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14 November 2011

musing summarizing magazine info I used to think about this (and even do it a bit) when reading Vanity Fair some years ago→[More:]

basically these stories are chuck full of info; nouns, stories

So is there some value to actually learning from them, like storing them in a database or wiki etc

I got a bunch of fashion/lifestyle magazines yesterday and started musing this again cause I want to do something online in this field (previous thread)

One thing gets ruled out for sure, you can't actually do detailed summaries of every noun and bit of info (X is a piece of clothing available at Y store for $34.50) cause that's exhausting and say you were going to organize this all publicly, 5 magazines, you'd quickly get into diminishing returns with transient info. (plus there might be IP concerns with detailed summaries of magazines that just skip the prose)

Now we can always collate the important info. Here's a list of stores for this brand! Let's put this online and cross-reference it with our DB. Be a source of data.

What I wonder about, and used to wonder about with VF, is names. Reporting in magazines is chock full of names and histories. Is there something creepy about starting to organize them all privately? One one hand, I'm not changing private contexts to public contexts personally--this info is already in these widely-published magazines. This guy works at this company before which he worked at that company. He was involved in this lawsuit. Now he's an expert at that. But then thing is when you start putting it together, serially, you end up with a big dossier of individual histories so the way the diffuse contexts of information gets collapsed into consolidated info can be surprising. But if you think about it, what do journalists really do? They must have background files on things and people. They don't approach everything in the dark and start googling the person right then.

What do you think?

post by: Firas at: 07:58 | 3 comments

1. Journalists do do that. You live and die by what they used to call your Rolodex, and most journalists have a shortlist of people they know all about and would love to 'get at.'

2. Also, development departments, recruiters, and other people whose job involves being a 'connector' do it. they do compile dossiers and track any mention or trace of people of interest. In fact, there is great software for it.

3. I can think of sane reasons why a private individual would do this in their personal life, and not-sane reasons.

posted by Miko 14 November | 08:50

Cool. I think I'll do it. It just seems odd to be reading so much stuff wihout retaining anything otherwise. And with regards to the project I'm trying to do I think being information dense and data driven can carve a niche among the deluge of fashion blogs out there. Personally I spent a couple years being really turned off by 'media' and its insularity but now my apetite has resumed -- not for commentary, which still sucks, but for information -- and now I can't get enough 'incoming'; mailing lists, blogs, whatever, give me more news and data!!

I have used customer relationship software in the past to be tracking contacs and my activity with them (it was too much for my needs though) but as I try to resume a connector role I think I'd be using something like that again... met X person discussed Y topic need to follow up by next week etc.

This thing would be different though cause these aren't my real contacts. I might be meeting then eventually but for now there's no reason to mix them in my personal address book. I do wonder what software is availalable for tracking mentions etc? It's a bit tricky because if there's too much structure in the way to input data then it's a slog and if there's too little then it's not analyzeable

I guess I'd basically have three sets of people info; personal contacts which is mostly simple info; business CRM style contacts which has more actionable info; and then this database which is more geared towards general knowledge.

posted by Firas 14 November | 22:06

I'm also getting into social media marketing so my drive to organize trends and info is also coming from that day-job skillset improvement angle

posted by Firas 14 November | 22:09

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