The Anti-Brand: Grand Theft Auto

Grand Theft Auto 4 is now in stores. For all the unseemly elements of the GTA game series, it does go to great pains to incorporate parody and, one might even say, satire into the GTA world.

Though I find myself now less enamored of immersive, virtual world/games like GTA, Runescape and Second Life, they do present unique opportunities for hiding humor bombs in the nooks and crannies of the game space. And here comes GTA4 with a satiric smack at one of the decades most revered brands: Apple.

The references play mostly on the perception of some that Apple is a brand for effete elitists.

More screen grabs and description at The Unofficial Apple Weblog.

So what?

It's just a game...for gamers. Except that this game is anticipated to sell nearly 13 Million units this year. And with distribution like that for what is arguably as immersive an online experience as it gets, one wonders where a brand's loyalties might be found...or found lacking...in the minds of GTA4 players.

The GTA4 Apple easter egg also reminds me that for any brand that becomes 'fashionable' there will inevitably be a counter-fashion that seeks to think different.

UPDATE 5/7/08: GTA4 delivers $500 Million in sales in the first week...6 million units of the game...that's a lot of engagement anyway you look at it.

May Day, May Day: Spam turns 30

May 1, 2008, marks the 30th anniversary of Rhea + Kaiser. Van Kaiser and Steve Rhea certainly had some sense of what they intended when they, and 6 brave souls, started their agency. Congratulations and may success continue!

A much less auspicious event also took place 30 years ago today: the first piece of unsolicited commercial email was sent. In what Wired Magazine reports as Spam, from novelty to nuisance in a couple of decades, we are reminded that what something seems on a small scale can seem to be something completely different when the power of computing is applied on a large scale.

In 2007 for instance, Barracuda Networks (maker of Spam filters and email applicances) reported that 95% of all email was classified as spam:

As marketers, email can seem an appealing vehicle to reach out and touch prospects and customers. The plague of Spam reminds us that what seems like a good idea to the sender can become something completely different in the eyes of the receiver.

Speaking of Viral, er, Word of Mouth

We are working on some Word of Mouth Campaign ideas for a client (a more viable approach for their objectives than traditional marketing). One thing that always seems obvious as we discuss strategies for seeding community conversations: employee ambassadors.

Of course, employees are ambassadors in their communities (both the online and offline incarnations)--whether their organization wants them to be or not. How can the community conversations that employees have about thier company and it's industry align with the organization...and vice versa?

Pursuing congruence between employee and organization in word of mouth campaigns certainly depends on:

1. Employee culture (are they empowered and engaged? are they team oriented? are they articulate and informed?)

2. Organizational context (is it a confrontational and competitive landscape; a highly collaborative, partnering situation; or a combination, frenemies-like territory?)

Assuming that the culture and context support the very idea of a word of mouth campaign, we beleive that there are a few guiding principles that can be used to evaluate employee-enabled tactics that might be employed in a word of mouth campaign:

Employee's should be supported in conversations that are:

1. Based on the facts (objectively and as they are known)

2. Connected at the grass roots (i.e., relying on peer-to-peer rather than status-driven information flows)

3. Community-centric (conversations should be focussed on the relevance of the conversation to the community, not the organization)

4. Take the High road (promoting positive, uplifting themes rather than negative attacks)

These may not be the principles best employed for grassroots political campaigns, but we beleive they make employee-engaged word of mouth work for everyone engaged in the dialogue.

Are you the web type?

We've recently presented some online concepts to clients based on branding work that was previously executed in print. The challenge with this sequence of design is often that the print form factor becomes the place from which the online design is concepted and evaluated...especially when it comes to the use of type.

Our discussion, centered as it was on the original print, reminded me that sometimes even 'professionals' get distracted from adhering to online principles for using type. We might (horrors!) even place type in ways that we know to be perfectly inappropriate online: think navigation-labels- reversed-out-over-photo-imagery kind of inappropriateness. Well, we're imperfect creatures at best. But, we can continually strive for perfection. And, just when we need it, here comes a smashing bit of type tipping from Smashing Magazine.

As a summarized list:

1. Approach type decisions systematically (type serves many roles online, including search)

2 + 3. Use information hierarchy and design for flow (remembering that heirarchy includes what is important from a navigational view)

4. Maintain legibility (my favorite...does effective branding favor illegibility?)

5. Treat text as a user interface (unformatted text gives you little sense of interaction options)

Here's a favorite example of Type Gone Wild:

An agency site. How surprising is that?

Mentos. The fresh maker.

Building on a well known video that made its way around the web, comes another installment in:

The Mentos-Diet Coke connection! A new world record!

About 1500 students donned blue ponchos to participate in setting a new world record for simultaneous Mentos-Diet Coke explosions. Translating from the Dutch in the subsequent student interviews, it went something like: "It was this or going to classes...the choice was a no-brainer."

A quick search on YouTube shows about 20 user-posted videos of yesterday's event with a combined viewing number of almost 400,000 views. Word of mouse indeed.

See for yourself:

Viral marketing for the uninfected

As much as I decry use of the wholly unhygienic term 'viral' to describe marketing--especially online--Facebook recently released it's 'Insider's Guide to Viral Marketing'. Go ahead, take one down, pass it around...99 (billion) copies of the guide on the wall.

Specifically the guide describes how to use Facebook Pages (as distinct from your Facebook profile) for marketing your business. Nothing earth shattering. Could have been just as easily titled "Facebook Pages for n00bs" but that might get them pwnd for being 1337 ists.

On the other hand, it's a nice, concise guide for initiating a dialogue with the uninitiated, especially in client organizations where the Facebook platform may be viewed as something that 'the kids do'.

As Facebook the company evolves, they are clearly building a platform (i.e., a network) for enabling the social connections that make all of us--of any age--human. Marketing is just one more application running on the social network.

ID10T error?

From the "no duh" files comes this gem: Men are not idiots. Some are, some of the time, of course. Then again, everyone is at one time or another. So why is there so much advertising that plays men as the fool? Advertising Age firmly grasps the obvious here

Priceless quote:

"The evidence is clear: "Man as idiot" isn't going over very well these days. "

Did it ever? Or was that only before there was evidence? Hasn't it always been unfashionable to stereotype--or to insult--your potential customers? Maybe it should be.

Technology-centric, name calling, headline reference here

Let's get physical

Back in the day--as those of us who remember hair bands from the 80's like to say--I remember reading about Information Theory as outlined by Claude Shannon. One point that stuck out at the time was the 'Inverse Square' law. Basically this law says that a signal's intensity decreases in proportion to the square of the distance from its source. Extracting the math from this statement one might say, the farther away you are from the sender, the weaker the signal you receive. Ok, that appears to be consistent with the obvious, so what?

It seems that this mathematically provable physical law might also serve as an approximate description of the intensity of a marketing message's impact as it relates to a receiver's distance from the sending source. Come again?

For any message to rise above the background noise that surrounds each of us it needs to have a strength greater than the background noise...and there is a lot of noise in the marketing universe. How can we increase the intensity? We can certainly invest more energy against the broadcast frequency...and reach...of the message in traditional vehicles. Some people even continue turning up the volume on their messages in an effort to rise above the noise.

But perhaps we're looking through the wrong end of the telescope (to mix a metaphor). Maybe we can reduce the distance that a signal has to travel so that its strength isn't depleted by the journey. Mind you, I'm not talking about the physical distance, but the closeness of the relationship between the marketer--the sender--and the receiver. How do you reduce the distance? Here's three simplistic guiding statements:

1. Make the message human...noone has a close relationship with a corporation
2. Make the message local...people will think globally, but they most often act locally
3. Make the message personal...ask, listen, and respond...our differences are where we are most empassioned.

Or we can just try shouting louder.

Show me don't tell me

Nothing is quite so fun as the web design debates that begin with "If I was coming to this site..." Of course, this is generally an inefficient way to actually get a usable web design.

