UC Irvine hosted a budget write-in this week and I can’t imagine why we’re still putting pen to paper.

While delivering letters in bulk to our state legislators is much more civil and respectful than the protests and disobedience that have been observed around UC campuses this past month, aren’t there more innovative, collaborative and effective ways in which to communicate our dismay with the state of the State and University?

After all, isn’t the University of California the top public institution in the world?  Don’t we produce Nobel Prize winners and Fulbright Scholars, life-saving research and game-changing technology?

Advice to UC students.  Take what you know best — Facebook, YouTube, Twitter — and turn it into a campaign that legislators can’t ignore, toss aside, or hand to an aide to craft a scripted response.

The write-in would have been a good opportunity for student leaders to flip out their mobile phones and interview each other about the personal impact the fee hike will have on them come the new academic year.  It was a chance for students to plead their hardships, share their personal stories, and talk about their needs… and to tell their stories through a new medium to legislators and public citizens alike.

If just a 1,000 students from each campus joined a Facebook fan page or custom website that integrates Facebook Connect (or the like) and allow students to voice their concerns online – that would be a collective power of 10,000 voices telling their story to the public. The public and media can then help pay it forward and tell tens of thousands of other people how devastating the fee hikes are.

A letter only goes to one person, and your voice may or may not ever be heard.  But new media content can be shared, redistributed, repackaged, emailed, linked, tweeted…  The same effort put into a letter can be put into a message that has the potential to be heard across the world.

And all it takes it the one story that becomes viral.  The one story that tugs at the hearts of the voters of California, the philanthropist across the globe, and the legislator who votes on the UC budget.

How about a video profile of how much it costs to be a bio major:  How much are your textbooks?  What additional lab fees do you pay?  And how are you able to afford the expensive rent around Westwood, Irvine, Santa Barbara?

Letter-writing campaigns didn’t even work in my time as a UCSA Legislative Affairs member or ASUCD External Affairs Chair.  What worked were the face-to-face meetings with the educational committee members, staffers for the legislators or better yet the legislators themselves.

Today, students have the best tools at their fingertips: new media and social networks.  Whether it’s a student, parent, professor or staff member speaking, why aren’t we using these innovative communication mediums, which are either no-cost or low-cost, to effectively lobby the State and its citizens?

A collective voice is a powerful thing when used the right way.

Protesting and rioting may have worked in the 1970s.  But times are different. Technology is different.

The UC’s budget is an obvious mess, and I have strong personal opinions about it.  What it boils down to though, is there’s plenty of blame to spread.  But I don’t think it’s too late to make a new media move — the right move — to influence change from the ground up.

Picket signs, the wood sticks and magic markers to poster board is so last millennium, and so un-ecofriendly.  If you want to be heard, to be green, to be innovative with your message, take a lesson from the 2008 Presidential elections.  That wasn’t that long ago…

Create a YouTube video in 48-hours starting at Midnight on May 15, and you can have the chance to be at the Cannes Croisette at the very moment that the world’s advertising community is in town for their annual get-together at the Cannes Lions advertising festival.

Two winners will be part of a team that takes on 37 others from around the world in a week-long challenge to shoot and edit a 60-second commercial on behalf of a charity.

More from YouTube:

In terms of the YouTube competition, would-be winners (who must be 28 or younger) will be able to see the brief from midnight on May 15. They will then have to upload their finished ads to the Cannes Lions channel within 48 hours, and then embark on a quest for clicks and kudos before the curtain comes down on the competition on June 1.

A panel of industry professionals will review the entries (as well as views, ratings and the profile of the ad) before announcing the winners. So stay tuned to the Cannes Lions channel for more information, review the efforts of those who have gone before you, and make sure your creative juices are set to flow forth once the starting pistol is fired on May 15.

Tonight, 90 musicians from around the world — including a Spanish guitarist, a Dutch harpist and a Lithuanian birbyne player — will gather in New York City for a historic social-media-driven performance at Carnegie Hall.

So the new answer to the old saying “How do I get to Carnegie Hall?” is “Make a YouTube video of yourself.”  And sure, a little bit of practice too…

From my original post about this project:

This is a great example of social media bringing together a community of musicians from around the world to accomplish a task that couldn’t happen in a 1.0 world.  Imagine the camaraderie that these musicians will enjoy… just because of simple videos and votes from strangers like myself that will bring them together for one night at Carnegie Hall.  And social networks – whether it’s YouTube, Facebook or another crowd-gathering site – will keep them connected for years to come.

Today, 12seconds.tv reveals its newest feature – the 12omercial – a 12-second video feature that can be linked to Web sites or contact information such as your Twitter or Facebook accounts. This in itself isn’t too unique. One can already tweet their 12seconds video, and people already send links to each other. In addition, now all 12seconds.tv videos track viewing statistics.

What’s unique with this morning’s new release is the partnership that 12seconds.tv has made with LG and its Versa phone. LG has a branded page from which they invite the 12seconds community to create short bits about their new mobile phone.

For LG, it’s free advertising, the opportunity to scout talent and even come up with creative marketing campaigns on a minimal budget. LG can repurpose the videos for a full-blown or viral ad campaign. Through this partnership, LG is also exciting and engaging its product owners.

YouTube and Seesmic both offer the ability to record your own video, but no company has invited the public to submit their own content, and add it to a live feed that can also be syndicated to blogs, Facebook, Twitter and beyond.

