The Elusive Fish — Creative Services

Hyperlinks may subvert hierarchies, information may flow freely and the tyranny of geography may be toppled by the Internet, but despite the marvels and wonders this communications tool affords us, it’s important to remember simple Newtonian physics are at play.

Newton’s First Law.
An object at rest tends to stay at rest.

This is doubly so when that object is someone’s behind, firmly at rest in a chair facing the computer.

The rate and ease at which ideas pass along the net give it the appearance of a frictionless medium. Bookmark, email, blog and tweet this idea and it will smoothly spread across the globe.

But transforming an idea to action, aye there’s the rub. That’s where the true mettle of an idea is tested. Few ideas have the momentum necessary to propagate onward, let alone push an individual out of their chair. Getting them out the door and into the streets? Best of luck to you.

Unless your idea attains significant velocity, or is of such weight and importance, do not expect the object at rest to do anything other than remain at rest.

Y’canna break the laws o’physics, Cap’n. Plan your approach knowing that you’re not getting that rump out of the comfy chair without a good push.

Can your goals be achieved through the propagation of an idea?

Every Creative Commons licensed work is an invitation to share that work. By passing along the work, you also spread the idea that the sharing of intellectual property can have value. You bring awareness of the Creative Commons and, along with it, the larger ideological issues that surround intellectual property and copyright.

Seth Godin talks a good deal about this in his book, The Idea Virus. Don’t worry about having to get up out of your chair. Seth has made a copy available for download, free of charge. In making his book free and available, he makes it all the more likely that you’ll divert your time and attention towards his ideas. The greater his ideas take root within the business culture, the greater the demand will be for his thoughts and opinions in future. Future book sales and consulting gigs made possible by the spread of an idea.

Can you defer, delegate or eliminate the need to physically move?

Getting folks to dedicate an afternoon towards making pies for bake sales in support of the local hospital is far more difficult than wresting a cheque out of their hand. Far easier, still, is allowing folks to make a one-click donation. Take Child’s Play, for example. Each December, the gaming community rallies to raise toys and cash for children’s hospitals around the world. The idea is quickly spread throughout the community by way of links, banners and badges. But the giving of toys is made easier still by way of wishlists on Amazon.com and cash donations via PayPal. Last year, they raised over $1.3 million.

And speaking of Amazon, has buying ever been easier? I log in and immediately find what I’m looking for. If I’m ready to buy, one-click and it’s on it’s way to me. If I’m not sure, reviews from other consumers help firm my decision or push me towards an even better purchase. I don’t have to wander aisles, hunt down sales clerks or wait in lines. In but a few days, the products will arrive on the doorstep. Their new gadget, the Kindle, even saves you the trip to the doorstep and satisfies that desire for instant gratification by downloading the book directly into the machine, any time, any place.

If you can’t, realize that you will need to build your idea into something of significant substance or to such a velocity that there is no choice but to take action.

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On October 23rd, I had the pleasure of sitting on a panel with Donna Papacosta and Dr. Joan Vinall-Cox, speaking on the subject of blogs, RSS, wikis, social bookmarking and so forth. Here’s my end of the discussion:

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How many different ways can a social media endeavour go wrong? FanLib counts the way.

FanLib is a social network site that aims to create a ‘MySpace’ for authors of fanfiction. Their heavy handed, often misguided and just plain clumsy efforts to monetize a community give the rest of us valuable lessons to take note of.

Fanfiction are stories about characters or settings by fans of the work as opposed to the original authors. Fanfic has a long history, but the internet has really helped push a hobby and pastime into a thriving community. For pretty well any TV show, movie or book with a following, you can find a collection of stories penned by fans who wish to explore further or alternative renditions. There are numerous forums, archives and collections dedicated to the practice.

Enter FanLib. “In synch with the Participation Age, FanLib’s community-driven online experiences produce consumer-generated media that is ready for the marketplace. The result: More value for marketers, more manageability for producers and, most importantly, more fun for fans.” Can I see a show of hands from anyone who feels that sounded sincere and authentic? Yeah. Me neither.

Their intial stumble onto the scene was to spam a number of authors of fanfiction. “Dear [insert fan name], I saw some of your [insert media property] fan fiction online and really enjoyed your writing. We’re impressed by your writing and value your opinion. That’s why we’re inviting you…” Flattering until you realize every other fanfic author you know received the same letter with the same praise.

