what's in an icon?

Donna Bogatin has an interesting point in her post on LinkedIn v Facebook in terms of women. She notices that the icon 'mascot' on LinkedIn is most decidedly male -- suit, tie and executive haircut -- (and I'd note predictably non-ethnic) even on the sections of female members.

Donna's right--it is a little thing--but what it reflects is not so little, especially in the week when the techmeme leaderboard reminds us all that the road to the top is littered with reciprocal-linked male voices.

Despite Dave Winer's positioning me as a feminist zealot, I don't self-identify as a feminist. Maybe it's my own ignorance, but I don't understand feminism quite. I'm pro-people, pro-men and pro-women, and I'm pro elevating the voices that are generally overlooked because those are where the answers are. If the answers to the pressing questions of our day were inside the heads of those we hear blather on ad infinitum, then problems would already be solved.

Anyway, that little linked-in guy leaves a lot to be desired.

And why do we need him at all?

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technorati tags: donna bogatin, social networks, web2.0, tech, advertising, business, PR, gender, a-list, linkedin, facebook, mancon

runningoutoftoiletpapertoday.com

That George sent me a link to this circuits column about the High Possibilities of Web 2DotOh and I have to say, I was nearly all a flutter with excitement. The author imagined the possibilities of Web 2DotOh and thought up a website that would tell us who's sick with what so we could use good hygiene and Stay Healthy (problem being, this idea would only show which INTERNET users are sick, and everyone knows we're a sickly bunch with too little Vitamin K, but don't let that get you down):

When my kids come down with various horrible flu variations, and it gets bad enough to see a doctor, we often hear from the pediatrician: “Oh, yes, it’s going around. You’ll have vomiting for two days, and then you’ll get better.”

Well, gosh darn it, why couldn’t someone have told us? If so much is known about a certain bug, then it would help a lot — both with life planning and with managing emotions — if you knew a little bit about what was in store for you.

Somebody should come up, then, with a Web 2.0 site where people could report what they’re catching and what you can expect from it. You could see a map of your region and watch the red cloud or the blue cloud spread closer and closer to your neighborhood, the better to step up your hand washings. As you lay in bed, miserable, you’d know that at least you had only 24 hours to go. Or whatever.

The Web did what you would expect -- IT ACTED LIKE A COMMUNITY-CAMP-SOCIALNETWORK AND IT ANSWERED! OH GLORIOUS WEB! OH SO MANY PEOPLE WITH TIME ON THEIR HANDS AND AN EYE ON THEIR BANK ACCOUNTS AND OVER-THE-COUNTER SUDAFED! YES VIRGINIA, there actually IS such a site!

It is called whoissick.org. There you can track post nasal drip in YOUR TOWN! Right Now, 24x7, from any Internet browser -- cough/sore throat (as if they're the same), headaches, fever and more. You sick? ME TOO!

And I'm sure mobile is coming soon.

I can sleep tonight, let me tell you.

This got Me In the Spirit, and I sent George back some ideas of my own as I began imagining the Possibilities of the social web:

CART4YOUYOULAZSHIT.COM - A social site where grocery store shoppers enter the last location of the cart they used so geeks with PDAs can pull in and park next to the nearest empty cart that is closest to the store's entrance! Hey, CALLING WHOLE FOODS - w00t!!

EATMYGASNOW.COM - A social site where participants monitor their farts and the farts of others AGAINST where they have eaten out so that the social web can determine which eateries serve the gassiest foods! t00t!!

RUNNINGOUTOFTOILETPAPERTODAY.COM - A social site where we track how much toilet paper we use, and who is running out of toilet paper, and then perhaps we can determine who is wasteful and send trainers out to teach "new techniques" in ass wiping! Hat Tip to George for the domain! h00t!!

Apparently George is on board for site development as he sent me some of his preliminary social research:

"Your search - runningoutoftoiletpapertoday.com - did not match any documents."

Suggestions:
Make sure all words are spelled correctly.
Try different keywords.
Try more general keywords.

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Disaster Preparedness - No 40 Acres and No Mule

we're still under a tornado watch.

In November 1992, Melvin Bishop's farm in Georgia suffered severe damage from a tornado. After the storm, Bishop went to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) to apply for disaster relief, an emergency loan, and an operating loan. For the next seven months, the local USDA office gave him the runaround. Finally, in May 1993, Bishop not only was denied the disaster relief he qualified for, he was also denied both loans. No reasons were given. Bishop, who is African-American, called his experience with the USDA "even more devastating than the tornado."

..........

In 1865, the US Congress approved the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery and, soon thereafter, passed the Freedmen's Bureau Act, which leased 40 acres of abandoned or confiscated Southern land to "every male citizen, whether refugee or freedman."

Unfortunately, these plans for the redistribution of Southern lands were never carried out. After the war, President Andrew Johnson returned the land to white aristocrats, ensuring the persistence of the South's semi-feudal economic order.

In 1920, nearly one million African-American farmers owned 14 percent of all US farms. By 1950, Black land ownership had declined to 12 million acres, and in 1969 it was down to 5.5 million acres -- a drop of 54 percent in just 20 years. Between 1982 and 1992, the number of black farmers in the US fell 43 percent -- from 33,250 to 18,816.

