If a college student asks me, “When is it acceptable to use a smartphone during a business meeting?” then I must confess that my only answer is “I have no idea … at all.”

Yesterday I offended a colleague by using my smartphone during a meeting, and it’s not the first time that this has happened. I respect and quite like this particular colleague, so I feel quite badly about the faux pas. However, the incident crystallized this question that has been floating in the back of my mind for some time now.

Before you merely label me a heathen with no sense of business etiquette, consider the facts of the case and a recent conversation with a highly successful alumnus of our program.

Students were presenting a strategic communication campaign, and their research raised a great question about the brand. The question. They cut to the heart of the matter. And sitting in the back of the room against the wall, I realized that their question was so good and so fundamental that I didn’t know the answer.

But I did know that the answer was merely a click away on my iPhone. So I set the phone on the notebook on which I was taking notes, Googled the question, and quickly learned the answer.

The volume of the phone was, obviously, off, and sitting on the notes on my lap, the physical movement of my Google search could not have been more animated than taking notes. And most people in the room were taking notes. So it could not have been a visual distraction.

Yet being on the phone was offensive in and of itself. As a behavioral scientist, I find this fascinating.

To me, information always is preferable to no information. And my data searching was subtle, especially considering that I was against the back wall behind the tripod videotaping the presentation. All eyes were, rightly, on the students.

Thus the faux pas was philosophical in nature.

I wish that I could claim complete innocence and report that as soon as I learned the answer, I pocketed the iPhone. I did not. I sent a couple of tweets about the presentation. Also discretely but less innocent, philosophically.

Industry perspective

My smartphone usage ruffles feathers more often than I would like, and because of this, the people who chafe at my usage likely would be shocked by how often I refrain from relevant searches due to feelings of etiquette.

All of this likely would merely heap shame upon me if it were not for a recent conference call.

As part of the college’s outreach, several members of our National Professional Advisory Board volunteered their time to talk with a group of advertising students about careers, success, and the industry.

When answering a student question about how to add value to an employer, one successful business-owning alumnus said that he especially values energized young employees who can put information at his fingertips when he needs it.

“When we’re in a meeting, and a piece of information will help inform the discussion, I need a person who can get that information. That person is invaluable to me, and I will always keep them near.”

OK, that is a paraphrase due to imperfect memory, but the sentiment is accurate, and the word “invaluable” is a direct quotation. And he elaborated that he was specifically referring to the employee who pulled out a smartphone and searched the information in the meeting, adding that he didn’t have time to do it because he was leading the meeting.

So out-of-the-blue, one of our most successful graduates tells a group of students that such information-gathering is invaluable, and no other member of the board on the conference call contradicted him.

Your guess as good as mine

So what to advise young people?

If this question actually were posed to me, I would hedge and say something like, “know your environment.”

I assumed that I knew what my younger-than-me colleague would think about such smartphone usage, and you know what they say about “assume.”

So I made myself look like a jerk, and I irritated someone whose opinion is valuable to me. That’s on me for not knowing the environment.

But that advice still sounds hollow to me. When I sit in Faculty Senate meetings and see our at-least-a-generation-older-than-me provost on his phone, I get it. Important stuff happens during a 90 minute meeting. He needs to attend to it.

However, it’s important to know that not only is my opinion not universal, it may be a definite minority.

I apologized sincerely, and I regret offending the colleague. But in the heart of the information age with the Millennial generation fully coming into the workforce, this issue must be addressed.

In the end, I forgot the first rule of strategic communication: know thy audience.

Photo published under a Creative Commons license from liewcf on Flickr.

That’s why I love the people who have made the modern smart phone — especially the iPhone — possible.

I always have a rarely lost list maker more available.  More importantly, I always have a camera handy.

This is the easiest way to remember information. See a book I might want to buy later? Take a picture.

Today I was buying bolts to fix my kids’ bunk bed. And if you have ever bought these kinds of things, you know you have to write down the part number on a little plastic sac. And uber-cheap ball point pens don’t like to write on plastic sacs, much less when they have been abused by hundreds of contractors.

