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Filed under: design, innovation, online media, politics | Tags: obama, democrats, politics, Nicholas Carr, design, Audience, Royal Opera House, rAndom International, Chris O'Shea, New Mexico Sun News, Obama Wins, Good Guide, xkcd, words that end in gry, memes, transparency
There were a few things I ran across over the last few days that are worth sharing but need not much by way on commentary.
1: A little cartoon that I, disturbingly, agree with.
source: xkcd words that end in gry
2: A newspaper in New Mexico “seizes the day” with their proclamation that “Obama Wins”. They also noted:
the newspaper has a goal of reaching one million readers with each edition, but prints just 10,000 copies of each of its issues.
So, “each copy must be read by 100 different and distinct people. This places an enormous burden on our intrepid readers. However, it is a burden that we must insist you carry. So, please, read quickly, care for the physical condition of the paper and pass it on to your next chosen reader.”
The liberal leaning alternative newspaper ended by imploring its readers to get out and vote, “even if we did spoil the ending for you.”
3: Well designed transparency—Good Guide gives more visibility into corporate political leanings.
4: Speaking of good design; a cool visual metaphor for memes (make your own interpretation).
Filed under: community | Tags: CNN, communities, homes, Marilyn Mock, Samaritan, Tracy Orr
I talk a lot about communities here—just look at the category and tag clouds to your right. The reason that communities are so powerful—in movements, in marketing, and in simply living—is that it is important for us to be connected with others. We can feel that inner desire to reach out, to support.
The cool thing is, people are really on a whole pretty good. There is lots of negative news about rotten individuals, but then a story like this comes out.
“Are you here to buy a house?” Marilyn Mock said.
[Tracy] Orr couldn’t hold it in. The tears flowed. She pointed to the auction brochure at a home that didn’t have a picture. “That’s my house,” she said.
Within moments, the four-bedroom, two-bath home in Pottsboro, Texas, went up for sale. People up front began casting their bids. The home that Orr purchased in September 2004 was slipping away.
She stood and moved toward the crowd. Behind her, Mock got into the action [...] she bought the home [...] That’s when Mock did what most bidders at a foreclosure auction never do.
“She said, ‘I did this for you. I’m doing this for you,’ ” Orr says.
[...]
“All this happened within like 5 minutes. She never even asked me my name. She didn’t ask me my financial situation. She had no idea what [the house] looked like. She just did it out of the graciousness of her heart.”
Lest you think I am hiding something, Mock and Orr are going to work out a way for Orr to pay her back. Mock isn’t a rich “Good Samaritan” that goes around with money to burn. Things are tight for her too, but she was in a position to help. And that’s what Orr needed.
That’s why we have communities, that’s why we need to facilitate their creation. It’s so people can continue to have these types of experiences.
Filed under: online media | Tags: anarchists, atheists, communists, Computer World, Culture Crash, Dan Tynan, democrats, hacktivists, human rights groups, online media, over capacity, political enthusiasts, religious communities, Republican National Convention, republicans, socialists, terrorists, Twitter, vegetarians
The writers of a recent military report examining the mobile technologies used by terrorists, theorized that
militants might pair some of these mobile applications with Twitter, to magnify their impact.
Part of the foundation of this idea came from the Republican National Convention where
Twitter was [...] used as a countersurveillance, command and control, and movement tool [...] The activists would Tweet each other and their Twitter pages to add information on what was happening with Law Enforcement near real time.
In response, Dan Tynan makes a fair point in his Computerworld “Culture Crash” blog, noting:
Saying Twitter can be used by terrorists is a bit like saying oxygen can be used by terrorists.
[...]
But is it such a great leap to suggest that when the US Army means “terrorists,” they’re not just thinking of fanatics with bombs who blow up innocent people, but ordinary folks who might occasionally be moved to exercise their Constitutional rights?
Check out the rogues gallery of evil doers cited by the report:
“Twitter has also become a social activism tool for socialists, human rights groups, communists, vegetarians, anarchists, religious communities, atheists, political enthusiasts, hacktivists and others to communicate with each other and to send messages to broader audiences.”
I love one of the comments to this posting:
We’re not really terrorists, but we are atheists. Where do we turn ourselves in?
Of course, if some activist or anti-social group does decide to use Twitter, they are going to have to face the same issues we regular non-Twitterrorists face.
*checking Twitter*
тупоумная американская технология!