In 1990, African Americans made up roughly one percent of the nation's farmers and were disappearing at a rate almost five times greater than whites. In 1999, fewer than 18,000 out of 1.9 million US farmers were African Americans, and these farmers owned less than 1 million acres. A 1990 Congressional report warned that black farms were on the verge of extinction. It is now feared that, by the end of 2000, there may be no black-owned land in America.

.....

time for a checkup.

They Called the Wind Maria

We're under tornado watch.

"During the evening of April 5, 1936, Tupelo, Mississippi took a glancing blow from an F5 tornado. Although the storm missed the downtown area it still took more than 216 lives and left over 700 people injured. Property loss from the strike is estimated at 3 million dollars. Since African-Americans were not included in either dead or injured totals, the toll in human lives was probably significantly higher. Still, by itself, this tornado ranks as the fourth most destructive storm based on the number of dead."

You Should Have Unprotected Sex with My Blogroll Right Now!!!

It is THAT clean, and I mean clean.

I have validated, deleted, edited, moved and sanitized my blogroll to a degree that makes me deserving of some kind of medal. Bestow one on me, QUICKLY.

"The Gold Medal of Safely Screwable Blogrolls"

I am honored.

Go ahead, click through those links on my blogroll. If you find a broken link, or a link of someone whose blog has moved and I missed changing it, you get a $10 amazon gift certificate.

YOU HEARD ME RIGHT.

I mean, I had to change half of the blogs on my blogroll to new addresses. Now the OPMLey among you would say, "there is a better way," but I think everyone should have to scrub down their blogroll once a month. These aggregators are like factory farming -- hamburger without the bloodletting. Well, I like a good burger, but there is nothing wrong with tending a garden as well.

Now, if you are as full of metaphors as I am, I will excuse you and let you go have sex with my blogroll.

ENJOY -- oh, and leave me comments with links to more cool diverse voices to add to my newly screwable blogroll.

Millar's Law, Brand Strategy, And Fish.

A week or so ago I took a quick shot at explaining what online marketers are doing wrong in trying to cut through the noise in the crowded Internet space: They're making more noise. What they should be doing instead is shutting up and helping people do what it is they want to do.

This post over at Brand Tactitians does a wwwwaaahhyy better job at illustrating what web companies should be doing for the people they like to call users. Because most companies treat people like users; their aim is to sell them us drugs, new drugs, better drugs. We're not users. We're doers. Help us do stuff, okay?

Anyway, I digress. A story about fish awaits you. It is Millar's Law. It is important. Go Read It.

giving it a go, diversity, the red button, and anil.

So many women over so many years around these so many parts have endeavored so often and so passionately to describe the problem with diverse voices being excluded from tech events, tech conferences, and the tech economy--heck some would wish we'd shut up altogether--that there is hardly anything left unsaid.

And yet, the same types of people keep spewing the same types of stupid arguments the same way about the same topic (linking to the same one anothers in doing so) to try and shift the blame anywhere other than their own two shoulders -- it makes me want to push the red button on this whole damn social experiment. As if i had a button.

It's crazy making. it really is.

Today the men are talking about it again, and I am pointing it out so that others can go there and talk about it with Anil, whose post is right on in explaining why monoculture is not only NOT a good thing, but why diversity is a business must that will pay off. (In other words, hurry, there's money involved.)

I haven't always agreed with Anil. In fact he's pissed me off several times over these many years. He's also very smart. This is a good post and a good discussion. Thank you Anil for having it.

Why Executives Should Blog

I wrote this for Global PR Week back in 2005. Much of the advice still applies, and most of those exec bloggers I talked to are still blogging. I should go back and do another one of these. I think I'd title it, Has Blogging Jumped the Shark? 10 Ways for You Can Still Make a Splash with Blogging. Except now you have to pay me to tell you. ;-)


ADDING YOUR VOICE TO THE CONVERSATION: Why CEOs and Other Executives Should Blog.

September 19th, 2005

By Jeneane D. Sessum, Kat Herding Media, Allied
EDITORS' CHOICE | CEO Blogs

Just how taxing is it to be one of today’s chief executive officers? Most are on call, in one form or another, nearly 24 hours a day. According to an article in the Pocket Manager, it’s difficult to determine precisely how many hours the typical CEO works, but research shows that U.S.- and U.K.-based chief executive officers work the longest hours. While Oracle’s Larry Ellison has attempted to cut back on his 80-hour work week, most CEOs ether haven’t mastered the technique or don’t have that luxury.

So why in the world would CEOs take on the extra task of blogging—a communication medium with a tentative ROI that remains largely unproven?

Marketing pundit and best-selling author Seth Godin says they shouldn’t. According to Godin, blogs work when they are based on candor, urgency, timeliness, pithiness, and controversy. “Does this sound like a CEO to you?" Godin asks. “Short and sweet, folks: If you can’t be at least four of the five things listed above, please don’t bother . . . save the fluff for the annual report."

As blogging evolves, however, many of today’s CEOs-turned-bloggers in fact are making the time—and having a good time—using the very characteristics Godin lists as what makes blogging successful.

Time to Blog?

Bob Cramer, CEO of Marlborough, Mass.-based LiveVault, sees blogging not as an extra activity, but as something inherent to his business.