I highly recommend a quick read of miera_c’s exchange over this email. Of specific note is when the one email to her which still included some of the company backchannel discussion, “She got a little hostile in her second reply, but it looks like she’s softened up a bit.”

If you were to poll the average guy on the street to describe who would write fanfiction about Star Trek or Harry Potter, I’m sure the answer would be either ‘teenage boys’ or ‘one of those trekkies that lives in his mom’s basement’. But if you were a part of the community, you would know that the majority of fanfiction is authored by women in their mid-twenties/thirties. So it is almost predictable who FanLib chose to target with their ad campaign.

Around this point, FanLib’s previous marketing materials came to light. They’ve been removed from the website but live on in Google cache. Of specific focus was the following:

MANAGED & MODERATED TO THE MAX
All the FANLIB action takes place in a highly customized environment that YOU control.
* As with a coloring book, players must “stay within the lines”
* Restrictive player’s terms-of-service protects your rights and property
* Moderated “scene missions” keep the story under your control
* Full monitoring & management of submissions & players
* Automatic “profanity filter”
* Completed work is just 1st draft to be polished by the pros

You can just imagine how much the community appreciated the colour in the lines concept as most fanfic is geared towards colouring outside the lines.

Now - when the community you’ve decided to thrust yourself upon is questioning your sincerity and motives, and your entire business plan depends upon them providing you with free content, what do you do? Well, according to the FanLib marketing playbook, the only thing to do is flame respected members of the community.

Granted, in an interview Chris apologized for his “…idiotic post across multiple blogs and for my offer to open a dialogue that I was unable to follow through on…”. But immediately following that interview being posted, Chris votes favourably for himself and FanLib in a poll asking whether the interview changed your mind. Under the username mimbo, Chris writes “Cool! I’ve been hoping for a site like this”

You can find many other examples across the net where Chris posts under ‘mimbo’ yet fails to disclose his connection to the company.

Needless to say, it’s a safe bet that the $3 million in financing this company received is going to see an absolutely lousy ROI.

The saga continues to play itself out at the Livejournal community Life Without FanLib.

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Maggie Fox writes that ghostwriting a blog is just a bad idea. But is it?

Flogs and astroturfing are definitely wrong, and should be viewed upon with full disdain. Flogs, for the uninitiated, is a fake blog. Often these take the form of a ‘independent third party’ who writes at great length why they love Brand X … all the while the blog is authored by members of the Brand X marketing team. Lesser known but still heavily used are the blogs or comments to blogs that take the point of view of a citizen concerned about a particular political issue, yet the ‘citizen’ is a paid member of a particular lobby. This is also known as astroturfing, as opposed to the more authentic grassroots movements.

I’m not against the idea of a character blog. I think a blog in which it is fully known that the situation is fictional can be a great creative outlet. It’s just too often the one heading up the character blog is a hack, and so the results tend to be lame. But just because the majority to date have been lame does not invalidate that particular use of the medium. Sooner or later someone will craft an incredibly compelling and moving work using blogs as their medium and a lot of people will be left scratching their heads wondering ‘why didn’t we think of doing something like that?’

Ghostblogging. Is it an outright bad idea, or is there room for it given that best practices are followed?

I have a web design client who is currently using a ghostblogger. He’s a tradesman, running his own business. Between driving from one end of the GTA to another to handle calls, he still has the day to day management of his business, never mind his family life and other ties to the community. Unlike those of us who work in front of a computer all day and can easily switch between one window and another, it’s not so easy for him to find the time to blog.

As well, he was not fully confident in his ability to write. He has a lot to say, and he certainly has wisdom and advice to impart. But a blank screen with a blinking cursor, he knows would be intimidating, never mind the concern that the words that end up on that screen may not read the same as what he actually means to say.

And so a ghostblogger was called in.

The way they work together is to connect on the phone and have a conversation, over the course of which, she draws out of him the details of what he wishes to say. She’ll then draft a post and send it to his marketing consultant and myself for comments and criticism, with a final draft being offered to the tradesman for approval.

I can’t speak for what the other two add in to the mix, but my own input is to try and steer away from any marketing language and to more freely shared knowledge. “Treat it as if you are at a dinner party“, is my standard response, “and someone has approached you and asked you about that problem. You don’t hand ‘em a brochure. What do you tell them?”

