-defined audience, a clear goal, the right vehicles — if anything, these become even more important to ensuring a strong, clear voice for working people and the organizations they create.

Ladies and gentlemen, put your hands together for Evan Leeson’s blog, blurt.info, the newest addition to my blogroll.

I’ve known Evan since we worked together in a squat concrete building known as The Bunker, on the grounds of the BC Legislature, during the last months of Mike Harcourt’s government and the first months of Glen Clark’s. We’d have long conversations about the Net and online technologies that would leave me full of hope and a sense of possibility, even though my head was hurting from having my brain stretched.

Now he’s at it again. His latest post suggests that Web 2.0 (that bundle of social networking technologies that ranges from news feeds to Flickr to wikis to blogs) isn’t just a cool way of remixing information and refining your Rolodex — it’s a channel to God.

Ow. Ow ow ow ow ow.

Pat Robertson today:

A US TV evangelist has said comments in which he appeared to call for the assassination of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez were misinterpreted.

Pat Robertson on Monday:

“If he thinks we’re trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it.”

A rant follows.

Read on…

A client just sent me a batch of files as background information. And my heart sank as I saw that procession of “.wpd” file extensions. Ugh: WordPerfect files.

There was a time when WordPerfect was the champion of the word processing world. That time was well over a decade ago, though, and Microsoft Word is now the undisputed leader while WordPerfect languishes in relative obscurity.

Read on…

Okay, I can understand bowdlerizing words like f**k and sh-t and j@k$%m*ckled… but as the son of a Dick (as in “short for Richard”), I’m a little narked at what seems to be going on in this screenshot of the iTunes podcast directory:

I’m not sure if this silliness is happening at Apple’s end, but the Chronicle’s RSS feed happily uses the D-word without any apparent fear of causing offence.

Andy Budd is making iTunes smart playlists jump through some pretty impressive hoops, all in the service is keeping a fresh supply of music cycling through. If you’re starting to feel your tunes are getting stale, have a look at his techniques – they’re pretty impressive.

Meanwhile, he tosses off a quick aside that’s worth its weight in gold records:

Here is a quick tip that frustrated me for a while, so I thought I’d pass it on. Selecting a song in a playlist and hitting backspace simply removes that song from said playlist. If you want to remove the song from iTunes you need to do Option (Alt) Backspace. And if you want to delete the song from your computer you can do Command (Apple key), Option (Alt) and Backspace.

To echo Alex:

We’ve been delighted with our current hosts, Ace of Space, but as our site and domain empire expands, it’s beginning to look like it would be economical for us to get a hosting package that allows unlimited domains.

A friend recommends IV Hosting, which offers 3GB of space and unlimited domains for only US $99/year. A great deal, but not the most widely-known company, so we’re exploring the various possibilities. After all, switching web hosts isn’t like buying a house or getting married; it’s a serious, long-term commitment that can potentially enhance or destroy your connections to the outside world.

So I’d be delighted to hear from anyone with a reseller host to recommend. We’re looking for hosting of unlimited domains, ideally also IMAP support, and somewhere or other I swear I saw somebody offer free domain registrations into the deal. We might also consider Virtual Private Server options but those sound a bit high-maintenance, so I think we’ll be happier with a reseller package.

I’m going to stress how much we’ve appreciated the service at Ace of Space. Unless you’re planning on unleashing the kind of online presence that requires a huge boardroom stainless steel chairs, a giant illuminated map of the world and a guy at the head of the table stroking a white persian cat — which is more or less what we have in mind — they’re a terrific solution.

I was just pointed to the folks at gVisit.com, who run a clever service using Google Maps to show you the locations of the 20 most recent visitors to your web site.

Setting up is simple: give gVisit your web site’s name and URL, and they give you a little code snippet to paste on whatever web pages you’d like to track. Within an hour, you’re looking at a map of the globe, with Google’s little push-pin-like icons showing you where your visitors are coming from.

Very nice, very simple… but something’s missing here: a privacy policy. What information is it that gVisit is collecting from my visitors? How are they storing it, and for how long? Under what conditions can I ask them to delete it?

Some early adopters aren’t concerned:

Before you get all Privacy Advocate on them, know that they’re using information that is already public. Your IP address (which you give to every web page you connect to already) can be used to find out, roughly, where you are.

True. But now I, the web site you’re visiting, am sharing that information with a third party — and unless I came right out and told you, you wouldn’t know that.

What’s more, gVisit is now in a position to aggregate that information from multiple sites. The more sites use their service, the more complete a picture they get of your surfing day.

Now, I’d be floored if they’re doing anything untoward; this is almost certainly just a genuinely useful little tool. But a little transparency would go a long way — especially because I’d like to be able to assure anyone visiting my site that their privacy is safe in my hands. I can’t do that if I don’t know what’s happening with my site data.

I’ve dropped the code into a single page, by the way. If you want to see it (and appear on my gVisit map, which doesn’t appear to give out any IP information), click here.

Update: Now that’s what I call responsive! Kevin Carey of gVisit has dropped me an e-mail to say,

I am working out a written policy. The main point that I hope people realize is that we do not collect any information about people. Our registration does not require a name or email address, and you cannot get from IP to an actual person’s name.