“The essence of our business is leveraging the Internet to transform how organizations run the process of data backup," he says. “Since our business model is based around the net, blogging is a natural fit for us." Cramer, who uses Six Apart’s Movable Type blog tool, manages the time demands of blogging by loosely scheduling time for writing.

“I aim for one blog entry a week at a minimum, and while I don’t formally schedule my posts, I do put blogging on my to-do list," he says. “When I get the RSS feeds from blogs I read and I see a topic that interests me, I’ll take some notes and make the time to write about it."

Phil Libin, president of CoreStreet, in Cambridge, Mass., takes a more free-form approach to balancing his blog time with his executive responsibilities.

“In every other facet of the company, I have a schedule," he says. “There are deadlines; there are reports; there are meetings, and so on. If I tried to extend that schedule to my blog, I wouldn’t bother blogging. If I had to say to myself, ‘Here are ten topics, now sit down and write about them,’ the whole experience would become bland and boring. So instead I post when something intrigues me, when something seems like it will interest my readers. I’d rather have readers remember me for having written something memorable than for when I last posted."

Gil Friend, CEO of Berkeley, Calif.-based Natural Logic, doesn’t have a regular posting pattern, but does have posting consistency over time, having blogged actively on his Radio blog since June 2002.

“I’ll go through a week or two of not posting, and then I’ll have days when I write five posts, then a single post—it varies," he says. “I don’t know if that’s a problem for readers. When I started blogging I wasn’t thinking about all of that. It was as much because I like to try new things as anything. But I continue blogging because writing is one of the ways I figure out what I’m thinking. And, what I think and what I write about are often key reasons people engage my company."

Matt Blumberg, CEO of New York, NY-based Return Path, also uses blogging to help crystallize his thinking.

“One of the best things publishing a blog has done has been to force me to spend a few minutes here and there thinking about issues I encounter in a more structured way and crystallizing my point of view on them," Blumberg wrote in 2004. “[That’s] invaluable, but mostly for me."

Unleashing Your Inner Blogger

Getting started in blogging doesn’t always take an edict from on high or a firm resolution to blog. Sometimes it starts by accident. That’s how GM vice chairman Bob Lutz came to blogging, according to marketing consultant Debbie Weil, who learned from Gary Grates, GM’s vice president of communications for North America, that Bob Lutz started writing flying back from Europe when he wrote up a response to some posts he’d been reading about GM.

When Lutz asked what he should do with his notes, Grates had his blog-savvy communications team put his writeup on the Saturn into a blog template. The rest, as they say, is history—at least recent history. Grates says that there is no science to how or when Lutz blogs, but rather that he simply “juxtaposes his response to reader comments with what he wants to write about next."

Lutz himself gives advice to other CEOs on the whys and wherefores of blogging in his article from the July 11, 2005 issue of Information Week, “Nothing to Fear from Executive Blogging". “It’s important that we run the bad with the good," he writes. “We’d take a credibility hit if we posted only rosy compliments, and credibility is the most important attribute a corporate blog can have. Once it’s gone, your blog is meaningless. If you filter the negatives out, you don’t have a true dialogue, so how can you hope to change anybody’s mind about your products or your business?"

Not every high-level executive, however, has a power blogger within, just waiting for the opportunity to engage the market in debate and express himself or herself online. It takes a combination of personality and proficiency, of wit and wisdom, and the ability to write well, to make a blogger—CEO or otherwise—worth reading.

CoreStreet’s Libin was inspired and encouraged into blogging by Chuck Tanowitz of Schwartz Communications, who urged his client to join the blogosphere in 2003.

“What’s right about Phil for blogging is that he’s thoughtful, articulate, well spoken, and a great writer, which translates well to the medium of blogging," Tanowitz says. “His blog is not just a recap of company press releases and press materials—far from it. What he writes about in his posts are the things that Phil thinks about every day. His passion for the industry, his business smarts, and his personality are really what attracted our firm to the company when we started working with CoreStreet."

According to Tanowitz, Libin’s enthusiasm for what he does—which comes across in his blog and in person—is something Tanowitz has leveraged for more traditional PR tactics as well.

“As public relations people, when we hear that passion from someone, that’s what we need to capture and take back to the marketplace," Tanowitz says. “Blogging is the digital pencil. As Phil’s PR counsel, we get a lot of ideas from reading Phil’s blog at times when we’re not in front of him. We get the thoughts he has while he’s traveling in a far-off nation. His blog is a direct line into his head, and what Phil writes on his blog often extends to traditional PR and marketing channels—allowing us to repackage his thoughts on a given topic and bring his ideas to the media in other forms. Often, something Phil’s read or written sparks talks with analysts and journalists."

For his part, Libin likes the way his blog breaks the ice when meeting prospects, partners, colleagues, candidates, and members of the media for the first time.

“I didn’t think of this when I started blogging, but people usually Google me before a meeting, and by the time I meet with them at least one-quarter of them will have found my blog and read something there that they want to talk about," he says. “It’s like a shared joke, something more personal that removes the pressure during for those first initial conversations. The basics about who you are have been taken care of on your blog."

