December, 2007 - Servant of Chaos

Jeremiah’s Instant Meme – J-list Trumps the Z-list for Speed

Memes are great, messy, chaotic fun. They lead you to places, websites and even videos that you would NEVER discover in a million hours of web surfing. But they do take a little time. Well, they do when I participate in a meme … I start by reading through the list of participants and discovering something about their blog. If there is a post that catches my attention, I will leave a comment or two. Occasionally, I find a blog that fascinates me, and I will spend ages clicking through, burning my elbow to new levels of RSI, caught in the excitement of new discovery. Then, after a discovery phase, I will come back to my own blog, find a picture on Flickr and write a post that introduces the meme. I normally thank the tagger who prompted me to participate, and then hit publish. Over the next few days or even weeks, I notice some links trickling in. A few comments saying "thanks for linking" will filter through … and then quiet. Back to normal. Earlier today, I was commenting on this post by David Armano. He was talking about the way that Twitter seems to be exploding, and I was wondering whether this was the case — or whether Twitter was just facilitating a whole range of cross-connections among and across specialist communities that had not yet been realized by blogging. Then, almost in answer, Jeremiah Owyang single-handedly kick-started an avalanche of Twitter connections. In a matter of hours, Jeremiah had amassed over 300 comments and simultaneously shared his network of Twitter followers. Where the Z-list took weeks (and even months) to spread across the Internet, the J-list took only a matter of hours. In the time since then, I have followed and been followed by many new folks — some that I have heard of, some that are new, and some others that remain mysterious. But speed is not everything. In fact, just as it can hasten adoption of a new product, it can also rapidly cause its decline. Will a multiplicity of new ties strengthen the Twitter network or will it accelerate its decline? My first thought was yes, this could be a problem … but, now, remembering the strength that comes from WEAK ties, it could be the opposite. Hmmm. Would love your thoughts.

Update: Jeremiah reflects on a day’s work completed in a moment; Stephen Collins talk tsunamis

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Got a Good Idea? Come Share It With Us

Uncategorized

I tried it, I liked it
Originally uploaded by Rob Barker

When the Sydney chapter of Planning for Good all came together to discuss a brief for UNICEF, we found ourselves sitting on milk crates in the streets of Darlinghurst. We were interrupted by planes and by passing trucks, but there must have been something to it, for one of our ideas (ok, it was Katie’s) was selected by the client.

So, tomorrow, we are meeting again, this time in more comfortable surroundings (at the Cricketers Arms in Surry Hills around 6:30pm). The brief is for Live Earth (get it here).

ALL ARE WELCOME.

Oh, and don’t forget to join our Facebook group too!

A Woman at the Top

Uncategorized

Prime Minister Rudd thanking his Number 1: Julia Gillard
Originally uploaded by LemonSunrise

We approach a momentous time in the history of the Australian nation. The recent election swept the Labor party into office, and with it came a new Prime Minister in the shape of Kevin Rudd and a new Deputy Prime Minister in the form of Julia Gillard (wonder twin powers?).

Now, despite the similarities of policy, the differences between the parties will largely be in the form of action and deed. This is where the Australian people will feel the difference between the two sides of politics — where policy meets people. And today is a great example.

From around midday, for the first time in since federation, Australia will have a woman leading the country. Julia Gillard will take over from Kevin Rudd as Acting Prime Minister while Kev07 starts working on the global Kev08 agenda (in Bali to talk Kyoto Protocol).

Now that is what I call a climate change. Let’s hope it is the first of many!

The Common Craft of Blogs

Blogging

For those of us who are involved in blogging, it can seem strange to be asked "what is a blog". But it happens almost everyday.

You see, despite the massive adoption of blogs as a tool for personal, professional or community content publishing (Technorati tracks >70 million blogs), blogging is still a rather marginal activity. A good way to gauge whether some technology has been "mainstreamed" is to do the "Five Step Grannie Test". I have used this to great effect in the past, and it requires the following steps:

Write down the topic that you want to research in a notepad. Try to keep it to a single sentence and write it in the form of a question (for example, "what is a blog")
Pick up the phone and call your grandmother (this research method works just as well with someone else’s grandmother)
Read the question/topic out from your notepad
Write the answer into your notepad in CAPITAL letters
Evaluate the response. If the answer is YES, then your brand/technology/services/product has been mainstreamed. All other answers count as a NO (especially the response, "what is a what"?)

So, if you are like me, and you are asked "what is a blog", now, rather than spending a couple of hours talking through the technology, options etc, you can send all your grannies to this video thoughtfully put together by Lee Lefever from Common Craft. How do you get to it? You just jump on the Internet (hint: you can even get it on computers now).

Vote for Mr Splashy Pants

Good Works

We all debate whether you can intentionally create something that "goes viral". Drew was asking the same question earlier.

My view, for what it is worth, is that we can (and probably should) design our marketing to be virally-enabled. That is, we should make it easy for others to pick up our idea and make it their own — via links, embedding options, voting/ranking and send-to-friend options etc. BUT it is important to remember that "viral" is not about the brand … it is actually about the users — about me and you. If I forward a "viral" piece I will do so, because it says something to you about ME. It provides me with SOCIAL CURRENCY.