Not knowing the exact size I needed, I bought several. Rather than fighting with the clear plastic sac, I simply pulled out the iPhone and took pictures of each of the part numbers. Check out was a breeze.

Thank you, cool inventor types.

Shot: iPhone 3GS

1/15 sec, normal program, f/2.8, ISO 94, focal length: 3.9 mm

Photoshop: Auto levels, crop

If you want a career in interactive media, you’ll have to be interactive and proactive. Daisy Whitney tells you how to build your media career by building your brand. More importantly, she shows how hard work and dedication lead to success. And for those scoring at home, Daisy is the second expert this month to advise not just meeting … but beating deadlines.

DAISY WHITNEY is a new media rock star. She’s omnipresent, and she’s everywhere with quality content. In her answers below, she credits some of her success to luck, but it’s clear that hard work, dedication, and talent led to her success. Daisy earned a degree in Art History from Brown University, making her path to new media the road less traveled.

She is the new media reporter for TVWeek and produces the New Media Minute (featured above) and an audio podcast. In addition she regularly writes for numerous other publications, including Advertising Age.

Her predictions for 2009 caught my eye, and thankfully she shared her time and advice with us:

1) One of your predictions for 2009 is an increase in mobile marketing. How do you think consumers will react to this increase? Isn’t it the one place left free of advertising clutter?

DAISY: I expect ads on mobile phones to be non-intrusive (think simple overlays on a small part of the screen) and will likely be super-targeted to you and even your location so the hope is you’d want the deals being offered!

2) You make a prediction of consumers dropping traditional cable TV and satellite services for online viewing. After the Internet killed newspapers and with the advent of satellite radio, is television simply the last old medium to die?

DAISY: I’m not convinced TV is going to die just as I’m not convinced papers are either. I think cable operators will be challenged to make their services relevant, and in time they will be forced to evolve and base their business models on being dumb pipes for broadband service. Broadband will reign supreme, and cable operators can deliver that. They will find creative ways to tier their broadband price offerings to make money in the future.

And TV won’t die! We as people love entertainment. Networks and studios are being forced to evolve and offer their programs in new ways and find new ways to make money on their shows. But we will always want content. The smart networks and studios who are nimble and fast will make it.

3) You make a prediction about Grey’s Anatomy. Hasn’t that show just about “jumped the shark”? Seriously, don’t you think that Denny needs to go away?

DAISY: I’m a Grey’s apologist, so it hasn’t jumped the shark for me! Many people think it has, but I love the show as crazy and weird as it is this season. I was loving the Denny storyline at first because I LOVE LOVE LOVE Denny, but now it’s time to do something with it. But I don’t have a problem with Ghost Love in general! I am all about the suspension of a disbelief and never have I expected a hospital drama to be realistic. Remember, this is a show where people get impaled on a regular basis and where doctors perform never been done before brain surgeries after a patient checks in that morning! So realism isn’t what Grey’s is about.

4) You seem to be a renaissance media expert. What advice do you have for college students today who want media careers?

DAISY: If you want a career in media you need a plan to become a brand. Don’t confine yourself to one medium. Develop skills for print, audio and visual. You need to be conversant in all three and you need to smartly promote and propagate your own stories across media. No one else is going to look out for you, so make yourself an indispensable industry resource.

Seek out speaking engagements, post comments on like-minded sites, get involved in social media relentlessly. Never miss a deadline, and in fact, make a commitment to file all your stories early as this will impress your bosses and enhance your job security.

5) How did your multi-platform career get started?

DAISY: Like most things in life I was in the right place at the right time. I was covering technology for TVWeek before it became sexy, back when it was racks and servers and traffic systems. That served me well when the iPod revolutionized video entertainment in 2005 with the iTunes-Disney deal. As I covered new media more I made a decision to actually use the services I wrote about and to write about the usage. Readers enjoyed those reports, knowing that I walked the walk and talked the talk. Because I was covering the transformation of entertainment, it only made sense to do the same with my own career and to also embody the changes I was writing about. I had been actively speaking at conferences for four years, so when my husband suggesting launching a video podcast in Sept. 2007, it made perfect sense.