Blogging Is “Complementary To"—Not a “Replacement For"

Natural Logic’s Gil Friend sees blogging as one of many communication pathways for his organization and its constituents. Friend, who has been online since the late 1970s, when he participated in EIES (the Electronic Information Exchange System), one of the early computer communications projects outside DARPA, puts blogging into perspective as a powerful tool for participating in the larger conversation.

“As a CEO, I write, speak and meet, and I see blogging as short-form writing that has its place in how I communicate," he says. “I do a longer monthly piece called “The New Bottom Line,�? regular pieces at WorldChanging (http://www.worldchanging.com) and GreenBiz, as well as articles for traditional media like The Wall Street Journal. Blogging is more informal, and makes it easy to link other relevant items and bring people into the conversation. People can engage at their own pace and at their own convenience. And with RSS and blogrolls, reading blogs becomes even easier."

The conversation is the point, according to Friend. And the more dimensions to it, the better.

“The conversation happens through blogging and around the water cooler," he says. “It happens in performance reviews, in the lunchroom, in the boardroom. Extended across the organization’s lifecycle is the defining conversation the company has with itself and its value chain. And every organization has the opportunity to have this conversation, to make it broadly participatory, to make it rich, and to have it in all the forums where it can occur."

CEO Blogging: Mischief or Management?

Because blogging is a continuously evolving medium, it is unpredictable. The risks of blogging—of being harassed in comments, embarrassed by errors and miscommunication, even being fired—have been well demonstrated in real-life scenarios for a few years now. Blogging’s blemishes are worth examining, but not worth losing sleep over, according to executive bloggers with a passion for posting. With unpredictability comes risk, but it also brings edginess and excitement that connects with readers.

“Our executive team had meetings to decide if we should do it, how we should do it, and who should do it," says LiveVault’s Bob Cramer. “We weighed the potential problems against the possible opportunities. In the end, we decided that the worst-case scenario was that we would learn from it. So we jumped in."

According to Cramer, the biggest risk for new executive bloggers is that they may expect too much from it.

“Blogging is about expressing yourself and how you feel—whether it’s your market, industry trends, current events, or some other topic," he says. “It’s not about selling product or writing a sales pitch. While I would urge every CEO to blog, I would also urge them to write about things they know about, to be personal, to understand that this is not your ‘company’ speaking—it’s you speaking."

What about encouraging employees to follow in his footsteps? Cramer says the more the merrier, as long as the work gets done.

“I think it would be great if our employees decided to blog, if they want to spend extra time conveying how they think and feel to the community."

Karen Christensen, CEO of Great Barrington, Mass.-based Berkshire Publishing Group, has identified the risks associated with blog publishing—and has some advice for overcoming them.

“Blogging requires consistency, which is why it’s a good idea to test the waters without making an announcement or commitment before you find out if it’s for you," she says. “It’s not a blog if the last entry is a month old, so before you draw a lot of attention to your blog, make sure you can really do it."

Christensen also advises CEO bloggers to get personal while understanding that a certain level of decorum is necessary.

“We should be as relaxed and uncensored as we can, but also be aware that there are risks in publishing on the fly," she notes. “For example, I try not to share my wilder dreams and visions on the blog. And if you are one of those people who can’t spell or see typos in your writing, get a proofreader or editor."

CoreStreet’s Libin, who views his blog as a personal site, separate from his company, does not use corporate resources of any kind to design, host, maintain, or post to his blog. He also makes sure his blog has a separate graphical identity, saying that “this separation of church and state" gives him freedom to keep things humorous and fresh—and keep him engaged in writing there. Of course, that freedom of expression also brings some—you guessed it—risks.

“From an HR perspective, it’s a personal blog, but I have to be appropriate," he says. “That’s a little tricky, because it’s easy to have what you write be misunderstood. Also, I find myself writing some humorous posts and I think, ‘Do I want my investors to think that I’m funny? Does that make me frivolous? Is there a difference?’ The truth is, yes there’s a difference—and being funny and interesting is not a bad thing."

A little fear, in fact, may be a good thing, according to Natural Logic’s Gil Friend, who notes that there’s nothing wrong with fear.

“Fear is part of awareness," he explains. “Blind courage gets large numbers of people killed. So, be afraid and go ahead with the risks in mind."

Friend sees the opportunities for executive bloggers to develop a voice that customers, employees, and other stakeholders can relate to as an important benefit of blogging.

“Giving a voice to what can be a monolith is important because people do business out of relationships as much as they do it out of price, performance, and benefit," he says. “Blogging facilitates a dialogue about what matters to companies and communities—a discussion that often leads to a working relationship."

Because a key job for CEOs is to provide the core of the organization’s identity and to ensure sustainability, a vital component of corporate identity is cohesiveness.

“One way that that the corporate voice can emerge is through blogging," he says. “The most interesting and powerful companies in the world are the ones who have dismantled that dichotomy between inside and outside, companies who speak with the same voice—internally, externally, and to themselves."

The Cost Is Low, The ROI Is Coming

What is the return on investment for developing an identifiable, sustainable corporate voice? Even the most enthusiastic CEO bloggers will admit that they have yet to figure that out.

“In terms of ROI, I don’t know what dollar value you can place on having people know me, know CoreStreet, and understand our values before we ever walk into a meeting," Phil Libin says. “But considering the number of meetings I attend, it could be pretty huge."