So, in this instance, when I ask you all to Vote for Mr Splashy Pants, this is what is happening:

I am linking to Nat who brought it to my attention. This means that I hope that she checks her Technorati profile and sees that I am linking to her. Then she can respond and engage in conversation (hi Nat!)
I am hoping that you good folks are going to click through to check Nat’s story because it is much better than mine
I am also using Nat’s cute pic which has a nice call to action … reminding you, dear reader, to help promote Greenpeace’s efforts to save the whales (and if you "right mouse click" on the picture, you can save it and republish it on your blog — nice one, thanks!).
Hopefully you love the silliness of the name of the whale and want to promote this to the world in an effort to fight the barbarity of whale slaughter with the power of cuteness while adding to your karma credits (remember, when you write this on your blog you will also receive additional karma credit transfers from others to you — after all, you are encouraging the good in all of us)
As this effort accelerates, your sense of belonging improves, and provides you with a story to tell other (I was there, talking about Mr Splashy Pants, when he was only a baby beluga).

Most importantly in this process, the "value" of social currency cannot be dictated (by a brand or organisation). This is more organic. And sure you can plan for it, design for it and even hope for it, but I think "viral" is like comedy — all in the timing.

And speaking of timing … you can only vote until DECEMBER 7, 2007 (at 17:00 Amsterdam time). Oh, see that — three calls to action in the one post. Lovely.

UPDATE: Mr T pities the fool who doesn’t vote for Mr Splashy Pants. Got to love T.

Friday Folly – December 7, 2007

Friday Folly

Is this what we call media placement? Who is responsible? This week’s Friday Folly comes courtesy of Meg Tsiamis. Got one to share? Is it yours? I would love to see it!

Why the Cluetrain Still Rings True

Web 2.0

howard barker
Originally uploaded by christheobscure

I remember first reading the Cluetrain Manifesto. I remember drinking in the 95 Theses and feeling like my senses were tingling. They were tingling, yes, but it did not seem to be a surprise.

What the collaborators were talking about — participation and activism — was something I had been studying for years. It was just that I was studying Theatre, not Marketing, not Technology. You see, I had just written a thesis on the brilliant English playwright, Howard Barker, and one of his most powerful pieces of critical writing was called "49 Asides for a Tragic Theatre". In this statement, written when Thatcherite Britain was at its zenith, Barker called for challenging and provocative theatre — a theatre of participation.

Ideology is the outcome of pain.
Some people want to know pain. There is no truth on the cheap.
There are more people in pursuit of knowledge than the accountants will admit.
There is always the possibility of an avalanche of truth-seekers.

Many years on from the publishing of the Cluetrain, we are still living in an age where the promise of a revolutionary form of conversation still has power. It has power because, despite its popularity, the ideas contained within the Cluetrain are hard to manifest. Consequently, the Cluetrain remains a marginalised tract.

I was reminded of this recently when I presented at InterestingSouth. I had interspliced text from the Cluetrain with images taken by my four year old daughters. And, to me, the words seemed to float out across the audience who were hearing this, perhaps, for the first time. It made me tremble. It made me focus more precisely on the words. This three minutes seemed much more important. Urgent.

What I like about the Cluetrain is its immediacy. It restores you to yourself — an individual experiencing the tragedy and beauty of everyday living. As Barker would say:

It dares to be beautiful. Who talks of beauty any more? They think it is to do with the costumes.

And it is because of this immediacy. Because of its daring. And because it continues to question the structures of power and influence, the Cluetrain will continue to maintain its relevance. At least for some. Again, from Barker:

People will endure anything for a grain of truth.

Recognizing Outstanding Bloggers

Memes

I love the smell of the end of the year. There is a mixture of tension, as we all begin to focus on the final weeks of the year in an attempt to reach our targets, deliver our projects or finalize the last elements of our budgets. But there is also the beginning of relief and play … last year, about this time, Mack Collier kicked off the Z-list. This year it is Troy Worman’s turn, with the Outstanding Blogger meme.

This one is already exciting, with well over 200 blogs, many completely new to me, promising an avalanche of holiday reading. My additions to the massive list (already included) are Innovation Feeder, The Kaiser Edition, Get Shouty, Tim Longhurst and Dipping into the Blogpond.

Enjoy!

UPDATE: Troy has an updated list here.

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Tags: TroyWorman, Outstanding Bloggers, Memes

RIP Evel Knievel

Pop Culture

When you are a child the whole world seems larger than life. The shops you go to are huge, the cars you drive in are enormous and the schools playgrounds seem to go on forever. Coming back to visit these places as an adult they appear to have shrunken … the spaces are smaller, claustrophobic even.

Public figures are different — well, those who capture and hold our imaginations are. Evel Knievel was, for me, one person who retained a larger than life imaginary space as I grew up. Perhaps it was to do with his ground breaking efforts and stunts, or the link he somehow made in my mind with Fonzie’s motorcycle stunt in Big Al’s carpark, or even the Evel Knievel stunt bike toy that I loved until it fell to pieces. But it is more likely that, in Evel Knievel, we all saw the potential to become an everyday hero … a real person capable of achieving close to the miraculous. May he rest in peace.