The real challenge to LG and other brands who participate in this live stream conversation will be how companies respond to complaints and other negative or inappropriate content. Will a company respond to a complaint with it’s own 12second clip, attempt to censor the content, or lead the conversation offline? Will a customer service representative respond to you? Will busy execs sometimes be expected to respond on camera themselves?

These are just a few things to consider when entering the next social media territory. The advantages of being a first-mover company is undoubtedly strong, but only when done with careful strategy. The consequences of failed public relations via this new medium, however, have the potential to be exponentially damaging.

We’ll keep a close observation on the LG and 12omerical campaign.

12seconds.tv itself has great potential. The creators of Tweetdeck must also think so since 12seconds.tv has been a feature there for a little while now. It’ll be interesting to see how the likes of Seesmic (which is integrated with Twhirl) and YouTube compete in this crowd-sourced marketing arena.

The next step for 12seconds.tv… First to come out of beta, and then perhaps a 12seconds iPhone app on a future model with video capability? Let’s hope so!

Our overview of different video/multimedia sharing options and its uses in social media applications are coming up in the next week, but I wanted to take a diversion today to review 12omercial as it debuted.

It’s good. You can spare 39 minutes to watch it!

From the YouTube blog:

Since polio no longer exists in the developed world, many assume that the crippling disease has been eradicated. Sadly, this isn’t true. Polio is still a reality in the world’s poorest countries. Created by our friends at Google.org and Vermillion Films, this captivating 38-minute film brings to light the global challenge of polio eradication and tells the story of those who are on the front lines helping the most vulnerable — children under five living in some of the world’s most destitute regions.

YouTube is bringing together the world’s first collaborative orchestra.  And though it’s too late to enter to be considered for the project, it’s not too late to participate by voting on 3,000 audition videos from more than 70 countries and territories spanning six continents. Submissions came from Kazakhstan, Mauritania, Eritrea, Venezuela, Vietnam, Russia and the U.S., and included everything from the violin to the toy piano and even an audition on the musical saw.

The selected few will perform this spring at Carnegie Hall. You can now vote from the selected finalists who have been narrowed down by a panel of musical experts from the London Symphony Orchestra, Berlin Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra and other leading orchestras around the world.  The final selections are based on such criteria as musicianship, vitality of performance and originality.

What a great idea to bring together musicians from around the world that otherwise would never have come together.  It’s all a twist of fate and a whole bit of luck bringing together these amateurs and professionals alike to perform on one of the most coveted stages in the world.

This is a great example of social media bringing together a community of musicians from around the world to accomplish a task that couldn’t happen in a 1.0 world.  Imagine the camaraderie that these musicians will enjoy… just because of simple videos and votes from strangers like myself that will bring them together for one night at Carnegie Hall.  And social networks – whether it’s YouTube, Facebook or another crowd-gathering site – will keep them connected for years to come.

Had I known about this earlier, I may have tried to get a hold of a contra-bass clarinet and entered myself. There’s something about being a part of a group of people symphonizing to make music.  It’s a beautiful thing, and I miss it a lot.

In conjunction with our central communications office and the MacArthur Foundation, Mizuko Ito (a faculty member in the area which I serve as Communications Director for) has released the following:

UCI researcher show time spent online is important for young people’s development

Teens who are into texting, gaming and “geeking out” are not wasting their time, according to results from the most extensive U.S. study on young people and their use of digital media. Instead, the study shows that when America’s youth go online, they are developing important life skills that adults often are hard-pressed to appreciate.

“There are myths about kids spending time online – that it is dangerous or making them lazy,” said Mizuko Ito, UC Irvine researcher with joint appointments in information and computer science and humanities and lead author on the study. “But we found that spending time online is essential for young people to pick up the social and technical skills they need to be competent citizens in the digital age.”

Released Thursday, Nov. 20, the study suggests that parents should help facilitate their teens’ online participation and that educators could benefit from creative classroom experimentation with digital media.

Ito, with the late Peter Lyman of the UC Berkeley, and Michael Carter of the Monterey Institute for Technology and Education, led a team of 28 researchers and collaborators, including UC Humanities Research Institute affiliates Heather Horst and Becky Herr who are now at UCI with Ito. For three years, researchers interviewed hundreds of young people and their parents; spent thousands of hours observing teens on MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, and other networked communities; and conducted diary studies to document young people’s digital media behavior. Among the findings:

• Youth are navigating complex social and technical worlds by participating online. Their worlds have new dynamics, as online socializing is permanent, public, involves managing elaborate networks of friends and acquaintances and is always “on.”
• Young people are motivated to learn from their peers online. They interact and give and receive feedback. They respect each other’s authority and are more motivated to learn from each other than from adults.
• Youth can connect with people in different locations and of different ages who share interests, making it possible to “geek out” or pursue interests that might not be popular or valued with local peers. “Geeked-out” learning opportunities are abundant, spanning topics from astronomy to creative writing and foreign languages.

Ito, a researcher at the University of California, Irvine’s Bren School (Department of Informatics) is a cultural anthropologist of technology use, focusing on children and youth’s changing relationships to media and communications. She recently completed a research project supported by the MacArthur Foundation a three year ethnographic study of kid-initiated and peer-based forms of engagement with new media. In 2008, she was awarded the Jan Hawkins Award for Early Career Contributions to Humanistic Research and Scholarship in Learning Technologies from the American Educational Research Association.

The research was supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s $50-million digital media and learning initiative, which  explores how digital media change the way young people learn, play, socialize, and participate in civic life.