As humans, we naturally start from an inwardly directed sensibility of how to frame and solve a design problem. But for usable website design, we need not rely on major assumptions built on inwardly derived beleifs. And while 'there's never enough time to do it right, but always enough to do it over" may be a common experience, it is useful to think about ways of incorporating a learn-as-you-go expectation into the design process. Afterall, online a good design is a design that works.

Jakob Neilson has a set of principles that make sense in "Bridging the designer-user gap".

But the Six Revisions site lists Seven Useful Tools for evaluating web designs.

Interestingly in the Six Revisions list is that these tools (which are mostly open-source or free) provide realtime data around what users actually do on your site...where their mouse hovers, what they click on, how long the pointer hovers as examples. For the record, we've been using the free Google tools that are part of the analytics package.

One implication of these tools is that it takes the notion of usability testing...learning what works...and puts it into the production phase...learning as you go.

So what?

Usability testing has often been relegated to the pre-productioon phase. There, it is oftentimes deferred due to rushed production schedules or the perception of limited budgets. And then the opinionated debates about design fill the vacuum created. These tools, though, enable something akin to the multivariate testing that has allowed ads, direct mail and search engine marketing to be tested and refined. The online world is ever changing. Our design decisions should reflect the real experiences and needs of real users. Empirically driven tools can help show us the way.

Masters of their domains?

For many people the difference between dotCOM dotNET and dotORG domain name extensions have long faded into meaninglessness (is that even a word?). But the domains dotGOV and dotEDU still generally represent the type of institutions expected to inhabit them.

Now comes word that a company called LinkAdage and an organization called the Pickering Institue offering commercial blog domains using the EDU extension.

"LinkAdage is now offering the web's first open to the public EDU blog community. This is a very unique opportunity for Webmasters and SEOs not affiliated with a university to control a personal EDU blog.

The opportunity that running one of these blogs presents is tremendous. Your blog will be a legitimate EDU blog that you can use to promote your business and increase revenues."

So is this effective marketing, leveraging a distinction for legitimate purpose? Or is this something else? Here's a view I endorse . It does beg the question, where is the line between 'marketing' and 'deception'?

Better yet, in the transparent, always-on and interconnected social web, where will brand stewards find the line between marketing, deception and the perception of deception? No worries, it's only Trust that hangs in the balance.

Searching for meaning

comScore has posted search engine market share data for the five major engines.

Google leads with 59%+ of all searches. Importantly, too, is that the total volume of searches continues to increase. So, even though % of searches shows MS and Yahoo declining, their total searches remain flat to slightly up overall (in the last 12 months).

Nifty trend chart:

Interestingly, looking at several sites that we provide analytics reporting on shows a somewhat more nuanced (i.e., relevant) set of results:

1. Search represents slightly less than 50% of traffic sourcing

2. Google represents about 40% of all traffic with Yahoo and MSN at 5% and 1% respectively.

3. Direct traffic represents ~35% of traffic and referrals from other sites ~20%

Depending on your site's objectives, search may be the first stage in engaging your audience, but referrals (from other sites) may represent an important source of relevant traffic. Bottom line, online the data enables us to know where the audience comes from, what they do and how to build on success.

Citizen Journalists and attack of the blogs

Over at the Blog Herald, there is a post on using some of old media's best practices to sustain new media's impact (old media, new media...meh).

The catalyst of the post was a report, posted online at a respected technology blog (TechCrunch) claiming that Twitter (see prior post) was testing ads. They weren't. But before it could be retracted, it got lots of attention (among those who hang on every word about twitter and tech anyway).

The blog herald explains how breaking "...a news story first means lots of traffic." (Just as it does to 'old' media). And then it does a decent job of explaining how citizen journalists (i.e., bloggers) might do well to implement best practices...things like research, verifying sources, followups and fact checking...and asking questions. Things that, in theory, journalists in old media do.

All characteristics that, in practice, are recommended for any professional who wishes to be taken seriously.

Hulu Dancing

The hulu site recently launched. Hooray for hulu! What's a hulu?

In addition to being a gourd of some sort, it's also the recent foray of several TV networks into the online version of themselves. Hulu.com represents a partnership between NBC and News Corp. It contains more than 400 programs from NBC, Fox and several other 'channels'. Similar in some ways to the Joost network that Fox was involved with previously. And though some of NBC's content is on nbc.com, Hulu offers more full length (and even some HD) programming.

I checked out the 5 episodes of The Office I have missed this season...so no need to TiVo. I did have to sit through 4 or 5 thirty second 'ads' by the sponsor of each episode, but I figure I netted out ahead of where I'd be if I had watched the episodes as regularly scheduled programming.

It's a nice step forward for the networks involved:

1. Viewers can watch when they want...and pause or rewind programming (but no forwarding past the ads)
2. Quality is good (widescreen, excellent compression relative to YouTube)
3. Wide selection of programming in HD format
4. The ability to share videos on user sites (though no user uploading)
5. All the popular content from the participating networks is available.

But I don't think it is the end of the stepping.

When content is free, it needs to be free. When content has value, people want it to be available. Think of it this way...if you have valuable content, you want it on as many distribution networks as possible (to fulfill the demand for the content). If you have a network, you want all the valuable content (to generate demand for the network) on your network.

But that's not the model the networks have figured out yet...that they either need to be a distribution network or a content producer. They are still trying to have it both ways and the value of their content is being commoditized in the interim as it competes with user-generated content and the networks that distribute it.

Dumb networks beat smart ones.

Metcalfe's law states that the value of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of users of the system (n²). And as the power of the devices connected to the periphery increase, so does the power of the network. That's why increasingly connected consumer content tools like video camera's, mobile devices and computers connected to a network like YouTube are so powerful.

When competing with consumers for their own attention, networks may have to choose whether they want to be there intensely for short bursts (with content) or at all times in the background (like telecommunications networks).

The Office takes on the timely topics of local market advertising

We are smarter than the smartest among us

Collective wisdom, crowdsourcing, and a host of other terms are used to describe the notion of tackling complex problems using teamwork. Online tools enable large numbers of individuals to work on a common problem in an organized fashion. Wikipedia is certainly an example focused on creating a near-realtime encyclopedia. The OpenSource software movement is another good example.

My son and I participated in a project called GalaxyZoo, which helped professional astronomers do real science 'in record time' by engaging the passion of interested amateurs to catalog more than 1 million images of galaxies collected by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Telescope.

Businesses are making effective use of their customers and stakeholder's interest in designing better mousetraps. Dell Computer's Ideastorm, and Nokia's Beta Labs are two examples. These companies are sharing ideas and getting feedback from customers using 'rating tools' or by sharing technology--some of it developed by the participants themselves--in soft launch mode tied to a continuous feedback loop.

And then there is Google. Google announced and is revealing its plans for Android, an open source mobile computing platform. Unlike Apple's iPhone, the Android platform will enable users to make, deploy and run applications on Android-compatible handsets...no permission required from carriers or Google. Taking the idea of the anytime, anywhere network and placing it's power in the hands of the crowd.

For a quick rundown and a revealing chart on the Google-enabled mobile platform future, see Ars Technica article.

For a Homer Simpson perspective on what happens when average customers become product designers, see here

Play ball!

As the baseball season kicks into gear, Seth Godin has a post about a post at squidoo that breaks online interactions into two groups: catchers and throwers (well, ok, I would have called it pitchers and catchers).

Seth's premise is that the end result of spam on your brand--where spam is anything that is impersonal and that hasn't earned the recipient's time--is corrosive. He relates an example that many business to business professionals have surely encountered: Faux personal messages asking for your time and engagement in an exclusive opportunity...often from very reputable and well known brands...only to reveal that they are neither personal, exclusive, or interested in your needs. A whole host of company newsletters are just one category.

So what?

