Vy Blog

Two very good posts that I recommend reading right now

Michael Arrington: Apple's Only Unfair Advantage: Their Products Rock

Hugh MacLeod: Random Thoughts On Being An Entrepreneur

Excellent both.

More on keyboard cowards: I wish I had written these two pieces

Oh, man, how do I.  On my pet issue of keyboard cowards, the get-a-life people who descend immediately into the mud with the launch of the first comment.

John Wagner puts it more intelligently than I have in more than half a dozen attempts at it:

We are "word police," always on the lookout for something that we don't like, something we can criticize.

That type of attitude is a major detriment to true communication, and a real reason why so many companies/organizations/people are afraid to truly dialog with others.

Most importantly, it takes a medium that has great potential to increase understanding and help people find common ground -- the internet -- and turns it into one big shouting match, with no one really learning anything other than how to pick apart another's point of view.

Exactly, John.  It's like a Jerry Springer show.

John makes reference to this piece from Dorian Lynskey, the British music critic, who got a whoopin' for daring to criticize Bruce Springsteen.  Oh the humanity.  Lynskey writes:

The most belligerent voices on the blogs speak with either a weary, condescending sneer or a florid pomposity redolent of Ignatius J Reilly in A Confederacy of Dunces. If, as they imply, their taste is flawless and their intellect mighty, then perhaps they could find a better use for these prodigious gifts than taking potshots on websites. Just a thought.

Why am I so exercised about this?  Because it's such a giant waste of potential.  What could be valuable and helpful ends up an exercise in defensiveness and anger. 

And any of you who disagree with me obviously have not read what I wrote.

The five weird

Risley tagged me.

I'm a person of myriad strangeness.  The five that are probably the most benign:

1. I can't stand tomatoes or mushrooms.  I wish I liked them, but I don't.  I can, however, eat nearly anything with these as an added ingredient (e.g., tomato sauce in Italian food).  No, it's not the texture.  Tomatoes taste like crap to me.
2. I drank with the best of them, particularly in my younger days, but I've never ingested a drug.  I don't know if that makes me weird or just puts me directly in a small minority.  Whatever.  I just never saw the point.
3. You probably can't find very many people who care less about NFL football than me.  I appreciate the game, and I'll watch the Super Bowl, but week-by-week, forget it.  Overall I'd rather play sports than watch.
4. I'm a decent athlete, but there is no sport that makes me look dumber (than I already do) than trying to play basketball.  I have no feel for the game.  However, I can spin a ball on my finger as if I'd played for the Globetrotters.
5. If you name a popular song from the 80s, I can probably tell you the year it was released.

Truth is I don't mind these memes because people (most people) interest me.  But the further truth is I don't have another five to tag, sorry.  Carry on.

Friday head gravel

Happy Friday.

Great new job board: CrunchBoard from Arrington's Crunch group.  This guy is the Cap'N.

Re: Mel Gibson and his "PR problem" -- first, there's solid commentary by David Parmet, and here's a link to an analysis by Laura Ries and some recommendations by Dave Weinberger.  I agree with Ries' main point that Gibson has to go do the right things if he's going to recover, but I disagree with viewing this through the lens of "recovering his brand."  But she's in that business, so that's her world view.  My own view is he'll always have this issue hanging over him -- some people simply won't forgive it, no matter what he does -- and the best possible way to salve all this is to simply behave authentically well.  That's it.  And if he were asking me for advice, I'd tell him that a) you have to keep doing the right things, no matter what, and b) when you're attacked anyway, even after you've honestly changed your views, just express regret that your authentic actions can't be seen for what they truly are, and you're getting back to doing good things, thank you.

Great new filmloop review of all of Hugh MacLeod's 2006 cartoons.

What the hell is the deal with the Cardinals?  It's like they forgot how to win.  Thank God Cincy has lost the last five.

Event this weekend.  Must...keep...going.

Portland Stormhoek Geek Event

Ray and I hosted the Portland version of Stormhoek's and Hugh's 100 Dinners in 100 Days at his house last night.  We had a great turnout -- half marketers and half wiki enthusiasts.  Probably 25 people total.

Ray had a good idea for an opening -- we organized into a circle for introductions, and as you made an intro, you took a picture of the person next to you.  We'll post it all up on Flickr or something later.  Everyone talked about their backgrounds and why they were interested in collaboration, as it applies to development or marketing.  It set a solid context for the event.

After getting food (which was fabulous) and a glass of wine, I gave an abbreviated opening presentation about collaborative marketing, followed by a demo by Ray of the use of wikis in the world today.  They were good interactive sessions with ideas and questions flying around the room.  Afterward, we stuck around, meeting new people and exchanging notes.  It was very positive and productive.  And we all took away a signed print from Hugh as a way to remember the evening.