Libin advises, however, that blogging isn’t for every executive.

“I would recommend blogging, but it depends on whether or not you have anything to say," he explains. “Blogging is not the only way to move the conversation forward. If you’re good at golf, you have the golf course, but unfortunately I’m not. Blogging is my golf game."

Berkshire Group’s Karen Christensen says all the ROI she needs to see is a positive response about her blog from her customers.

“Our customers are librarians and book distributors, and they have told me that they appreciate getting to know what goes on inside a publishing company," she explains. “Publishers typically have something of a castle drawbridge mentality. They send out information in polished, finished form, then pull the bridge up. The whole open-access movement is putting them under pressure to be more collaborative, and blogging is our chance to show our approach."

Blogs Power Convergence

If a fundamental job of a CEO is to be thinking ahead, can blogs help make that job easier? Is there a role in blogging for helping companies determine what the business wants to be not only in five years, but in 25 years?

“There are companies in Japan that have 500-year plans," Gil Friend says. “Because our business is about the intersection of economic and environmental sustainability, we ask our clients to tell the truth about what they aspire to. We ask them, ‘What’s your organization’s purpose? What are your long-term commitment to your shareholders and employees and community? What’s in your own heart? What are you really here to do?’ And we ask this of CEOs, of senior executives, of everyone within the corporation. Typically, they say: ‘Do you mean in my job? In my life? In my family? In my community?’ And eventually they realize: ‘Oh, you mean all of that?’—and then they get very quiet, and drop into authenticity. What follows is deep and genuine, and it is an extremely powerful conversation."

Friend and his company have seen first hand the tangible benefits that occur when the CEO and the company’s mission, vision, business model, and value proposition are aligned. And, according to Friend, blogging can play a role in facilitating this authentic convergence.

“Providing multifaceted forums for participation and conversation enables more people within global organizations and communities to emerge and participate in ways that work for them. Blogging is just one way to facilitate this important goal—but it can be a powerful way."

Perhaps it’s GM’s Bob Lutz’ words of encouragement for executives considering whether or not to blog that will convince the more hesitant business leaders to get to their keyboard especially since the blog world, the press, and most of GM’s constituents are tuned into Lutz’s blog—which, he says, gets more than 5,000 visits and 13,000 page views a day.

“To any senior executive on the fence about starting a corporate blog, I have a word of advice,�? Lutz says. “Jump."

so you think it's funny i'm selling shaklee, huh? -- ADVERTORIAL --

yeah, hahaha. well, maybe not.

I decided to try shaklee vitamins last month because i was sick of having to drive to the health food store every 15 days to get a bottle of quality supplements, and because I'm sick of being on antibiotics (as a result of failing to do number 1 above, in part), and I'm sick of feeling like homemade crap, and because george used to sell shaklee in the early 80s. I've tried their stuff before and have always liked it.

And THAT'S why you see the puppy in the sidebar. Right over there --->

And what the heck, if i'm not my own best advertiser, what kind of a model am I setting for others who would pay to have me hawk their brands!??!

So here's to good health. Yours and mine. And if you're looking for supplements, eco-friendly (not boutique, mind you) cleaning supplies, personal care items, etc., check out my shaklee store and order online.

this advertisement sponsored by the people for the ethical treatment of bloggers, ltd.

Five Years After I Asked for It, It's Here!

To my own not-so-easily-perked-these-days amazement, I read on Lisa's blog about this blog slurper book thing. In short, Blurb apparently lets you "slurp your blog into Blurb’s BookSmart™ software to create a bookstore-quality book, and end up with a permanent and portable archive to share with others."

Been looking for something like this?

Shhheah!

Five years ago I asked a way to export content in this meaningful way. Hey, I'm patient. And I'm willing to give it a try. Book Slurper says it does some pretty cool stuff:

• Imports and maps blog text, images, comments, and links into a professionally designed template, producing a draft book in real time
• Allows you to customize and edit your book as little or as much as you like
• Creates bookstore-quality books up to 440 pages, with professional printing and binding

Not sure about their business model or pricing -- sounds like a downer to me. They need to find a way to REWARD self-publishers for longevity and heavy-content (because they will tend to bring more buyers), not tax them for books over 40 pages.

You pay only when you publish your book. Books up to 40 pages start at $12.95 – see pricing table for details.

Not sure about the backend publishing part either--real creativity needs to happen there to help bloggers make it worth their while rather than just cutting and pasting into a PDF and using lulu. Why should I pay $12.95 to publish 40 slurpped pages of my blog? I can go copy out 40 pages worth--it's the 5,000 posts over six years that I need to slurp.

I'll be digging in to check this thing out and either signing on or waiting for the open source version. Stay tuned.

feeling all information superhighwayish

I've been perseverating about Stowe's traffic and flow post for a couple of days. Not every waking moment. But pretty persistently.