My first few episodes were awkward, and my delivery was stiff, but I learned on the job and quickly was able to refine my on-camera skills. One thing led to another and I also actively pursued new opportunities, so now I produce on-air reports for KNTV’s “Tech Now,” host and produce the New Media Minute and host an audio podcast This Week in Media.

Links

• Learn more about Daisy on her Web site.
• Follow Daisy on Twitter.

Review

Through the wonderful world of Twitter, I recently stumbled across GeekBrief.tv. I’m not a podcast guy, but something about the link caught my attention.

Once I arrived at the site, there was Geek Brief #481 (released Dec. 20, 2008). In this 4 minute, 50 second podcast, Cali Lewis (on Twitter) demonstrates a large green laser from Wicked Lasers called the Spider II GX (which costs just $1,699.99). According the Lewis (via the Guinness records folks), it’s the most powerful hand held laser available.

This particular episode must be the Geek Brief version of Mythbusters, as Lewis puts the laser up to several tests:

• After a long time, the laser eventually pops a balloon (presumably by superheating the air inside);
• It ignites a wooden match;
• It fails to light a candle, producing only smoke;
• Illuminates steam over boiling water;
• and makes a leather jacket smoke without leaving a hole.

After a brief introduction by Lewis, the podcast features an up-tempo professionally produced introduction. Lewis has a fun upbeat screen presence, and the podcast was lively and fun.

Mostly the podcast was interesting and self-contained, so one can watch without a serious time commitment.

And although I cannot tell you exactly why it was fun to watch, I am not alone. Lewis is a full-time podcaster with more than 25,000 followers on Twitter. I saw one estimate that each show receives between 200,000 and 300,000 views.

The laser was enough to bring me back, and I’m glad it did.

Briefs #482 (December 23, 2008), featured above, and #483 (December 25, 2008) tell the story of GeekBrief.tv’s origin.

In July 2005, [husband and co-producer] Neal [Campbell] heard Adam Curry being interviewed on NPR. Adam was talking about podcasting. I didn’t have a TV in my house growing up so I didn’t know Adam Curry from MTV and when Neal started telling me Adam said this and Adam said that, I thought he had joined a cult. Then Neal played an episode of The Dawn and Drew Show for me and I fell in love with the concept of podcasting. Dawn and Drew, a young couple who live in a farm house in rural Wisconsin were doing a show from their house and building a worldwide audience. Adam Curry was doing a show from his house and building the business of podcasting. We wanted in and when Dawn and Drew announced Drew was quitting his day job so they could do the show full time, we decided that’s what we wanted to do.

The first podcast was launched on Dec. 23, 2005, just a couple of months after I started this blog over on Blogger. Needless to say, they’ve done a much better job monetizing their idea than me.

As an advertising professor, this was a great new media story. These two podcasts should be required viewing for our Electronic Media majors.

The rest of the two briefs tell the story of their rather meteoric success. The first brief aired on Dec. 23, 2005, and they worked out a deal with what is now known as Mevio on May 23, 2006, to podcast full-time. That’s an impressive five-month turnaround.

From their inspiration by Adam Curry to their adoption of a green screen and a teleprompter, their success story is briefly outlined.

It’s a great story and the kind of thing the fuels the American Dream. Hard work led to opportunity — the way that we hope that it always will.

Mevio’s Web site claims to be the “Home of Personality-Driven Entertainment,” and it’s Lewis’ personality that drives this show.

Her Twitter bio calls her a “shiny, happy geek girl,” and the description is perfect.

She has on-camera skills without coming across as a stilted professional anchor. It’s just the right mix of talent and whimsy. Lewis’ look might be best described as “geek chic,” and it’s perfect for the podcast. Lewis has bloggers calling her “beautiful” while still looking as if she actually knows about technology.

And success has led to other Web ventures, as the main GeekBriefs.tv site also links to related sites, Dear Cali, iCali.tv, and CaliLive.tv.

Whether you’re interested in technology or a new media success story, I highly recommend GeekBrief.tv!