And Erika Polmar was there and shared pics from her Mt. Hood climb.  She summitted early Sunday and met her fundraising goal (a buck per foot, so that's $11,235 plus) for the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.  Well done.

Thanks for a great idea, Hugh, and Sam, thanks for the great wine.  See you next time.

PR perspectives from upside down

Greetings again, from the hemisphere where the water spins down the drain in the other direction.

I'm not doing now what I was doing two days ago (see picture below), to my chagrin.  I'm in Wellington for the ICANN meetings, where the word process can define new forms of freelance art.

Roundup:

New blogger

Sure, I'll join the noise: Amanda Chapel is in town.  If you believe her bio, she's got a killer, uh, portfolio and foreshadows that she's going to give an honest assessment of PR (maybe she already has).  She obviously is after and unafraid of attention; now that she has it, let's see what she has to say.  (And I apparently did not make the blogroll cut, though magically by e-mail she found me and invited me to place my bet.)

Perspective

I keep beating this proverbial dead horse, but for the love of all that is holy, there's nothing, not a damn thing, as valuable to one's mind like new perspective.  I keep learning this and maybe one day I'll get it right.  International travel is uniquely capable of informing you of the depth of the rut your mind is in.  If you're in the PR business, I wonder if you could successfully convince clients to devote parts of their budgets just to getting out of the US and watching how businesses in other cultures connect to their publics?  I'm certain -- and would go so far as to guaranteee to a client -- that you could uncover at least half a dozen new ideas in two days of open-minded looking. 

If you're on the east coast, take a five-hour flight to Europe and soak it up.  If you don't have the budget, think of another way -- there are thousands.  Buy a set of magazines from an unrelated business and read through them.  Go to the library, check out documentaries, watch them with your creative mind open.  Just alter your point of view somehow.

Pitching and gatekeepers

I strolled through this post, which is from last year, but got me thinking about it all over again.  The gut of the question is whether or not bloggers should be pitched, engaged or otherwise approached by flacks to help spread the word.  Some are good with it, others think anyone who can even spell PR is a scumbag.

I don't see blogs as the fulcrum here.  Blogs are just the latest iteration of a communications method -- we're all so enamored with it because of what it enables.  That's justified -- it enables things that previously were impossible (efficient two-way information exchanges) that have spurred exciting new things.  Woo hoo.  You could have said the same thing when KDKA went on the air, or when the fax machine was invented (or name your new technology that spreads data).

Is it evil to pitch a blogger?  No.  It's evil to pitch the wrong people for the wrong reasons, no matter where or how they write or talk.  Some people just don't like to be pitched, no matter what.  Others don't mind.  Never mind blogs, phones, mail, newsletters, faxes, FedEx packages, carrier pigeon, cuneiform, billboards, stadium naming, advertising in the bottom of a golf hole cup, skywriting, art, product placement in a film -- never mind all that.  The fulcrum issue is whether or not you have something relevant to say and have identified the method by which your publics like to receive and exchange information from and with you.  If you pitch the wrong person, with the wrong information, for the wrong reasons, at the wrong time, you're not practicing real PR.  You're just throwing something out in the wind.

Jarvis posts about gatekeepers and their demise -- gatekeepers, that is, in terms of the people who have and give out information (including PR practitioners).  I respect Jeff and think he's right most of the time -- I'll put the corollary out and say that I don't think the Internet will forever obviate gatekeepers.  There will always be people who know things and people who don't, and they'll use whatever is most advantageous to flow information out from there.  Corollary to even that is the fact that there always will be intermediaries that help sort and categorize information and services that help us make sense of what we're seeing. 

More from the land of Kiwi soon.

My Sprint phone is here

FedEx brought my Sprint PowerVision phone on Friday.  I didn't open it until Saturday afternoon, then screwed around with it for a couple of hours, downloading some music, making a few calls, taking some photos and otherwise messing around with it.

My real interest in this -- beyond evaluation of the phone -- is to experience this effort from the customer's side.  So far, I like the way Sprint has approached this -- they've basically said, "Here, try this out, give us as much feedback as you like.  No charge.  We figure you'll blog about it, so go ahead if you want, or don't, good or bad, whatever."  If there's more to this, they're doing a good job hiding it.

What I like so far:

• Plenty of features, most of them useful.
• Mostly intuitive, though it's so heavily loaded with features that every step requires a lot of work and attention.  You trade some efficiency for more toys.
• You don't need to be a techie to get things started.  I opened the instruction book, then put it down in favor of messing around with it to see what I could learn and do without reading a thesis.  Without any real problem, I set up voice mail right away, took photos of my kids and test e-mailed them to myself and a copy to my mother, downloaded a couple of U2 tunes, text messaged myself and did some other functions. 
• I still need more time with it.  Anyone know if you can configure it with a card to work overseas?  I'm traveling later this month and that would be mighty handy.