In any meaningful relationship (inside or outside of commerce), the dialogue has to be personal and respectful if either party is to earn the right to make a request. For marketers, the right to make a request of prospects is even more one-sided in favor of the prospect. It would seem that our effforts require that the form of the dialogue follow the function to which the prospect would apply it...and that marketers would do well to get the quality of the conversation right before we worry over the quantity.

Somebody's watching me...

...and you...and apparently it makes us uncomfortable. Or at least some of us.

Harris Interactive released a poll concerning US internet users concern with websites that customize content based on user profiles, including the use of behavior-based advertising.

Principle researcher Dr. ALan Westing of Columbia University observed:

"Websites pursuing customized or behavioral marketing maintain that the benefits to online users that advertising revenues make possible – such as free emails or free searches and potential lessening of irrelevant ads – should persuade most online users that this is a good tradeoff. Though our question flagged this position, 59 percent of current online users clearly do not accept it."

And although the oldest users seemed least comfortable with content targetting, younger age groups were markedly more comfortable when the privacy and security policies were visible and explicit.

So what?

Consumers have shown their willingness to provide personal information for loyalty programs, rebates and the like in exchange for a clearly articulated return of value (e.g., discounts, coupons, preference satisfaction). Online advertisers (and the online properties that rely on them) attempting to engage users via content and behavior targetting would seem to be best served by the common courtesies of transparency and permission.

Gratuitous headline musical reference

Google Analytics: Benchmarking beta

Benchmarking a business' performance is a time-tested approach for understanding where one's business stands in relation to peers, partners and clients.

Google launched a set of benchmarking tools (free and in perpetual beta, of course!) for its web analytics offering in Mid March. By agreeing to share your site data (anonymously), you can compare your website performance against the industry category of your choice.

Here's a screen shot from our site for one month:




We've been testing out the becnhmarking feature on the R+K site for a couple of weeks and the results look very promising. We're able to compare our site metrics in several commonly used analytics areas including:

1. Visits
2. Pageviews
3. TIme on site
4. Pages per visit
5. New visits
6. Bounce rate

Users can drill down in each of these areas for more detail including conversion rates, traffic sources and visitor loyalty. We can see how our site stacks up against PR, Marketing and even client industry vertical category sites.

All of the usual Google Analytics dashboard features (such as easy to read graphs, flexible report configuration and point and click interaction) are available in the benchmarking toolset.

One downside appears to be in the way that Google categorizes peer sites in each category...it does so by site size, using the uber-technical categories of small, medium and large. Unfortunately, you cannot benchmark your site against industry vertical sites that are smaller or larger than yours. I understand the value of the categorization by size, but I don;t understand the restrictions on viewing your site data against sites from different size categories.

So if you aspire to create small, efficient sites, you may find that your peers who have bloated inefficient (but large) sites are not part of the benchmark group to which you belong.

For the complete FAQs on Google Benchmarking, see this

Code for...Nerd

Not a big tatoo fan, but here's one that certainly makes a statement.

I've seen an explosion of tshirts and other clothing celebrating net-worthy self expression...say it loud, I'm nerd and I'm proud...in this case, even for budding gen millens:




Cafe Press item

Moving Pictures (on Flickr)

The photo sharing site Flickr (owned by Yahoo) now allows it's Pro users to add video next to their photos (which poses the problem of how to henceforth describe what Flickr is!). See here for how Flickr describes the whole thing.

But wait, doesn't YouTube have the lock on video sharing? Well, yes. Flickr does not appear to be competing with YouTube for the following reasons:

1. Only paying 'Pro' members have access to upload video (everyone can see them)
2. Videos are limited in length to 90 seconds and 150MB

So what's the dealio then?

Mostly, I it's the idea that 'slice of life' video as often taken from a camera phone or cheap camcorder is now indistinguishable from the 'slice of life' photos that Flickr has always enabled.
In other words, it's simply taking the core function of the site (photo sharing) and expanding it to include short segments of moving photos.

Maybe your slice of life is event photos and videos? Maybe you are a sales rep diagnosing a problem on location with a brief video of the issue. You upload it, and someone in support has diagnostic context? Flickr users will determine how it serves their needs best.

Here's one example: A narcoleptic cat


All the usual features of Flickr are applied to video, including tagging, thumbnails, creative commons licensing and uploads directly from camera phones. In addition, the videos are able to be embedded elsewhere on the 'net using a player provided by Flickr (though as a free user I am unable to make it work easily).

Gratuitous headline musical reference

Do you twitter?

TOTH to Faisal who forwards a nice YouTube link explaining Twitter. Think microblogging...from your mobile phone or web page...to those who choose to follow you (and vice-versa) on a mobile phone or a webpage.

No universal purpose is served other than to answer the question 'What are you doing?' (Personally, I mostly use it to send myself and a few others notes on what I am thinking or doing for later action).

What it is, is another example of a social networking tool supporting anytime, anywhere, anyone communication. What it also is, is an example of a tool (like many products) that requires only that its users define how it best serves their needs.

Schadenfreuden: Blogging kills

NYTimes Sunday edition has an article entitled "In Web World of 24/7 Stress, Writers Blog Till They Drop".

Like so many stories on afflictions of the Always-on, All ways connected world, the NYT article leads with death to introduce the downsides of hard work in the information age. IN this case, the hard work of a few who choose blogging as their obsession.

It strikes me that online tools--just like hammers, shovels or any industrial age tool--are not moral actors. But that doesn;t sell newspapers online or off.

One blogger, Marc Andreesen (Creator of the first web browser, Mosaic), has a funny take on the NYTimes approach to these type of stories with just the right amount of humor.

Bite the big apple

Apple Computer has been known to protect its trademark vigorously...in this case, they are going after the City of New York (sometimes known as 'The Big Apple') over a trademark application by the City's GreeNYC campaign...

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/news/2008/04/apple_vs_apple#

From the article:

"The Cupertino, California, company calls for the trademark to be denied, claiming the city's logo will confuse people and "seriously injure the reputation which [Apple] has established for its goods and services."

"Trademark protection extends to sight, sound and meaning, Goldman says, and if a company can prove there's confusion over such matters, it may very well have a case. "

"The ultimate arbiter is the consumer," Goldman says."

Can one envision a day where perception is polled by the courts--a' la Collective Wisdom--to determine the relatvie merits of a trademark suit over 'confusion' or 'meaning'? The tools are available online.

In the meantime, we'll have to rely on a handful of lawyers and judges to make the decision for each of us...or maybe the lawyers at Apple will assess the perception of their actions from blogs, portals and other online feedback loops. Is suing taxpayers a wise strategy for protecting a brand? Is Apple's reputation as a friend of the earth? Or is Apple something not-so-different after all?

You be the judge of the 'trademark infringement' in this case: Yes? No? Maybe?




















Headline explained here if you really need it

Shine on you crazy yahoos

Tip o' the hat to Diane who forwards a story on Yahoo's latest effort that "..targets women between ages 25 and 54."

From the CNN article
(http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/ptech/03/31/shine.yahoo.ap/index.html )

"With Shine, Yahoo plans to expand its offerings in parenting, sex and love, healthy living, food, career and money, entertainment, fashion, beauty, home life, and astrology. Shine likely will replace the existing Food site over time, although Yahoo plans to keep its Health site operating to serve men and women of other age groups.

"It is Yahoo's first site aimed at a single demographic, although other Yahoo sites like Finance and Sports already draw specific audiences."

Good luck and everything, I really like many of Yahoo's tools...but there is something wrong here. In nearly every other area of commerce and public life, collectivist notions of gender, age and race are outdated means of describing individuals. And while the mass media has always been somewhat limited in its ability to individualize it offerings, this is online. Online we're supposed to know better. And we expect to be treated as individuals.