Filed under: community, innovation | Tags: 37signals, communities, Quiet Innovations, reciprocity, T-Shirts, Threadless
Since first featuring Threadless, as one of my “quiet innovators”, they seem to have been less “quiet.” This probably has much more to do with a cognitive bias on my part than anything else, but it is obvious that people love them. And for good reason. They are awesome.
The concept is simple:
*translation, you design it, the treadless community votes on it, and if your design is liked, you get paid.
Matt at 37signals writes about their “Community…no, really.”
A lot of sites pay lip service to the notion of building a community. Threadless actually does it. And it’s not just having a blog or a forum (though the site has those too). Check out the site’s navigation where “Shop” and “Participate” are given equal treatment
[...]
It’s no accident. Threadless isn’t just a place to buy stuff. It’s a place where people do stuff too.
And I love the comments to Matt’s post. They give us great insights in the pathway to Treadless’s success.
Threadless sends out the only newsletter that stops me in my tracks during work. While every other newsletter gets a ‘junk’ click, I can’t wait to see what is new from them.
Threadless personif[ies] everything that’s great about the web.
Threadless is an example of an actual real community online.
Their transfer of work to users is a brilliant strategy in not only sharing design cost, but also in creating and maintaining a community. There is a give and take factor that underpins the entire organization.
And so we come to reciprocity again. It is a key factor to community-building (if not the key). If you can figure out how to do that, you create one pretty strong and hard to assail position.
I am going to be purposely vague, the reasons being obvious. Over the last two weeks, a family member of a popular blogger went missing and was later found. Online posts, images, and messages proliferated when the word went out. But when the immediate crisis was over, there was a simple message:
Now that [removed] has been found [...] we are asking all that posted on Twitter, messageboards and their blogs to please delete the posts. We don’t want this following the family around for the rest of their lives and would appreciate your continuing support.
And now, if you go to those posts, you are likely to find “Error 404 – Not Found”, “Sorry, no posts matched your criteria.”, “This photo is unavailable”, a blank page, or some other message.
Communities become communities when reciprocity occurs. And in this case, it did. The circumstance was unfortunate, but the response was beautiful. That community exists in the truest sense of community. This blogging group has figured it out.
You want to bet that this organization continues to be pretty successful?
Filed under: community | Tags: London Underground, London, Tunnels, Mesa Verde, Cheyenne Mountain, Blitz, Daily Mirror, M16, Interservices Research Bureau, Port of London Authority, Ministry of Works, High Holborn, Fleet Street, Disneyland, BT
Have you heard about London’s underworld? I’m not talking about the seamy, corrupt place of black market transactions, but rather an actual underworld built during the Blitz.
There are pensioners living in London who can recall long, uncomfortable nights during the Blitz, huddling in the Underground as bombs rained down their homes. With thousands crammed together in confined spaces, you could meet all sorts of people but you never saw a spook from the Interservices Research Bureau, a branch of MI6, or from other government agencies such as the Port of London Authority or the Ministry of Works engineering unit. They had somewhere better to hide.
There was a secret lift behind an unmarked door near 33 High Holborn, where the Daily Mirror used to have its head office. Even Fleet Street’s finest did not know who used it, or where it led. n fact, it took selected officials to the safety of two secret tunnels, deep below London.
[. . .]
Officially, they did not exist.
image from The Independent: UK
So cool. It’s like when I found out about Cheyenne Mountain and Mesa Verde. In fact, when given the choice to see Mesa Verde or Disneyland as a 11 year-old, Mesa Verde was my pick. Places like this have always been magical to me.
What is additionally interesting about the recent revelation concerning these tunnels’ existence was the experience of journalist Duncan Campbell. As noted, these tunnels simply “did not exist,” but we learn (same citation as above) about Campbell that
He had an obsession about government secrecy. He phoned BT security one Christmas and told them “if you go down [to the tunnels], you will find a Christmas tree.” He had planted it. They still don’t know how he got down there.
As much as the government insisted these tunnels did not exist and tried to stymie the information of their existence to the public, the human desire to know could not be quenched. It was just another example of how a movement, even if just a movement of one, is near impossible to stop.
Filed under: innovation | Tags: change, first mover advantage, knowledge, Lord of the Rings, Sean Connery, Seth Godin, tribes, understanding
We read today that Sean Connery turned down the role of Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings trilogy because he “didn’t understand the script.” The impact of this decision is impressive:
In return for playing the role, New Line Cinema offered the Scottish actor up to 15 percent of worldwide box office receipts, which would have earned Connery more than any actor had ever been paid for a single role—as much as $400 million.
