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Phil's Blogservations
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Posted by philgomes 12:07 PM
A Tale Of Two CountriesA Tale Of Two Countries
Wow... What a week.
It started with my day-long social media seminar at the Associação Brasileira de Comunicação Empresarial (ABERJE) in São Paulo Brazil. About thirty professional communicators were in attendance from companies both regional and global.
Essentially, I took the core parts of the week-long immersion program I do at Edelman and compressed it into one day. (Turns out this week would maintain its focus on the art of compression, since I had to further condense my talk to 75 minutes for PRSA the following Sunday.) The session went off without a hitch, thanks to the hard work of James Heffernan and Carolina Soares, who organized this education series. There's also a Flickr photoset of the event.
Was oddly refreshing to see that the same things that concern corporate communicators in Brazil — the over-wrung possibility of an ambush by any angry online mob, the weighty task of inspiring cultural change toward social marketing within companies, the and so on — are pretty much the same than in the U.S.
From what you might gather at Orkut or, as I once experienced, a trip to the predominantly Lusophone "Orientation Island" in Second Life, Brazil is rapidly coming up to speed on all-things-Internet-and-Web-2.0. The country boasts the most online users in Latin America (15M to 49M, depending on whether you count public-access use) and yet has the greatest Digital Divide: 11% are "haves" versus "have-nots" if you take the 15M figure and divide it by the general population.
Some doubters might ask why Brazilian communicators would expend time and resources building programs or at least developing a POV on online communities where the nationwide online penetration is 11 percent.
In answer, I'd ask American communicators "Wouldn't you have wanted to be ready when U.S. Internet penetration reached 11 percent?"
Yeah... Thought so...
And therein lies Brazil's opportunity. The same spirit that brought the country to energy-independence within three decades could make it not only the next epicenter for Internet growth but also innovation — especially if the country makes smart infrastructure choices at this critical stage.
Back in the states... Throw in an expiring moratorium on Internet taxation (on my future wife's birthday, no less), and a murky net neutrality picture and you might find yourself begging for Orkut invites again.
I got a good idea of Brazil's online spirit the following day, Oct. 19. Thanks to the hard work of Thiane, Cecilia, and Thiago in Edelman's São Paulo office, I got to meet Brazilian bloggers Lucia Freitas, Alexandre Fugita, Alexandre Inagaki, Henrique Martin, Edney Souza, and Manoel Netto. Our bus tour took our group through São Paulo to a quiet picnic full of fascinating and entertaining discussion at Ibirapuera Park.
See writeups from Lucia and Fugita. If your Portuguese is, well, as bad as mine, you'll have to rock the Babelfish and take your chances. Leticia also posted about my trip on YJDGU.
There are also photos from Edelman Brasil, Manoel, and yours truly, plus two from Lucia.
I came there to teach, but ended up learning a helluva lot more. Owing to awe, humility, and my unforgivably bad command of Portuguese, all I can say at this point is "muito obrigado"!
UPDATE: Edelman São Paulo's Thiane Loureiro posts.
UPDATE 2: Manoel Netto weighs in over at Tecnocracia.
Technorati Tags: brasil, brazil, aberje, blogs, sao paulo, social media
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This is the blog of Phil Gomes, SVP with Edelman Digital and senior advisor to the Society for New Communications Research. This blog not only discusses PR and media matters, but Phil's everyday observations about a variety of topics. Phil currently resides in Chicago, IL.
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