Join me for Social Media Weekend (#SMWKND) this week!
Can't tell your NFT from your RGB? The perfect online conference to learn all about the digital and social world.
Sree’s newsletter is produced w/ Zach Peterson (@zachprague).
Scroll down for Read Something; Watch Something; and a weekly tech tip from Robert S. Anthony (@newyorkbob).
Tickets are on sale for my fully-online conference, Social Media Weekend 2021 (#SMWKND). Join us May 21-22! You can watch live or later. Makes a great gift, too. Use code SREENOTE for 20% off.
TUNE IN: The #NYTReadalong is back this week with a great guest. Lisa Napoli is a journalist and author, and her most recent book, "Susan, Linda, Nina & Cokie" is the story of the 'founding mothers' of NPR. Join us live at 8:30 am ET, or later.
My Digimentors team is working with companies and nonprofits around the world to create virtual and hybrid events. We’ve worked on events for 50 people and 100,000 people. See our new brochure. Don’t cancel or postpone your conference - contact us! sree@sree.net
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This Friday and Saturday, May 21-22, my team and I are putting on our 10th anniversary Social Media Weekend (#SMWKND), and I hope you’ll join us! Use code SREENOTE for 20% off.
We’ve got some fantastic guests joining us for keynotes, workshops, and more. My goal with #SMWKND is, as always, to help you better understand the increasingly digitized world around you.
This year we are really pulling things together from across society, and I’m proud of our lineup and especially the range of topics. In this newsletter, my course at Stony Brook School of Communication and Journalism, and my consulting work, I try to weave together the real-world consequences of what many see as issues existing solely in the digital world. These can be normal business outcomes, strong political statements, and everything in between.
We’ll be talking about inclusion in the media and entertainment industries with Twitter VP, Diversity Partnerships, Candi Castleberry (@Candi). Wade Davis (@Wade_Davis28), Vice President of Inclusion Strategy for Product at Netflix, will talk about what cancel culture really is. I’ll have a discussion with Erica Anderson (@EricaAmerica) about what the last decade of social media and news means for the future. And, we’ll open things on Friday night with CNN’s Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) and NYT Director of Community, Sona Patel (@sona). We have another 20 fab speakers, too!
On Saturday, we’ll have sessions throughout the day covering artificial intelligence, memes and internet subcultures, social media and mental health, newsletters, and much more.
There’s a lot to learn here, and my team and I want to help you. We’ve put together a lineup of guests who are experts in their fields—they’ve been there, they’ve seen it, and they have been gracious enough to share their insights with us. Use code SREENOTE for 20% off.
See you this weekend! You can watch live or later. Questions about sponsorships or anything else, please contact our fabulous Executive Producer, Linda Bernstein (@wordwhacker): linda@digimentors.group.
- Sree
Read Something
I always love throwbacks to the early days of the social internet. Taylor Lorenz shared a short thread with some slides she had put together for her bosses at the Mail Online back in the early 2010s. It truly was amazing watching these teams start as one or two people and then, a decade later, they are a dozen people doing video, photography, and so much more. The thing is, much of what’s in these slides still holds up rather well.
Digital Vaccination Passports: Ready or Not, They’re on the Way
By Robert S. Anthony
Each week, veteran tech journalist Robert S. Anthony shares a tech tip you don’t want to miss. Follow him @newyorkbob.
Do you have a passport yet? No, not that one: A Covid-19 vaccination passport, a portable digital record of your vaccination against the novel coronavirus. If you don’t have one, you’re hardly alone. They don’t exist in most of the world—but they will at some point.
While we’re now getting by with paper vaccination cards, in the long run the need for a fast, reliable—and verifiable—method to prove vaccination status will require some type of electronic means, according to experts. There have already been cases where blank vaccination cards have been stolen and filled in with false information.
Unfortunately, the mere mention of vaccine passports has already ignited loud, spirited arguments akin to those over the concept of wearing face masks. Some states have already taken measures to ban or limit the use of vaccine passports, alleging that they infringe on personal freedoms.
Nevertheless, the move to digital vaccination records is underway, as can be seen in some countries and in New York state’s Excelsior Pass. Anyone vaccinated in New York who is 15 days past the final vaccination shot can use the state website and app to generate a QR code similar to an airline boarding pass that can be shown on a mobile device or printed out.
The Excelsior Pass is already accepted at sports venues like Madison Square Garden and Barclays Center in New York City. Unfortunately, the Excelsior Pass is only good in New York state and some users have reported that the system did not work for them.
While countries like Denmark which has the MinSundhed app, have already established national digital vaccine passports, the White House has already said that the US has no current plans for a nationwide digital vaccination records platform. Thus, it’s left to states, businesses, schools and other entities to figure how to manage some kind of proof-of-vaccination system.
Chances are good that the last word on digital vaccine passports in the US won’t come from the White House, Silicon Valley, corporate board rooms or university trustee meetings, but from the US Supreme Court. And that will take time.
Data Points
TikTok has established itself as a major social network, especially over the last year. Look at the shift here from just over a year ago.
Watch Something
I have to say, this whole Liz Cheney drama strikes me as a bit odd. Kudos to her for standing up for something, but the GOP is a mess, and my guess is that Cheney may very well run for president in three years. If so, welcome to the start of her campaign. Probably worth noting that she voted with Trump well over 90% of the time over the first couple of years of his term.
Odds & Ends
🗞  TUNE IN: #NYTReadalong - our guest this week is author Lisa Napoli, 8:30 am ET, live or later.
Tickets are on sale for Social Media Weekend 2021 (#SMWKND) - sign up and take advantage of our early bird rate! Join us May 21-22! Use code SREENOTE for 20% off.
The Readalong is followed, on Sundays at 11 am-noon ET, by a new medical show I’m co-executive producing with surgeons Sujana Chandrasekhar, M.D. (@DrSujanaENT), and Marina Kurian, M.D. (@MarinaKurian), called She’s On Call (watch live or later).
After 250 episodes in 250 days, my global show has moved from daily episodes to 1-2 times a week. The best way to know when I’m on the air and see all my archived shows, is to subscribe to my YouTube channel or my Whatsapp alerts.
The Sunday #NYTReadalong is sponsored by Muck Rack. Interested in sponsorship opportunities? Email sree@digimentors.group and neil@digimentors.group.
🎧 Every Saturday, I host a call-in show on WBAI 99.5FM (@wbai) - "Coping with Covid19" - focused on being helpful, hopeful, and focusing on the pandemic's effects on society’s most vulnerable. Listen live Saturdays from 12-1pm ET, or later. And, of course, call in or tweet questions for us using the #wbaisree hashtag. Listen to a recent episode here!
👀 Did we miss anything? Make a mistake? Do you have an idea for anything we’re up to? Let us know! Let’s collaborate!