Riding the tide

SOMETIME ago, I told a group of student interns with regards navigating their way around the Internet and learning to work this to their own advantage and not just be mere consumers: "This is the most exciting times to be in mass communication. We may not know where it's headed to, we just have to be there."

"I may not know how everything will unfold," I told a friend once, "but I'm having fun!"

In a similar direction, I've been telling Masscom students for a decade now that, definitely, the medium will change but the discipline will remain. The discipline of verification and building credibility, that is.

I've always quietly sneered at all those who are banging the funeral drums for print journalism being a printed word junkie who has been surfing through all media, just to get my fix of the written word in whatever form it may manifest (including the back of a cereal box). Having attended last week's Wan-Ifra Digital Media Conference 2017 in Singapore, the vague ideas I have had for years now have taken form in actionable ideas, and were given affirmation.

"We have not figured it out. I don’t think anyone has figured it out. That’s why we all have to communicate with each other," said the very young CEO of South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd Gary Liu. Hey! I'm in good company here!

Yes, these are exciting times, but we're at a crosscurrents, where things can get very murky, even dangerous, but during which we just have to ride the waves and not tie ourselves down to what's familiar. Insisting on the old will mean death by drowning, as we are witnessing. We cannot go on further tethered behind our desks.

In the crosscurrents, the weak and stubborn will drown and die; the strong may survive but with a lot of scars and maybe even the loss of enthusiasm to be in the water; while those who look at it as a game of strategies on how to ride the waves and the tides will having the best times of their communication lives... as I am.

Who cannot be fascinated with the Internet and how it has evolved?

For so long, bloggers were dropping the word "analytics" to sound so into it. I preferred to study the analytics quietly, sifting through the tons of information that it was giving me and tweaking my articles this and that way as my personal experiment. And with my propensity to be excited with things new, I knew there was a bigger tide to ride and go "Wiiiiii!" as Steffen Damborg in the maste class for Paid Content Business Models said, "The new thing is not the analytics, it has been there for many years now. What is new is the amount of data we can get from these is exploding."

As I have said, I didn't know where everything was headed, all I know is that it's exciting; and so, I preferred to experiment on myself first to prepare for what I think is ahead, which many still do not foresee now would want to see.

Having been on this earth for half a century now, I'm aware of how rabid some may be in defending their views and turfs, especially when it's about changes. I'd rather stay far away from the rabies and the territorial boundaries and quietly plot my way around.

Let's call it lack of confidence... having no computer background at all, and learning everything hands-on. I first learned about operating systems when a former system administrator taught me to type C prompt or what I called C-tuldok-tuldok. From there I was winging it out with those green letters on black screen of the diskette days. Much later, I'd learn to write scripts using html after learning how to make a simple button.

Greater responsibilities, however, forced me to retire my all-nighter explorations into the computer world and just trust our techie guys to do the work. That didn't mean I let the world pass by unnoticed.

"Never stop testing, never stop experimenting, and never stop learning," said one of the speakers in the conference, and he could've just been reading my motto.

"What does that mean for us? That means more work for us," said Sue Brooks, the Global Head of Product in Reuters.

With that, I get a longer surfboard in my head and paddle on to the next big wave to ride and skim the surf knowing I could take a tumble, but who cares? That's part of the fun... and who said I'm working? saestremera@gmail.com