Then again, in the world of MeCommerce, one might excuse even Yahoo for suffering confirmation bias in it's research agenda:

"Amy Iorio, vice president for Yahoo Lifestyles, said internal research also shows women are looking for a site to combine various content and communications tools.

"These women were sort of caretakers for everybody in their lives," she said. "They didn't feel like there was a place that was looking at the whole them -- as a parent, as a spouse, as a daughter. They were looking for one place that gave them everything."

One thing is for sure...there will be real data to show whether this insight is, in fact, insightful.

Yes, but...

Presented to a client group today on opportunities afforded marketers in the webfacemysocial world, release 2.x

Like many other marketers in the b2b world that we've heard from, there is a clear desire to 'think different' about their marketing. Consistently, a common point of discussion revolves around the obstacles to change...when discussing blogs, for instance, these concerns are mostly associated with the 'risk' of having someone say something not-so-nice and on company property to boot.

Of course these are all valid concerns. So here's a quick list of what's worked in our experience:

1. Start small: pick a project where the risk is small if it blows up.

2. Do what you already do: Sending out newsletters? Have experts who offer points of view? Try posting the content to a blog or board.

3. Find champions: Find those who are passionate about the connected world and get them involved...regardless of org chart titles.

4. Do it for yourself, then your customers: Try a project that helps your own organization's communications, then take what you learn and pursue the external audience.

5. Build on success: Find something that works and tweak it. If something doesn't work, move on.

6. Don't wait: Perfect is the enemy of good when the customer is on the line...

Alt+64

Just returned from the Dominican Republic where I suffered withdrawal symptoms from my connected devices (yes, I know...pathetic. The warm temperature and powdery sand helped however, so need for any sympathy ;).

It took a couple of days to get comfortable with the idea of having only 15 minutes of access a day--from a shared terminal--to check email and the like, epecially when part of the 15 minutes was spent trying to remember alt-code keyboard references for characters that are not part of the standard spanish language set.

Alt+64 for instance being the code for the ubiquitous "@". Alt+69 for '\' and so on. A subtle reminder that sometimes the always on, always present online world has some built in friction...and that sometimes a vacation from 'always on' helps reduce it.

Faster, better, stronger...

No, it's not about Kanye West or, for old schoolers, Col. Steve Austin. It's faster, better, stronger consumer research.

Hat tip to Sue LaBarbera who forwarded an article (PDF) about building a better research platofrm using "the tools of web 2.0." According to Sue:

“Quantilitative” research is what Andrew Piece [Senior Partner at Prophet Research] coins this integrated, web-based approach to gaining valuable insights in an effective and efficient manner.

Hopefully, the coin on this term is worth more than the US dollar. Either way, the article describes uses of online tools to engage customers in online brainstorming, concept testing, and product design with an eye toward the more traditional purposes of research:

...yield[ing] deeper, more impactful insights about the who, what, when, where, why and how about their customers and brands.

A key point of the article is the ability of the online methods and tools to obtain these insights in a rapid, iterative, learn-as-you-go manner... without, one presumes, a $6million dollar pricetag!

Does Apple make you think different?

Researchers from the University of Waterloo and Duke University have attempted to answer the questions:

"Does the [subliminal] impact of brand exposure end with purchasing decisions or can it extend to behaviors unrelated to the products the brand represents? In other words, can brands cause people to behave rudely or win more points at Trivial Pursuit?"

You can read a summary here or the 'Prepublished' paper (which will appear in the Journal of Consumer Research) here .

Despite the headlines claiming evidence that Apple's brand "makes you think creatively" and Disney "makes you behave more honestly", there are reasons to be skeptical. In the authors own words, "...brands play a less central role in life than do people, and one of less affective value." This would seem self-evident, of course, to anyone participating in the social media/social influence evolution.

Though it appears well designed, the experiment uses subliminal exposure to brand logos and then measures the amount and degree of 'creativity' or 'honesty' that results. Hard not to define these as soft measures. And while I think the researchers have done an admirable job of constructing a solid experimental method, it isn't the experimental construct that appears fallible...rather, it's that the hypothesis...(does subliminal brand exposure influence behavior) is built on a premise (brand impact) that remains itself the subject of great debate.

Also telling may be the conclusions of the researchers themselves:

“Instead of spending the majority of their money on traditional print and television advertising, companies with established brand associations such as Apple may want to give serious consideration to shifting more marketing resources to product placement opportunities and other forms of outreach that emphasize brief brand exposures,” Gavan Fitzsimons said.

As someone once said "I'll see it when I beleive it".

Selling awareness through advertising

If you sell advertising based solely on its ability to generate awareness, this clip may encourage you to rethink the pitch...it might cause the buyers to rethink their purchase - unintentionally of course:

http://www.dothetest.co.uk/

There will be blood...

...in the web/agency future.

The question is whose blood and how much?

A dialogue that may become a debate...

Chris Bernard User Experience Evangelist, Silverlight/Microsoft Corp Kevin Flatt Exe Creative Dir, Tribal DDB (Chicago); Garrick Schmitt VP, User Experience, Avenue A Razorfish Brooke Nanberg Exec Creative Dir, ip pixel Peter Eckert Chief Creative Officer, Projekt202

1. Is trouble here?...lots of people in advertising know that many of the messages we create are not authentic...the degree of trouble may be determined by where you are now. Are you nimble? You will probably be fine. Nimble probably needs to be modified to incorporate 'a bias for learning'.

2. Traditional agencies are getting savvy about new technologies. But does viewing the interwebs as 'just another media' say something about how savvy?

3. General agreement about the primacy of 'The idea", but the execution requires the heavy lifting and this reflects the culture of how things get done in an agency...and how ideas abot collaboration and control may be different in interactive.

4. Master data...in this medium you cannot be successful if you can't analyze and draw conclusions from data about behavior. Data is native to the web/net platform...a tougher task for traditional viewpoints, though some media departments would seem natural fits.

So whose blood will be spilled? Here's a list based on the discussin:

• Their will be blood from those who think it is about building a website or creating an email.
• There will be blood from those brands who attempt to force their way into social spaces uninvited.
• There will be blood from those who don't center design around the user's needs/desires.
• There will be blood from those who use outdated ideas about people's passions and behaviours that are based on notions of gender, age, and factors that fail to recognize individuality....the power of who defines you shifts to you.

Top Secrets

Frank Warren who created Post Secrets discusses where it came from and what he thinks secrerts mean to people.

http://postsecret.blogspot.com/

Like the Zuckerberg keynote, there was a bit of audience upstaging that took place during the audience question segment...Someone had a secret…they took the mike and asked a woman in the audience to marry him. She said...yes.

Anyway, an interesting notion about why the popularity of the Post Secrets site also came up in audience discussion...the idea that there is an intimacy revolution…people seeking authenticity (e.g., sharing secrets, posting photos on myspace). Brought to Warren's mind that post secrets is a brand, but, in the search for authenticity and open source and community, this brand exists outside the realm of commerce. Can you put a price on passion and connectedness? That would be the question I guess.

If you are not familiar, people send their secrets via postcards that they make...very artful in many instances. Original project was set up because he handed out cards and got about 90 that were used in an exhibition. But then he continued to receive them…word of mouth…so he created blog to post what he got. The group organizes itself as it develops around community functions online. He allowed the band All American Rejects ((dirty little secret)) to use postcards from the project in their video for no money…just a contribution of $2000 to suicide prevention hotline organization.

A couple of the funny secrets (many are serious or sad) included:

“I serve decaf to customers who are rude to me. “

“You called me an idiot…oops! I sent your bags to the wrong destination. I guess you are right.”

In the spirit of Picasso’s quote about there being an artists in everyone, Warren hopes that the idea and the site/books that connect us to each our common secrets will expand the role of art in the world and the people who the world sees as artists.

Ten things for managing creative environments

What can we learn about managing creative environments by interviewing theater groups (steppenwolf and neofuturists), symphonies (philly) tech design shops and restaurants? Here are ten things that the Adaptive Path team has found...