I'm in a frame of mind where I'm taking a look at how 'social' all of this new social technology really is, especially as technology seems to be backfiring all over me this week:

1.) what with my wireless router working well for everything but wireless all of a sudden, and

2.) what with this annoying feed-reading dyslexia I've developed where I keep thinking I'm reading SOMEONE except that halfway through I start getting that weird "doc's excited about new underwear?" or "j. brotherlove went to the circus?" feeling only to figure out I've once again clicked on a different name in bloglines than I thought, jolting me out of my happy reading experience with someone I thought I knew. It's like going home to the wrong house, or walking in on your parents having sex. I'm just saying.

So Stowe's report of Emily Chang's new data stream left me feeling jittery. I don't want to feel jittery about a data stream. But no matter how much I admire these ideas and their generators, and no matter how much I admire the professional stamina and gitundoulous amounts of information and knowledge these folks juggle, the focus on data and streams and all of the recent nattering around "how DO we keep up?" leaves me feeling a little jittery and a little pissy.

Part pissy, part jittery.

Maybe the jittery part is about me not being able to explain why I'm so pissy about it.

Certainly Emily's goal and journey in figuring out how to keep up with her online social activity is an important personal activity. People who live inside of this stuff and make a living there really ARE drowning in data and dying for information (oh wait! that was 1996 and data warehousing...). Drowning in websites and dying for gigs (no wait, that was 2002). Drowning in feeds and dying for .....what?

What?

What exactly is it that's being died for?

To know me? To see me? To read me? To understand me? To get me? To get as many mes as you can?

Or to FOLLOW. To follow the traffic, the noise, the action?

The collision of RSSing and aggregating and twittering--it's people following. It's people following information. Not following not you or I, but following themselves.

Emily writes:

Recently had to revisit the plan to aggregate all my activity into one data stream. As the calendar rolled to 2007, I kept wishing I could look at all my social activity from 2006 in context: time, date, type of activity, location, memory, information interest, and so on. What was I bookmarking, blogging about, listening to, going to, and thinking about? I still had the urge to have an information and online activity mash-up that would allow me to discover my own patterns and to share my activity across the web in one chronological stream of data (to start with anyway).

On the 'cool solution!" front I'm all, 'how cool is that?' On the 'what does this mean to the web?' front, I'm all about being creeped out.

What I'm trying to say -- I think, at least, as I limp along -- is that I don't get how we're trending toward social here. What I see is more and more niche experts going more and more micro, inner and inner and inner, and calling it social.

How does this help us act as intermediaries for new voices? How does any of this help connect the man or woman who isn't "followable" in terms of scale with readers and friends who don't know they exist?

At our SoCon session last week, I made a call to bring back the blogroll. Because in all of the devices that have come along since the day when we only had blogrolls to show who we were reading -- RSS and aggregators and technorati and conference agendas and on and on -- nothing has done THAT job effectively.

There is no tool to raise us up. Only to follow those who have been raised.

And I think THAT job -- the job of connecting and circulating voices, especially new ones -- is the most important part of what we're doing here. Reading and writing one another whole.

I'm not here to FOLLOW you. I'm here to meet you. To like you, to love you, to read you, to hear you, to know you, to call you family or kick you in the ass and tell you to get lost.

Stowe is one of the smartest guys I know in this space. I'm sure that when he says there are tools in the works to make meaning out of things like traffic and flow, he's telling us straight. But I'm not getting how this technology is -- at its core -- social-making:

A pal of yours is having a party? He will create the event using some social application site, and the event will be cast into his traffic. Your flow-aware calendar app might snag the event from the traffic, and ask you if you'd like to confirm. You agree, and the agreement is thrown into your traffic, for your buddy and others to make sense of, downstream.

This world of traffic will change things like blogging: instead of commenting at someone's post -- a static, page-centric system -- I might simply create a commentary with a link to the original (which I may have discovered in my inbound traffic, not necessarily by browsing his/her blog), and I drop a comment into my traffic, where it flows out to all those who want to see my natterings. Yes, sure, I might archive that comment (as well as the inbound post), or maybe push the comment into a conventional blog post: but the basic perception of what is going on shifts away from pages and static URLs toward flow and the elements that make up my traffic.

While I got the initial buzz off twitter -- the unending chatter of followees about this dinner and that, about this meeting and that, about this profound thought and that -- twitter's after taste is what was so important to me. Twitter made me realize how unworthy we are as human beings of being followed.

Period.

We are not, each and every one of us, a walking techmeme or fashionmeme or dinnermeme or godmeme, streaming continuous brainfood for the masses. Thank you Jesus.

Those who could change you in some fundamental way if you followed them -- you won't see them sticking a stream out of their butt and asking you to jump on.

I don't know. Am I making sense?

I was feeling pretty alone thinking through all of the the last couple of days when I happened on Doc's post, We Are All Authors of Each Other.

And Doc brought me home.

Let Doc bring you home too:

I don't think of my what I do here as production of "information" that others "consume". Nor do I think of it as "one-to-many" or "many-to-many". I think of it as writing that will hopefully inform readers.

Informing is not the same as delivering information. Inform is derived from the verb to form. When you inform me, you form me. You enlarge that which makes me most human: what I know. I am, to some degree, authored by you.

What we call "authority" is the right we give others to author us, to enlarge us.

The human need to increase what we know, and to help each other do the same, is what the Net at its best is all about. Yeah, it's about other things. But it needs to be respected as an accessory to our humanity. And terms like "social media", forgive me, don't do that. (At least not for me.)