Not understanding something is a scary thing. Conservative practitioners trumpet the idiom “look before you leap” as a measure of their solidity. This lack of total understanding puts off the leaping until it appears that risk has been mitigated (whether they are correct in viewing that mitigation is often debatable).
Notwithstanding my tepid recommendation for Godin’s Tribes yesterday, I rather enjoyed his section on “Not Now, Not Yet”—
The largest enemy of change and leadership isn’t a “no.” It’s a “not yet.” “Not yet” is the safest, easiest way to forestall change. “Not yet” gives the status quo a chance to regroup and put off the inevitable for just a little while longer.
Change almost never fails because it’s too early. It almost always fails because it’s too late.
I’m not quite sold that the first mover advantage is the best strategy (in the glaring light of the legion case studies, I know, but there are many contrarian examples as well). Nevertheless, I am convinced some of the greatest pathways to sucess comes much more from doing rather than completely knowing.
Filed under: community, marketing | Tags: Bowling Alone, Chief Awesome Officer, communities, marketing, Robert Putnam, Seth Godin, tribes, Triiibes
As you can see on the sidebar, I have been reading Seth Godin’s Tribes. I vacillate between promoting books like this—books that do a good job of inciting but are more shallow on hard data—and discouraging their propagation in light of more deeply founded arguments. This moving to action that like books offer is most helpful when trying to organize a group around a core idea. And when we compare Godin to Putnam (as in the Bowling Alone author), the former is going to do a much better job of furthering the ideas in the latter’s book.
That said, Putnam’s book gives a strong foundation for understanding the cultural forces in such phenomena as a tribe, thus giving the reader and insights into steps that move beyond what is discernible in the case studies and metaphors that Godin breaks out. Tribes is the spoon full of sugar, Bowling Alone is the necessary medicine that the true marketers, managers, and strategists ought to have their organizations swallow.
It is worth reading both, but you will have much more success in passing Godin’s book to others (as I have started to do—we’ll see what our CAO thinks about it).
With that, Godin has also produced (with Triiibes) a Tribes casebook in a free ebook format. Included in this book is a case study that I wrote and I have featured here already, so there is a bit of self-promotion with my referencing this publication. If you do download it, please read the very first case study. It is remarkable.
Filed under: leadership, politics | Tags: biden, factcheck.org, mccain, obama, palin, politics, truth
You know what’s great about America? We can have something like FactCheck.org as a check to illiterates, rumormongers, and outright liars—whether these spewers be elected officials or emailing trolls. If you are not aware of FactCheck.org, you should check them out. They are a group out of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania and they are really good at filtering political slime.
On the same note, what’s bad about America is that we need FactCheck.org. I understand that there will always be those troglodytes who find some semblance of joy in spreading falsehoods, but with our leaders? Of course, I understand that in a debate you may misstate information, but in plan and published advertisements—it is unfortunate to see the blatant disregarding for truth.
For example, FactCheck.org reports that
An Obama-Biden radio ad hammers McCain for being opposed to stem cell research. Not true.
[...]
By saying that “John McCain has stood in the way – he’s opposed stem cell research,” the Obama ad seriously misstates the view that McCain has held on this issue since 2001, when he began backing embryonic stem cell research, a position that was out of step with that of many of his fellow Republicans.
And some time before this, we read that
The McCain-Palin campaign has released a new ad that once again distorts Obama’s tax plans.
The ad claims Obama will raise taxes on electricity. He hasn’t proposed any such tax. Obama does support a cap-and-trade policy that would raise the costs of electricity, but so does McCain.
It falsely claims he would tax home heating oil. Actually, Obama proposed a rebate of up to $1,000 per family to defray increased heating oil costs, funded by what he calls a windfall profits tax on oil companies.
When we cut through the clutter, it is easier to chose who more closely aligns with whatever policies we more closely position ourselves, but it is this purposefully and deceitfully presented clutter that is most alarming. Giving credit where it is due, our CAO discussed with me yesterday that it is interesting that organizations like ours are held to such a high standard of what we can and cannot say, but those who ultimately have the greatest responsibility don’t even cause alarm when they misrepresent the truth.
They love truth when she shines on them and hate her when she rebukes them. For because they are not willing to be deceived and wish to deceive they love her when she reveals herself and hate her when she reveals them.