1. Cross train people on other's discipline.
2. Rotate the creative leadership.
3. Identifyi the point when divergence of ideas must become convergence.
4. Know the roles each member plays
5. Practice with each other
6. Make your mission explicit and actionable to the team
7. Kill your darlings (with respect...positive or silence...no negative)
8. Leadership is the ultimate service position (not a dictatorship)
9. Generate projects around the groups interests (if you do it for the money only it won't keep people engaged)
10. Remember your audience...you are doing it for other people.

Boy I wish they wouldn't have made so many references to food

Xray specs

Make magazine has a booth...here's someone demonstrating a brain stimulating device...you can make your very own for $30 and your free time

The Future of Consumer Electronics is here...

It’s just unevenly distributed!...

Robert Scoble, formerly of Microsoft and now with FastCompany TV, moderates a wide ranging discussion on what’s driving the future of consumer electronics. Product Development and marketing directors from Seagate, Logitech, Sling Media, Revision 3 discuss.

The question: Where do you guys see consumer electronics going?

• Everything goes through IP stack…things like Wii’s attached to electronic devices (Like HD TV).
• Software becomes the common area of focus to integrate hardware pieces. Hardware is easier to build. What’s hard is the software.
• Open source development is a ‘collective wisdom’ approach to solving hard problems.
• Techhnology in general is moving toward open environment (as opposed to proprietary schemas…Can you say Blu-ray?).
• Large blocks of data present challenges to distribution into the home (for instance, HD video), especially over wireless broadband/broadcast.
• Many of the issues in consumer electronics are not technical, they are regulatory and deal with issues like intellectual property (digital rights management, RIAA, MPAA). But when technology and regulation collide, regulatory usually ends up frustrated.
• What’s really important in the new electronics world is batteries (True Dat!).
• The Bug Labs device is interesting. It’s basically a motherboard that allows you to snap in TV screen, Music player, Camera…it’s a build your own consumer electronics device.
• Everything about it is open source.
• The user experience becomes the focus of moving design forward. Design of the software to use processing power for presentation layer is trend (like the iPhone..again software is hard).
• Embedded devices as a future trend (e.g., implants in clothes, under skin). Open source enables the collective intelligence to figure out how to develop the desirable devices and electronics.
• Notion of productivity of an individual’s time as a purpose that mobile and connected devices serve…not work productivity but doing something when you are doing nothing. (Not the time in a life but the life in a time).
• With voice commanded devices, what’s the future of buttons? (besides a large 'Mute' button)

Going Social Now

Shiv Singh, Avenue ARazorfish

Social influence marketing

Using the example of a sofa purchase, SS outlines the current, linear catalog approach to much online shopping…show the brand, take the user to the shopping cart, purchase, and ship. Realworld is less linear…we comparison shop across stores and products, collaboratively share information and even decision making…that’s how we shop for (high value?) items today…groups influence us. This is social influence.

What matters in social influence marketing? Compliance with the norms and expectations of peers; Identification with a group and importance of belonging as it influences behavior.

(then)….Brand marketing-àDirect responseàSocial influence marketing (now)

This evolution in marketing is a reflection of the increasing communication and connectedness we have today. We are more influenced by each other now than ever before…and less influenced by traditional marketing approaches. We are listening to each other.

Social media, on the other hand, is a means to an end…the end being social influence (another shout out to “the vehicle is not the idea!”).

Other considerations for success in social influence marketing:

• Become your consumer (And another DePaul campaign idea)
• Aggregate information for the consumer (Bayer Season anyone?)
• Participate where your customers are (But of course you have to find where they are)
• Take small steps

Facebook Faceoff

Ah to be 23 and worth $15 Billion…Keynote interview yesterday with the creator of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, was as interesting for what he said as it was for the crowd’s hostility toward the interviewer, BusinessWeek columnist Sarah Lacy. But i'll get to that.

First, what he said…with more than 60 million active users and billions of page views a month, Z seems remarkably obssessed with the social change aspects that he believes Facebook can enable. Throughout, he responded to questions about monetization, IPOs and the like with “I’m just really not that focussed on that part”… What he is focused on is creating a platform.

His described the platform as “…trying to help people connect and communicate more effectively. Removing the friction that we think helps people build trusting relationships.” He talked about the platform in ways that would make Robert Metcalf proud (The inventor of Ehternet describes the power of the network as residing in the power interconnectedness of devices at it’s periphery). He asked aloud, “Why do advocacy issues require big, centralized groups, like the NRA, to enable consitituency’s voices to be heard?” He believes Facebook can be the facilitator (another great DePaul campaign idea ;) of bottom up change.

He described anecdotal stories of Facebook, and the connectedness it enables, being used to combat Colombian guerillas and in Lebanon to dissuade youths from pursuing a path of isolation and extremism. He also confirmed that Facebook (which is currently available in Spanish and English) would be launched in France tonight (you heard it hear first!).


Discussed running the business around breakeven right now…this is enabling them to pursue these larger social change objectives…building Facebook as a business, it would seem, is a means to an end. His vision impacts the larger trend of advertising…as people are communicating with each other more, then the reality is that endorsements (from one person to the people they are directly connected to) become the dominant influence on awareness and perception (prior to an actual brand experience).

And now, what she said. The interviewer was a crowd disfavorite. She was booed at least twice and the crowd of more than 1000 audibly groaned and gasped on several occasions. She alternately was smug and flighty, generally asking questsions that required only a yes or no answer and on one occasion even interrupting one of Zuckerberg’s answers in mid-sentence to change the subject to a story she wanted to tell! She promoted a book she wrote in the interview and generally seemed to be confused about just who was supposed to be the center of attention. The crowd made sure she had access to its collective wisdom on that question.

Man in a box

Four actually. In the exibitor hall an interview was conducted behind plexiglass and streamed to the web...while 100s of people visited vendor booths all around. A case where 'in person' was not a superior experience.

Strategies for Social Media Revolution

Charlene Li of Forrester presented thoughts on enabling companies to participate in the Social Media revolution taking place without their consent. She focused mostly on blogs and good examples from Blendtec (the ‘Will it blend’ YouTube series that cost $50 to produce); Ernst and Young’s college recruiting via Facebook (something for R+K to study for our own use); and Dell’s path from the Dell Hell blog to effective PR with the flaming laptops and collaborating with cutomers to design new product.

Fulfilling the role of good consultant/analyst, she presented a memorable acronym, POST, for structuring the idea of using social media. P is for people, O is for objective, S is for strategy, and T is for technology, in that order. The order is important, if not also the most obvious. The best analogy I can come up with on an empty stomach is ‘vehicles are not ideas’…

Also included was this comment: “Making revolutions stick will require frameworks and processes”. Go BCM team!

Covered the Ladder of participation…Inactives, Spectators, Joiners, Collectors, Critics, Creators…as a description of behaviors. I favor the simpler ‘Receiver<—>Seeker<—>Provider’ descriptors since a critical notion is that we can move from one behavior to another in an instant online.

How to find and support revolutionaries:
-People most passionate about developing relationships with customers
-Educate the executives…the benefits
-Put someone important in charge…
-Define ‘the box’ with policies and process…
-Make it safe to fail…

Summary of success factors:
-Revolutions require frameworks and process
-Start small, think big
-Make social strategy the responsibility of every employee
-Be patient…culture change takes time.

Unsafe at any speed...

Someone is taking rhe risks of a virtual motorcycle racing game pretty seriously...crash and burn

Interacting with the audience...

And the audience with itself...live chat on screen from audience...who is engaging whom? Of course, the screen is sort of irreleveant given that it isn't any more readable than the photo suggests and that anyone participating in the chat is seeing it up close on their computer.

The presentation is about designing interactions. A behavioral psychology and economics look at designing interactions between people (as opposed to interaction between people and information).