What he said.

Media 2.0 - Video Blow OR GooTrain

Cutting Through the Noise -- You Don't Do It By Making More Noise.

Seems to me Robert is asking as much a marketing and PR question (how can companies cut through the roar of noise on the net) as he is a personal time management question. Surprisingly (heh), I have an answer:

Engage a Marketing/PR person who lives, breathes, and sleeps online like you do. BUT: Make sure they're actually smart, not just off their Ritalin.

The right person will watch for opportunities -- much the same way you read feeds, but with different glasses on -- to enable people who are gathered around a common interest or passion, one your company's product/service addresses. This person understands that an opportunity isn't a chance to spam influencers. It's a chance to help people accomplish something they can't accomplish at that moment. It's two, two, two mints in one: engage and enable.

It's helping the market help itself.

Using your company's passion and people, you help real people (in old-school language, your user base; in new-school language, communities) solve a challenge--not necessarily a challenge that has anything to do with your product or service.

A snapshot that Robert was involved in-- CES 2005. There was a room shortage--no one could find rooms anywhere near CES in Vegas because of a collision of shows and events. Bloggers started saying, Oh crap, I can't find a room at CES. WTF? Big names and not-so-big names were told there was no room at the inn. Technorati ranking didn't matter to the reservations people.

At that time, I was working with BubbleShare, who was also going to CES without dollars to spend but with the hope of connecting with bloggers and others. What did we do? We saw this context-based need and realized an opportunity to help solve a problem. We didn't pull some obvious, goofy PR stunt: Hey, let's take photos of people out on the street and have a contest! We engaged people and helped solve a problem.

In one night (we started around 11 p.m. I think), we built, populated and got the word out about the CES Wiki, which was designed to connect folks who were looking for roommates, places to stay, rides, etc., at CES. By the next morning, everyone was talking about it.

We followed the conversation like bloodhounds trying to help people hook up, matching needs with solutions. Calling hotels and getting information on who had rooms and who didn't. And once everyone was situated, we used the wiki to update that same community during the show. Charlene Li told people where they could rent bikes to get around. Doc debated a star-watching excursion. And we held an "Unconference/Unshow" during the show to connect bloggers and companies realtime.

Yes, we encouraged photo sharing on the wiki, but the POINT of the wiki was that we were providing a way for the people to accomplish something. And we were doing so without spending money on hot air balloons or limos.

Now if we had had money..... well, never mind. The cost was virtually nothing. The reputation gain was huge. If I had my way, that wiki would still be up and active, and would have morphed into something larger in its own right, continuing and facilitating relevant conversations and connections around events.

So, yes, while tools and processes can help Robert and the rest of us cut through the noise, smart people who understand the net are what help companies cut through the noise.

Okay, Ritalin helps too.

(I'm KIDDING!)

Angry Jonas Shot

IMG_4299.JPG
Originally uploaded by jon gos.

easy, jonas. eaaaasssy.

And right back at you! Imagine my surprise to find you speaking in the ATL--well, almost in the ATL. One of my early day who's-that-masked-man heroes.

George says, come back soon--we will try to get left coast too.

Chick-Fil-A and the Straw-Coke Thing

It’s not all that deep, nor is it terribly interesting, yet it’s important enough that I’m taking ten minutes to write about it, this straw-Coke thing.

In the South, we USians are fortunate to have a fast-ish food joint called Chick-Fil-A. My understanding is that it’s run by a conservative evangelical type, but I don’t know enough about the company to say if that’s true, and it’s not the point of the straw-Coke thing.

Well maybe it is, but I’m claiming it’s not.

I don’t go to Chick-Fil-A often, but as quick food goes, their chicken breast sandwiches are not all that unhealthy, plus they taste good.

What little tendency I have toward ADD seems to love the Chick-Fil-A brand. It took more than a year after first arriving in Atlanta for someone to stop and inquire, “What are you saying?” when I asked if they wanted me to bring them anything back from the drive through.

“Chick-A-Fil,” I announced. “I’m going to grab a sandwich.”

“You’re kidding, right? ‘Chick-A-Fil’?”

The entire front desk staff doubled over when it became clear that I indeed thought the name was Chick-A-Fil – as in ‘fill you up with chicken.’

Old Habits Are Hard to Break

Even after I learned the real name, it was hard to break the old habit. It became an office joke—I’d write post-it-notes saying, “at chickafill, be rt bk!” and stick them on my monitor. Countless lunch discussions focused around which brand would really be better for the company: A-Fil or Fil-A. You could call it a meme. Or not.

But this isn’t even about that.

It’s about this week and the straw-Coke thing.

There has been, no secret if you read here or there, a ruckus going on at Tara’s blog, which emerged from what some -- present company included -- saw as her dogmatic, even careless, approach to discussing a loaded topic with her commentors, an approach I happen to think she takes too often, nice though she may be.

I have been knocking the whole thing around in my head for a day or more, trying to figure out what part of the interaction was bugging me the most.

As it happened, clarity was waiting at the Chick-Fil-A drive-through window.

It Really Is That Simple

As I was paying for my chicken breakfast bagel this morning, the cashier handed me my drink with my change. As usual, I sat staring at my drink wishing she’d given me the straw that goes with it.