When I compare the conversations I’ve had face to face and over the phone with the emails and written missives I’ve had from the client, I can say that the ghostwritten blogs are much closer to his true voice than his writings are. My hat goes off to our ghostblogger for being able to capture his tone and words so well.

Is this the optimum scenario? No. Any impediment between your words and another’s mind is something to be avoided. But -and I may be reaching with this comparison- if the words come to you through the lips of a translator, and not the person themselves, does that lose authenticity? Our ghostblogger takes the client’s spoken words and translates a long rambling conversation into a concise and digestible written article. Optimum - no. But to be avoided completely?

I would be very interested in advice and opinions from the community. Should ghostblogging be classified side by side with flogs and astroturfing? If not, what are the steps one should take with a ghostwritten blog to still walk on the side of the angels? Should it be disclosed upfront that it’s ghostwritten? Written in an interview-like format?

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Doesn’t seem a week can go by without some big announcement of a group, organization or government taking a plunge into Second Life. I suspect many are doing it as either a low cost means of grabbing a few inches of type in traditional press, or to be able to demonstrate their company’s ‘view to the future‘ as opposed to any real outreach to a digital community or strategy to leverage the world for business uses.

I’ve been a resident of Second Life for close to a year now, logging in for an hour or so towards the end of my day (at last the dirty secret to my low blogging output is out). During this time I’ve observed and taken note of much of the culture and workings of this world of communities. I see great potential here. I see much opportunity. But there are limitations that are important to consider when building a serious strategy to enter your company into Second Life.

With most online communication, scale and time are not an issue. A document, sound file or video on the internet can be posted and then experienced by any number of people at any point in time. My blog posts sit on my web page and on any given day something I wrote a year, two years … even four years ago, are being found via some Google search and read. I have about a week’s worth of Daily Source Code episodes which I’ll be listening to tonight whilst coding. I have a dozen tech conferences from last year via IT Conversations that I’ve been slowly working my way through on commutes into Toronto, but those will be bumped aside as soon as the new For Immediate Release comes down from the feed.

What makes new and social media compelling isn’t the technology but rather the conversations themselves. However it is the technology that allows these conversations to be found, linked together, shared, aggregated, mashed up and deconstructed: and through the process to grow and spawn entirely new conversations.

Conversations in Second Life are much like a conversation in real life. Limited to those within the sound of your voice. What Second Life offers is an experience. But, as anyone who’s tried to relate these to others, the conversation often ends with, “I guess you had to be there.”

That’s the crux of it. You have to be in Second Life in order to have the experience. But more than that, you have to be there at a specific time. And a specific location. For example, I’m more often than not tied up with work at the time that Coffee in Crayonville takes place so I’ll forever be missing those experiences and conversations. But even if I were in world at that time, there’s the chance that the room is already to capacity. Only around 50 individuals can interact in a given area within Second Life. Though that limitation is bound to be pushed to 100 and then higher and higher - you are still in a physical space. There are only so many people you can comfortably squeeze into the same room.

But I’m able to experience Managing the Grey and Across the Sound at my own pace and in my own time. I can just as easily comment on something Jason Calacanis blogged today as an entry he made last month or a year ago. And just as I’m experiencing these and other writings, discussions and thoughts - so too are thousands upon thousands of others.

These conversations transcend time and space. Second Life conversations are framed by time and space.

There are a lot of great uses for Second Life and a number of ways it can be leveraged for business use, but do keep in mind, when working out your Second Life strategy, the limitations of the three dimensions.

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First movers have the benefit of being pioneers. Of being the ones whose name is remembered and praised for the very fact that they were first. Doesn’t matter who comes second or third or fourth. Every man, woman and child can likely tell you that Neil Armstrong was the first man on the moon. Can you name the other 11 men to have walked up there? I know I can’t.

While the first mover advantage is considerable, it is not necessarily the end all and be all. A pioneer, however, is generally known as the fella with all the arrows in his back. There’s something to be said about coming in after the ground has been paved, and simply doing the job exemplary well.

It doesn’t always matter so much if you did it first, just so long as you do it best.

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There was a story a few weeks back that got some minor play in the press and the blogosphere around a Hamilton police officer who had the good sense to leverage YouTube as a means of identifying two suspects. With the traffic that sites such as YouTube, Flickr, MySpace and other social media sites garner - and the relative ease and speed with which such info can be disseminated, it’s almost a no-brainer for posting appeals for witnesses, info on missing children and general ‘wanted’ notices to be posted there.