Design against considerations including: costs, reward, risks…

The costs are primarily of user time and cognitive effort (e.g., enable action at the point of behavior); Reward is primarily about status (e.g., popularity, respect and alternative social currencies). The considerations of risk are about mitigating the risk of an action (such as rating systems that distinguish only positive options).

Many examples are of sites that, on the surface, may seem absurd...for instance the facebook "Buy and Sell Friends' application (http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=7019261521 ).

But even these experiments appear to appeal to fundamental notions of what many humans value: esteem, belonging, recognition and a degree of narcissism that is able to be indulged in realtime, all the time. Interaction designers are using these values as incentives to drive interaction between people...online.

Nothing groundbreaking in the psychology (think FiberMAx One Ton Club for an incentive geared toward esteem and recognition)...what seems new is the granular and diverse nature of defining infrastructure that enables individuals to actively pursue and manage against these incentives....think of it as knowing what everyone thinks about you and being able to do something about it to the level that you care.

Americas next top spokesmodel...

Demoing the latest HP supersystem...the geek chic!

Macs vs PC

Of course it's not a binary decision, but an informal count shows that there is no correlation between Mac use and wearing the color black among attendees.

Curry in Austin

Last night, the Worldwide Partners went to dinner at an Indian restaurant...good food (if you like Curry) and good conversation. Best story of the evening was from a session on social media metrics...apparently the speakers were not addressinig the issues to some folks satisfaction, so about a dozen attendess in different parts of the room began using twitter (a networked text messaging application) to organize a disruption...I guess the message was received by the speakers on the topic they were presenting...

Managing the media blur...

The panelists, Quentin Hardy (Silicon Valley Editor of Forbes Magazine) and Douglass Merrill (CIO and VP Engineering of Google) await the crowd, like fathers makenzie...the presentation will be run from a MacBook Air, so it has to be good ;)

Co-branding works for many companies. Apple, Forbes and Google all have stellar brands, brought together on one stage. Unfortunately, in this session only the Apple MacBook Air delivered to expectations. The panelists, and the brands they represent (themselves?) are pretentious, smug, patronizing, and pedantic...

But other than that, I think they really just weren't very well prepared. But here are a few of their comments anyway:

Technology has changed society previously…for instance the printing press. (newsflash)

The future always shows up with big chunks of the past in it. (and then its the past)

Key mechanical innovation has unanticipated social change. (like war photography)

Web 1.0 imitates the past…it looks like print and radio and tv. Now, Web 2.0 is enabling neighborhoods…of trust, of interest, of involvement

Information in itself is valueless. Only when it enables action does it have value…but information overload is nothing new. We just talk about it more now.

Authority is a relative scarcity.

A vigorous debate takes palce about the merits of 'every citizen having a voice as a journalist' vs the idea of 'quality editing and filtering'. Tools enable a merging of some of this via collaborative knowledge vetting (like Wikipedia), tagging, and search.

Audience questions didn't save this session. Sorry guys. I'll still read Forbes and use Google though. On my PC :)

10 thing from 37signals...

When I wonder what's going on in the world of good online design and usability (where good means form follows function) I ask myself...Hey self, I wonder what the guys at 37signals are up to"...well, they are running a session entitled 'Stuff we've learned at 37signals'...here's a link to their company blog (http://www.37signals.com/svn/ ). 37Signals is a Chicago-based software firm. They're widely regarded for understanding how people use online tools and for identifying the goals that they have...here goes...

Well, that was more about effectively managing a business that involves collaboration, tehcnology and creativity...hmm, certainly lessons applicable to a variety of organizations. Here's the baker's dozen of Ten Things 37 Signals has learned (your mileage may vary):

1. Red Flag Words: Here’s the words that get people upset…red flags
· Need: It’s an absolute, puts barriers up, not negotiable.
· Can’t:
· Easy: Usually used to describe what someone else does
· Only: It never is only one thing
· Fast: it seldom is
· It’s only one more feature, but we really need it. We cant launch without it. It should be easy, cant you just do it real fast.

2. Being successful and make money by helping other people be successful and make money.
Spot the chain reactions…BE the catalyst (sounds like a good tag for a university campaign!!!) for these chain reactions..you don’t have to worry about charing if you are delivering value

3. Target nonconsumers and nonconsumption
Nonconsumer has a problem but the solutions are too hard, too expensive, or too inaccessible…people who don’t use something who would use something.

4. Question your work regularly
Why are we doing this? Are we adding value? Whats the opportunity cost? Will this change behavior? Be honest with yourself.

5. Read your product
Biggest sin on the web is crappy copy/writing; Too much attention to pixels, not enough to words. Words are easiest and cheapest things to fix. And for all of us, rewrite first, then redesign second.

6. Err on the side of simple.
Start with the easy way. Most mistakes are the result of doing to much.

7. Get three things done in one week instead of one thing done in three weeks.
The longer it takes to develop something the less likely you are to launch it (Cat WL CD anyone??) . Get it out and tweak it later. Momentum and motivation are temporal qualities.

8. Resist the urge to try and do more the next time around. Focus on what you are good at…don’t start to think your prior success is whats going to enable you to do something different

9. Invest in what doesn’t change: Today and ten years from now…people will always want fast, affordable, what works

10. Follow the chefs (BAM!)
These guys share…they are experts and ttey tell you what they know…they build their empires by sharing them. In business, people are afraid competitive will mimic it and beat them. When you give it away, people pay attention.

11. Interruption is the enemy of productivity.
The closer you are, the more likely you are to interrupt colleagues…taps on shoulder, required meetings. A fragmented day is not a productive day. Passive communication reduces interruption…write back and forth…boards, email, etc. Allows the person on the other end to get to it when they are free…not when you think they should get to it. This is certainly different than we work.

12. Roadmaps can send you in the wrong direction. Roadmaps lock you into the past…into decisions you made in the past. Ok to think about the future, just don’t write it down.
Ricardo Sembler has a book about rethinking the organization…"Maverick"

13. Do the right thing at the right time.

14. Be clear in crisis

15. When you make tiny decisions you cant make big mistakes

16. Everything you do should matter.

030808: Audience discussion

Discussion on the ratio of consumption to creation (with media)...it is changing to a smaller ratio due to technology tools (e.g., youtube mashups, facebook)...

Discussion on screen time: Term is inappropriate generalization of how time is spent by youth..what they are doing is more important.

Cyberaddiction discussion: Addiction is the wrong term...if you stay up all night reading a book you are learning, but staying up all night playing a game is addicting. IS there some way to make school learning more engaging?

Discussion on impact of expansive online networks (Facebook, LinkedIn) with smaller offline relationships/networks

030808 keynote speakers

Speaker 1:

Everything that’s bad is good for you: Steven Johnson

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everything_Bad_Is_Good_For_You

Speaker 2:

Convergence culture: Dr. Henry Jenkins, MIT

http://www.nyupress.org/books/Convergence_Culture-products_id-4756.html

HJ: Never underestimate the power of parents to see their children as dumb. Kids have always adopted new technology as a way to separate themselves.

New literacies emerging that adults don't understand...hence a wave or angst over the 'declining skills' of youth. But no good evidence testing for new learnings in areas such as collaborative learning, ability to tap into collective knowledge...people don't need to have mastery over an ever evolving body of knowledge.

People don’t do things that are meaningless…the challenge is determining how it is meaningful to the individual engaged in the activity...in many instances, this meaning is found in collaboration.

For instance, TV shows like Lost/The wire….The Wire is hill street blues on steroids, last gasp of old school tv??? Lost, fan created engagement with the map of underground lair…people trying to decode text, freeze frame map and upload to discusson threads…

And then, the good Doctor panders to the audience! “What’s wrong with America that they don’t value such creative engaged people?” Expected applause follows as everyone in the audience thinks he's talking about them :)

On to politics of technology:

How do we turn a collective knowledge society toward endeavors that change the political culture/system? The Obama Phenomenon (PhenomObamathon??)