I still need more time with it before I make any real judgments.  I'm not usually an early, early adoptor, but I would be attracted to this phone so far for its utility, which I care about far more than the onboard candy.

Engage brain, open [keyboard]

Interesting feature this morning on NPR about an actively blogging grad student who apparently shares a lot of personal information on his blog -- the context of the story is the ongoing discussion about privacy.  The student is not at all concerned about sharing some personal data and enjoys the active feedback he gets from readers.

Other side of the fence:  story today here about the unintended consequences of showing the world some things that may be better kept private.  Like, say, pictures of you snorting cocaine, or a hostile mouthing off.  I could actually laugh out loud at some of these people who are outraged that their (public) sites are being seen and -- gasp -- there are consequences for hurtful, or just plain stupid, behavior.  It's hard to laugh, though, when you realize their incapacity to understand the concept of consequence.

The discussion on privacy -- in the whole, not just as it relates to blogging -- is very necessary and very healthy.  This is a great reminder that, fair or not, it's pretty damn smart to take care with your language and think about what photos you post.  Online or offline, public or private, doesn't matter -- give respect and get it back.  Treat others like you want to be treated.  Have a backbone, yes, and be a stand-up human being, but above all be a human being.

Hold on loosely, but don't let go

Hold on loosely, but don't let go
If you cling to tightly, you're gonna lose control

I've been ugly slammed since returning from the excellent NewCommForum last week -- kudos to Elizabeth and Jen for putting on a great event.

There's a ton to try to post about what we all learned there, and others are doing it much faster and with better articulation than I.  But if I were to summarize my biggest takeaway, it's the same as the lines from those wild-eyed Southern boys above.  If you're going to succeed in today's PR environment -- really do good work -- you're going to have to get comfortable with who's in charge.  And it ain't you.

Before, your company was in the middle, sending messages outward.  "Command and control," as it's known.  There was no Internet, no technology as a field for lightning-fast information and impression sharing.  Today, you have exactly that -- and your "targets" use it to talk with one another about you and your product.

That scares most practitioners, and it should, a little.  The idea of ceding a position of control is uncomfortable.  Here's the hitch:  You're not in control any more.  The customers are.  Go ahead and be a little apprehensive, but don't be scared -- this is an opportunity, as well.

Why?  Because in addition to each other, they're trying to talk to you, too.  Don't fret, it's not all going to be bad -- if you don't take it personally, the customer will lead you closer to the promised land than you've ever been if you'll only listen.  How?  By telling you exactly what they want.  By virtue of talking with you, they're already saying: "I think you can probably solve my pain.  Here's what I want.  If you get to work and treat me with some respect, I'll come buy it from you."

Always the case?  Of course not.  Predominantly the case?  Probably.  Certainly this is the trend in marketing communication today.

If you don't engage, you're going to look slow, dull and stupid.  Think Jeff Jarvis and Dell.  If you do engage, you look nimble, smart and sharp.  Think Howard Dean before he went off the deep end.

In a very good presentation, Elizabeth pointed out very astutely again what we've been hearing for a while:  Trust in institutions is weak.  Consumer experience teaches this -- often we're treated poorly by the company itself.  Consumers trust messages from each other more.  That means they're looking to each other as the authority on the product, not the company -- so if you're in the company's shoes, you have to give up some message control, close your mouth on occasion, open your ears, and have an actual back-and-forth.

If you do that, honestly and with authenticity (oh, and you actually have a kick-ass product), the customers will speak with the authority you need for validation.  And sales.  This is the new direction of marketing.  And it's a lot of fun.

Other huge benefit:  Meeting so many great people (and that's just a few of them) interested in contributing to the success of others.  Trading ideas, telling client stories, learning from one another, laughing and enjoying a collaborative atmosphere.

Why are you blogging, anyway?

David Parmet says blogging is about self-expression.  He's reacting to this ongoing meme (see HorsePigCow today) about blogging best practices, or how to get on the A-list, or how to get your blog read, or whatever.

Am I the only one who doesn't have a lot of time to think about this?  (Surely that's plainly obvious by this tool-spare blog that badly needs updating.)  David is right in his point of view -- at least I agree with it.  I find a lot of value in just writing what goes through my bone-heavy skull.

That said, I also blog for a very specific reason -- the same reason I'm going to NewComm Forum next week -- to learn new things and build new relationships.

If I get famous somehow, then it's because I managed to say something worth hearing.  And that parallels my view of PR exactly -- you get famous/attention/ink when the market is attracted to what you say/sell.