And whilst the majority of mainstream media focused on this apparent first use of YouTube in this manner, what caught my eye was this little section of Ian Austin’s story in the NYTimes :

“After a week, YouTube had not brought the police in Hamilton any closer to finding the men, although Sgt. Lasso said the experiment was still worthwhile. He acknowledges making one mistake. Because the police department’s main computer system does not allow access to YouTube, Sgt. Lasso made the connection through a non-network computer, using a YouTube account belonging to officers who search for online child pornography. As a result, the YouTube posting inadvertently revealed one of the squad’s online screen names, jayjay551. Sgt. Lasso assumes that pseudonym will now be retired.”

It’s a common enough practice for corporate IT departments to apply blocks to social networking or hosted blog sites. The common wisdom being “we can’t have precious moments of productivity wasted because everyone’s looking at the wedding photos passed along from Fred in marketing, putzing about on YouTube watching the monologue from last night’s Daily Show, or reading the latest on their neighbour’s journal“.

Of course, this is a poor move - throwing out the wheat with the chaff. Ted in accounting will spend three minutes doodling or twiddling his thumbs, as opposed to watching todays RocketBoom, and Sally in PR will totally miss critical remarks aimed at your brand on an influential blog.

When IT blocks users from making what, to them, seems normal behaviour, an end-run is usually done to IT. This creates an overall breakdown in communication within the company and leads to potential compromises to security or inadvertent leaks of sensitive data.

Worse than missed opportunities, however, is the underlying message to such blanket moves. “We don’t trust you“.

I don’t know how an organization can be expected to continue with effective or meaningful communication when and where there is a fundamental under-pining of mistrust. We’ve seen this happen in corporations, where a well meaning supervisor hoping to eke out a percentage of inefficiency ends up causing far worse productivity due to breakdowns in communication and lowered morale. Now, it would seem the practice is carrying over to the public sector, where, it not only sends a poor message to the employees but to the public at large. Trust your public servants, we are told, yet they are not trusted by their own supervisors.

Somewhere along the way, someone in IT or administration decided that the police officers in Hamilton could not be trusted to avoid wasting their time, and put arbitrary blocks on various social networking sites. The initial fallout is that an undercover net-name has been compromised. Hopefully there is a reexamination of this policy and the officers of Hamilton are granted the trust they deserve.

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I’m lucky to live in an area with a pretty decent public transit system and make copious use of it. One thing I’ve noticed is that invariably there’s at least one person who misses the bus. Huffing and puffing, running like mad to the bus stop only to be left behind.

But this one morning was different. A teenager, being dropped off by his dad, missed the bus by just seconds. His dad must of noticed because he and the boy were soon tearing beside the bus in the car, hoping to get ahead to the next stop. Ahead they did get, but to no avail as the boy took too long getting out of the car and the bus drove on, with the boy still standing on the sidewalk. Well once again the chase was on. The father zipped in and out of lanes to race ahead of the bus. Finally, bringing the car to a rest on the sidewalk just past the next bus stop, the lad jumped out and made it onto the bus. A shame, however, that the father chose that moment to step out of his precariously parked car, because the bus was again pulling out and the result was the car door being sheered off.

Every day I see people leaping into lanes of traffic, hurtling down flights of stairs and risking life and limb to catch the bus or subway. Yet another one will be coming along in just a minute or two. My own preference is to move to the bus stop at my own speed. While others kill themselves to jockeying for a position on an already crowded vehicle, I’m waiting first in line for the next one to come. Less stress to me and a more comfortable ride as I invariably get my choice of seats.

Many businesses are slow to catch the latest and then flock in a herd of ‘also-rans’ trying to get the first mover advantage that’s already slipped past them. So maybe you were late to the world wide web. So maybe you missed blogging. Maybe podcasting is whizzing past you at this very moment and vidcasting, widgets or social networks are not even on your radar. Stop running off half-cocked to catch the wave that’s passed you by, because maybe the trick is to look at what the next wave is and be ready for it when it comes.

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“He who forgets the past is condemned to repeat it.”

It occurs to me that each and every company, government and organization should have in a position of power a historian. A person or department who is charged with watching, noting and recording the mistakes of the past and with the authority to step forth and have a voice at the table when that mistake is in danger of looming forth again.

A workable definition of insanity is repeating the same action yet expecting different results. Without a proper voice to serve as the memory of a group, there’s little chance to move forward.

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