In Politics, younger generation is about ‘We’ versus 'I’…collective intelligence and collaboration are hallmarks of Obama's campaign, moresoe than Hillary according to the doctor.

"We are the answers we are seeking."

On to the audience questions...

Collaborative gaming

Lots of rockband and guitar hero here at booths for local universities among others...people will watch others play and then the booth staff swoop in...this 'rockband' was jamming to paranoid.

Play the frag dolls...

Four master (mistress) game playing women take on all comers in a first person, multiplayer shooter game...beat em abd you win a maxtor hard drive...at lest 30 people watching the screens over player shoulders...

Gamer community.

Registration....

Interesting that the registration reuired a small green card to be completed...in pencil. Opening remarks at 2 pm...now, tradeshow and swag. :)

There's a very good reason...

That they hold this conference in the south!

SXSW, huh?

I will be live bloggin' from the South by Southwest Interactive Festival in Austin. The festival schedule can be found here:

http://sched.org/sxsw2008/0307

Mailto blogger

"Mail to" as distinct from "mobile"? In this day? Only in a vehicle-centric world...my friends.

Shoes made for walkin'

These shoes have walked on Pele's hair, combed across the brow of the big island.

They've run across pitch and down sideline as futbol dreams of youth kick 'round.

Up and down the steps, and round about the yard, a tool for work, a toy for play.

A form fitting fortress against assaults by land, air, or sea. These shoes have stood beneath me, and kept me on my feet. For every journey they've taken, they've taken me with them.

And now they must walk away alone. Reuse, reduce, recycle.

Toast

How do others do it? The always-positive, overcoming-the-obstacles attitude? I assume they overcome obstacles of course...maybe they just love what they do. Maybe they live in perfect worlds. Where does that come from?

It doesn;t seem to matter in the slightest to me...and yet somehow deep inside, it does. The 'it' being the emptiness. When other people disappoint in proprotion to the disappointment you hold in your self, what's a lad or a lady to do?

What you love, you shouldn't. What you should love, seems unable or unwilling to throw you a line. Even when you are surrounded by your best friends, there's an impatience. A desire for something else, something more perfect. Something new.

But the desire is drained of the energy for action. An architect without paper, a builder without a hammer...or worse, all the tools available, sitting unused. Saved up for the someday that was yesterday.

Mountains unclimbed, trails unpacked...the way they will stay.

If this is step one burn out, then I am toast.

Minimalist

Too much time, broken into fragments...too small to glue together. Too much desire, buried under shards of fragmented time. Too little focus, too late a' coming, I'm afraid. If only. But then. Do what's necessary to get buy. Repeat.

Soft self center

With the Congressional vote to establish a timeline for withdrawal from Iraq, I am struck by the narcissism of it all. The debate, as it is, seems never to focus on US responsibility to the Iraqis.

I hear superficial discussion about winning and losing, about mistakes, about arrogance...but I don't hear much discussion about the Iraqis. When I do hear mention, it is often tinged with the subtle racist/imperialist tones of blame: if only the Iraqis would step up, we'd be able to leave.

Like it or not (and I don;t), the US invaded anothe country and unleashed forces it is now unable to control. To walk away and, as some have said, let the Iraqis solve it seems irresponsible. To assume that diplomacy and negotiation can work without a credible threat of force to back it up s naive.

When the government of Iraq asks for us to leave, we should...immediately. It is the only Iraqi body that reflects anything resembling the Iraqi people's position.

To leave because we wish we had never gone simply demonstrates the soft, self-centered will of the American people.

Dead man watching

I watched a man die. His family, friends, and I have been watching him die for the last 5 years. I went to visit him in the hospital...in a hospice room...on Saturday. I walked into his room and greeted him with a smile, thinking I was there to provide support or comfort or I-don;t-know-what kind of positive presence to honor him or, at least, to not upset him . And what does he do? He offers me an orange!

He was diagnosed with intestinal cancer 5 years ago. It's the same disease that killed his father early. We watched as he fought it, on and off, through two courses of 'cure'. Only to watch as it came back, determined to beat him down. And it seems it has won. Or has it?

I sat next to him in the little chair pushed next to his bed. The morphine made it hard for him to keep his eyes open and slowed his speech into a soft whisper. I asked if he was in pain and he said no...I held his hand and he told me that the disease had won. "I tried to fight this, but it has taken over. I can;t eat anything. All I have is this cold, clear water...so clean and beautiful."

He told me he was so grateful for everyone who had helped them though this. "If it had been you, we'd have helped you out the way you have helped us out" he said. "Remember the little things...the littlest flower, it's beautiful petals." He squeezed my hand as my eyes welled up with tears. "I don;t have much to offer" he began as a tear slowly dribbled down his right cheek..."but I am thinking about an orange that is sitting on the dining room table. Please ask [his wife] to get that for you...I hope you like oranges...and when you peel into it and eat it, feel the cool tasty juice in your mouth, I hope you will take time and enjoy it".

He was beyond the cares of time and place that had occupied his regular life and that seem to occupy all of we temporary survivors...and sharing that state of grace, he freed me...perhaps he knowsand was understating just what he had to offer...poetic in a way that seemed natural...even supernatural.

I grasped his hand tighter and told him we would look after things for him...that I would look forward to seeing him again, in another place to come. And if it is true that we all see what we beleive, then I see him living, even in death, in the hearts and minds of everyone he has touched.

Goodbye...for now.

Seedy Tournament

We played our friendly scrimmage and, after having 3 goals scored against us in the first half, came back and scored 3 goals in the second to the opponents 1...progress...especially given that this was the first time we had 8v8. So we went into the tournament feeling good about our chances.

We came out of the tournament 3 and 3, the last game delayed for an hour by rain...and the boys looking sluggish and distracted. The league organizes teams into Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze, and Red divisions in an attempt to group by skill. By all rights, we figured bronze maybe and red maybe...so we went to the seeding meeting...what a farce!

Another team from our club, a new team with no record, was seeded 7 spots above us and they did not even play in the seeding tournament. Throughout the meeting the League President kept reminding everyone that these were 10 year olds and slotting wasn;t that important, that if the coaching salary really mattered he'd consider movement...of course the reality is that it DOES matter...to the boys, to the parents, and given the relative value of the metals involved in division descriptions, it would seem to matter to the league...I mean why not name the divisions Orange, Blue, Yellow or Grape!...and then, the League president proceeds to arbitrarily agree to move or to ignore requests from the coaches...like some self-appointed UN chief, for whom it is the appearance of process that matters...for whom the ability to lecture the coaches about how silly they are for worrying about seeding...why have the meeting then? Because this is about the appearance enabling a civilized patina for what is the most base exercise of personal power...and a quest for cash (yes, the league gets $400 per team for the tournament...82 teams...$33,000 for one weekend!).

And so we are now seeded at the top of the red division...a team we beat 5-1 in the tournament is seeded above us in the bronze division...and the team from our club that did not even play in the tournament is in the silver division. We will play this season to earn our way into bronze...and we coaches will have learned another valuable lesson about how adults operate in the world of youth soccer.

An unnatural act

Soccer...er, futbol, isn't natural. At least not for boys. The game is supposed to be played with disciplined energy...with patience punctuated by explosions of energy and motion. 9-year-old boys, though, well they aren't realy about patience at all...so I guess that's what us coaches are for. To get the kids to do something they wouldn;t otherwise be inclined to. That's the coaches theory anyway. The practicum demonstrates that what the kids really listen to is each other. There is an amazing amount of peer pressure that gets mvoed around the field as play begins. Not overtly critical, but someone calling for the ball and not getting it...then not delivering it when they do. Boys passing where they think they might get one back or where they think the recipient will be able to, well, receive it without error frankly. It's also interesting how even the players are picking out who the 'best' team mates are.