But they never do.

At Chick-Fil-A, they always give you the drink, and you have to fish your straw out of the bag later, once you start driving.

I was thirsty, so I asked for my straw.

She went and got one with a smile. And I decided to ask:

“Why do you guys always wait to hand out the straw? It's pretty stupid. I mean, why not hand it over with the drink? Drink-Straw, Straw-Drink.”

She explained to me that usually they try to “expedite” orders so that there is just a little time between the drink and the bag of food with the straw in it. But usually that doesn’t work. Especially at breakfast.

So I said, “You don’t even have the straws nearby do you?” She shook her head, “They’re with the assembler—he puts them in the bag after he wraps the food.”

I decided to talk to her a little more. “But I’m thirsty when I get my drink. Doesn’t it make sense to have a straw with the soda?” She shook her head yes. “You wouldn’t believe how many people ask me for the straw after I hand them the drink.”

I told her maybe I would let Chick-Fil-A know that the straw-in-the-bag thing isn’t working.

She smiled and said she’d like that because she spends a lot of time getting straws.

The Generosity of Saying, "That's Stupid."

Beyond remembering that flawed processes tend to get passed along in franchise businesses – and downstream to the customer in all businesses – the interaction at the drive through window brought me some clarity on what’s been bugging me the last couple of days.

There is a generosity in telling someone they’re wrong, and there is generosity in hearing it.

When you take the time to explore with me where I’m off track—that’s an act of generosity from you, no matter how much I think I’m right.

“Enlightened” is not shutting you down for telling me what I don’t know, and making sure everything resolves to the easy key-of-C “My Truth and Your Truth.”

Enlightened is owning up, is learning and reapproaching, is stepping down into the muck, not stepping away from common filth onto the pedestal. Enlightened is willing, is stupid and messy, but is so much more beautiful than pretty.

It’s saying, “The fucking straw does belong with the Coke. How’d I miss that all this time?”

And maybe even saying, "Thanks."

If My Purpose Isn't Higher, Then It's........

Tara Hunt falls prey to the Oprahization Movement, already in progress across Western Civilization.

Chris tries to take Tara to school, something he doesn't waste a lot of breath doing these days, rightly so. Instead of actually groking the links and facts-- never mind actually reading (the kids these days, they don't want to know), Tara tries to reason that even Hitler had a higher purpose.

Sphincter says wha? Define 'higher' kay?

You see, taking the time to learn, slows down posting.

And in the world of web 2.o, posting trumps everything. Even if it's a matter of say, eugenics, genocide, or other annoying topics that take us away from our net-naval-gazing and other important E commerce activities.

Oprahization Rule Number 1: when lofty concepts are threatened with facts, scream foul and claim higher purpose is a personal thing.

Oprahization Rule Number 2: Say, Good Point, now take it somewhere else. And watch your language.

Oprahization Rule Number 3: Have other clueless people reinforce rules number 1 and 2.

(p.s.: I got E. Commerce once from raw meat--I had to take Flagyl.)

ALL OF THIS is far less important than the fact that one of my favorite internet personalities is about to be abducted by aliens (see photo exhibit a)!!

GOOBER ALERT: Jeff Jarvis Outraged Over Moms Ensnared in Advertorial Slavery Ring!!

I've watched the video of Jeff Jarvis explaining his issues with Pay Per Post; I've followed Jarvis' odd blog crusade to save children from their mothers, and the moms from themselves. I know he is one of the loudest voices calling for a halt on PPP's paying bloggers to make advertorials, an advertising mechanism as old as dirt. (Hey Jeff, ever send a mom to Davos in your place?) I've read comments and blog posts by Robyn -- Jarvis' newly-appointed "poor clueless mom of the day" -- and seen the actual video that won her her HP Camera Kit and $1K in cash; I have blogged about PPP before myself; hell, I've even watched Ted Murphy's obnoxious rockstartup videos of PPP's adventures.

All of this has led me to one conclusion: I want a little ticker tape to put at the top of my blog that sends out "GOOBER ALERT!" messages.

I want this ticker tape to work in the same way cable broadcasters use the public broadcasting system warn us of alarming events in our local area by scrolling scary words across the screen, and in the same way the Department of Homeland Security saves us from Terrorism by playing with primary colors.

My "on-topic" opinion is that while Ted Murphy has some annoying qualities, Jeff Jarvis tips the obnoxious scale by a long shot with his continual techmeme-gaming pseudo-rants that serve to boost his own ad revenue. PPP will either stand or fold based on the corrective nature of the Internet, not on anything Jarvis says or doesn't say, no matter how many mothers he claims to be trying to save in the mean time.

PPP, keep paying bloggers to make advertorials as long as they say that's what they're doing. (And just because I agree with the business model doesn't mean you aren't annoying in the truest sense of the word). Robyn, keep making your videos. (Tell your kids to use plastic bats next time.) BTW, I thought you looked great and laughed at your postie patrol blog introduction--LOL if you get my drift. One other thing: I'm not sure what you're doing with SEO and exclamation points, but girlfriend, stop it. You can write and still make the scratch. And finally, to you Mr. Jarvis, one day your righteous-prick shtick is going to wear thin on the wrong people.