They think they will be playing for at least Silver division status in the seeding tournament. Me, I'm thinking bronze. We'll see Thursday what might be possible after our first friendly scrimmage!

Futbol

Travel soccer team started practice this week. We have the usual mix of coachable and more, um, 'spirited' 9 year old boys...all of whom are masters, stars and studs by their own ready admission. Of course that doesn;t stop them from making excuses for not being able to execute a rake or platini move!

Of course some of the boys are lazy. Can;t coach that, but maybe peer pressure can.

Apparently, we aren't even supposed to be practicing until Aug 1, but what sense does that make for a new team when the seeding tournament is Aug 4 and 5? We'll just keep our stealth pickup games under the radar...take a risk...the capitalist way!

The futures of Advertising

With much teeth gnashing and finger gnawing among the ad industry intelligentsia (an oxymoron for certain), the future of the business is being debated. You see of course that all manner of technology and social forces (maybe even genetic ones too!) are conspiring to place control of one's attentions in one's own hands, rather than the formerly homogenous and concentrated media outlets.

iPods, Satellite radio, the web and bloggers even let you see what you want to see, hear what you want to hear, say what you want to say...when you want. So what's a poor ad exec to do when the job search goes nowhere? Invent the futures of advertising of course!

WTF? Well, let's start with seemingly absurd futures ideas. Here's what the Chicago Mercantile Exchange has to say about weather futures:

http://www.cme.com/trading/prd/env/cmeweather14270.html

"It is estimated that nearly 20 percent of the U.S. economy is directly affected by the weather. As a result, the earnings of businesses can be adversely impacted by summers that are hotter than normal or winters that are much colder than anticipated. Conversely, revenues of power providers and utilities can suffer from either balmy summers with less need for air conditioning or mild winters with less heating demand from consumers.

CME created a weather derivative market which enables those businesses that could be adversely affected by unanticipated temperature swings, to transfer this risk. Just as professionals regularly use futures and options to hedge their risk in interest rates, equities and foreign exchange, now there are tools available for the management of risk from extreme movements of temperature. This sector of hedging and risk management products represents today’s fastest growing derivative market. "

So, using this as a model, one could replace certain of the precepts with the word 'attention'. What are people paying attention to? When? Where? And how much of it can be predicted? Each day every individual has 24 hours...that's fixed. So subtracting out all the statistical averages for time sleeping and other 'unattentive' moments, you get a market of potential attention. MOst of that attention will be given over to the routine daily habits of life: flipping on the radio, firing up the laptop, browsing your favorite chat room...all the usual suspected places to capture or engage someone's attention...the places where advertising (in it's most general sense) already tries to make headway. But what about the unanticipated events that capture collective attention...HurricaneKatrina, Acts of Terror, Alien Landings ?

The unanticipated presents risk to the advertisers who bank on the relative proportion of attention they can gather in the normal course of a mass audience's day via the accepted and emerging vehicles available to them. So why not a future's market for attention...to be used by advertisers? You could literally buy and sell the future value of blocks of attention through various vehicles...maybe the massive vehicles (e.g., cnn.com, FoxNews, the NYTimes) get priced at a premium for these futures...maybe they get priced down as people race to their favorite small-time chat room to discuss what's going on with those who are there...no intermediary necessary. That's not my call, let the future's market decide. The benefit to advertisers would be a more uniform pricing model for units of attention...no more of the BS impressions...they also get a way to hedge the risk of consumer attention being diverted by unforeseen events...again, putting a more consistent, long term view on the value of attention in the marketplace.

But that's just the beginning...at some point, it changes the mechanism of advertising from a need to get attention, to the need to sustain attention...and there is no way advertising will ever compete with real life for that...30 seconds out of my 24 hours doesn;t register, the awards winners notwithstanding.

Hero's end

Just finished reading a book by Neil Peart, "Ghost Rider, Travels on the Healing Road". The drummer for the rock group RUSH lost his daughter and wife in the span of 18 months and the book chronicles his journey around North America in search of a reason to live.

I've been a Rush fan since 8th grade when the odd-time-signatures of Cygnus X1, Bastille Day and the like made me stop and listen...and work to buy my first set of drums. So in no small way is my attraction to this book driven by Fanboi-ism. But if the start was getting to know one of my hero's a bit better, well, the outcome is, as he says in the book, getting the thing done. Part travelogue, NP has provided a nice image of landscapes in Quebec and along the Southwest and West coasts. Part self-indulgent autobiography, I also have a more complete image of Neil Peart as a man.

Peart at once seems to embody the contradiction of us all...he's a nice guy and an a-hole. He loves people and he despises them. He says one thing, and yet he does another. In the end, his story tells the tale of a man who fails to find meaning in the tragedy that enveloped him (or who, at least, fails to reveal it to the reader!). What befalls NP forces him to question his prior life's philosophy of "Give good, get good". And yet, his 'give good' seems described mostly as supporting various causes with donations of money. Missing in his descriptions are the giving of generosity of thought, of benefit of the doubt to those who don;t, in his system of beleifs, 'measure up'.

He seems completely at ease with his soul-mate friend Brutus, the subject of many letters in the book, who is incarcerated for possession. And yet, he has no tolerance for the flawed individuals he describes so generically as 'Fat Americans' and the 'Sheep' among the tourists who've chosen a different construct for their travels. One wonders how he might view the tragedy of someone whose own child succumbed to the tragedy of drug abuse and how that might change his acceptance of his best friends flaws? Or perhaps being "a citizen of the world", as one of his rock lyrics suggests, is more an ideal than a reality.

Tragedy befalls us all in time, in our own definition. What we learn about ourselves, our friends and of those 'others' that we tolerate during tragic times is that we are truly "strangers to each other, each one's life a novel noone else has read"..and yet, having read NPs novel, it seems to me that it's the generosity of strangers that makes our stories worth the read.

Blow...hard

As the various victim's stories make their way through the swirling storm of Katrina media editors, it appears to me we have poked the true soft underbelly of our modern life...we are bombarded by blame.

Only four days in from 'the worst natural disaster in our history' and you'd think there had been dereliction of duty from the red cross, FEMA and, of course, the White House. Why weren;t they 'ready'?

One commentator links the disaster's effects to the FDA's decisions regarding birth control (http://www.guardian.co.uk/katrina/story/0,16441,1561356,00.html).

The tragic aftermath of Katrina has been blamed on, among other things:

New Orleans gay parade [http://www.repentamerica.com/pr_hurricanekatrina.html] (though no evidence it was going to pass through MS or AL),

america's racism (though strange to contemplate that NO is overwhelmingly, um , African American),

abortionists (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/8/31/0836/62623) and

US involvement in Iraq (http://today.reuters.com/News/CrisesArticle.aspx?storyId=L02310631).

...(and of course, global warming) [http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050902/ap_on_sc/katrina_warming].

This hot air proves of course that it would be too simple to blame it on the hurricane. In our modern lives, even a tragedy this massive is like some sort of video game or moive...why should a category 4 hurricane across low lying, ocean front ground prevent aid from appearing like magic...instantaneously...at the speed with which we've grown accustomed to news and information appearing in front of us?

Many of us seem prepared to politicize every trauma...from the slightest to the greatest, there are thousands of axes out there, just waiting for the next news-grabbing grindstone. Somewhere in the mess of sparks and smoke, the truth lies...will we like it when it confronts us? The tragedy of poor decisions...of natures unruliness...of victim on victim violence.

And the tragedy of the universally understood, if not universally expressed, sigh of disaster relief. That sigh of relief inherent in humans that, thank God, this disaster did not befall us (does God pick favorites?)...

While some catch our collective breathes, and others take action, I hope we will be able to ride out the storm of shrill voices casting blame...and I wonder how prepared we are for the aftermath of that storm?