Mitch Joel's Blog: Six Pixels of Separation, page 284

Summer Reading 2013

There have been a slew of new business books that have come on to the market lately.

Summer should be here... some time soon, right? If you're looking for something to read, here are some new releases that will grab your attention and enrapture your mind (in alphabetical order):

Choose Yourself - Be Happy, Make Millions, Live The Dream by James Altucher. About the book: "The world is changing. Markets have crashed. Jobs have disappeared. Industries have been disrupted and are being remade before our eyes. Everything we aspired to for 'security,' everything we thought was 'safe,' no longer is: College. Employment. Retirement. Government. It's all crumbling down. In every part of society, the middlemen are being pushed out of the picture. No longer is someone coming to hire you, to invest in your company, to sign you, to pick you. It's on you to make the most important decision in your life: Choose Yourself. New tools and economic forces have emerged to make it possible for individuals to create art, make millions of dollars and change the world without 'help.' More and more opportunities are rising out of the ashes of the broken system to generate real inward success (personal happiness and health) and outward success (fulfilling work and wealth). This book will teach you to do just that. With dozens of case studies, interviews and examples-including the author, investor and entrepreneur James Altucher's own heartbreaking and inspiring story-Choose Yourself illuminates your personal path to building a bright, new world out of the wreckage of the old."

Converge - Transforming Business at the Intersection of Marketing and Technology by Bob Lord and Ray Velez. About the book: "To create rich, technologically enabled experiences, enterprises need close collaboration between marketing and IT. Converge explains how the merging of technology, media, and creativity is revolutionizing marketing and business strategy. The CEO and CTO of Razorfish, one of the world's largest digital marketing agencies, give their unique perspective on how to thrive in this age of disruption. Converge shares their first-hand experience working closely with global brands... to solve business problems at the collision point between media, technology, and marketing."

Decisive - How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work by Chip and Dan Heath. About the book: "Research in psychology has revealed that our decisions are disrupted by an array of biases and irrationalities: We're overconfident. We seek out information that supports us and downplay information that doesn't. We get distracted by short-term emotions. When it comes to making choices, it seems, our brains are flawed instruments. Unfortunately, merely being aware of these shortcomings doesn't fix the problem, any more than knowing that we are nearsighted helps us to see. The real question is: How can we do better? In Decisive, the Heaths, based on an exhaustive study of the decision-making literature, introduce a four-step process designed to counteract these biases. Written in an engaging and compulsively readable style, Decisive takes readers on an unforgettable journey, from a rock star's ingenious decision-making trick to a CEO's disastrous acquisition, to a single question that can often resolve thorny personal decisions."

Finding Your Element - How to Discover Your Talents and Passions and Transform Your Life by Ken Robinson and  Lou Aronica. About the book: "Sir Ken Robinson's TED talk video and groundbreaking book, The Element , introduced readers to a new concept of self-fulfillment through the convergence of natural talents and personal passions. The Element has inspired readers all over the world and has created for Robinson an intensely devoted following. Now comes the long-awaited companion, the practical guide that helps people find their own Element."

The New Digital Age - Reshaping the Future of People, Nations and Business by Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen. About the book: "Eric Schmidt is one of Silicon Valley's great leaders, having taken Google from a small start-up to one of the world's most influential companies. Jared Cohen is the director of Google Ideas and a former adviser to both secretaries of state Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton ; he was instrumental in helping shape the way the U.S. government thinks about technology. Schmidt and Cohen have traveled the world--from the hot spots of the Middle East and Africa to the more stable European and Asian nations--meeting with world leaders, entrepreneurs, and activists to see and hear firsthand about the challenges they face. With the authors' combined knowledge and on-the-ground experiences, they are uniquely positioned to take on some of the toughest questions about our future: Who will be more powerful in the future, the citizen or the state? Will technology make terrorism easier or harder to carry out? How will war, diplomacy, and revolution change when everyone is connected, and how can we tip the balance in a beneficial way? When broken societies are rebuilt, what will they be able to do with technology? In this book, Schmidt and Cohen combine observations about the physical world with their insights into our digital future to outline in great detail and scope all the promise and peril awaiting us in the coming decades. This is a forward-thinking account of where our world is headed and what this means for people, states, nations, and businesses."

Present Shock - When Everything Happens Now by Douglas Rushkoff. About the book: "Rushkoff introduces the phenomenon of presentism, or - since most of us are finding it hard to adapt - present shock. Alvin Toffler 's radical 1970 book, Future Shock , theorized that things were changing so fast we would soon lose the ability to cope. Rushkoff argues that the future is now and we're contending with a fundamentally new challenge. Whereas Toffler said we were disoriented by a future that was careening toward us, Rushkoff argues that we no longer have a sense of a future, of goals, of direction at all. We have a completely new relationship to time; we live in an always-on 'now,' where the priorities of this moment seem to be everything."

Who Owns The Future? by Jaron Lanier. About the book: "Who Owns the Future? is a visionary reckoning with the effects network technologies have had on our economy. Lanier asserts that the rise of digital networks led our economy into recession and decimated the middle class. Now, as technology flattens more and more industries--from media to medicine to manufacturing--we are facing even greater challenges to employment and personal wealth. But there is an alternative to allowing technology to own our future. In this ambitious and deeply humane book, Lanier charts the path toward a new information economy that will stabilize the middle class and allow it to grow. It is time for ordinary people to be rewarded for what they do and share on the Web."

What's on your bookshelf for the summer of 2013?

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The New Convergence

This is not about media convergence. It's about something bigger.

Things change. Things change so fast that sometimes, it's hard to see it. We tend to think about our businesses and our lives in terms of keeping up with change. This creates a metal imagery of a mouse running on a wheel, doesn't it? At some point you're just chasing your own tail. Instead of worrying about how much the world is changing, why not focus on the things that have changed?

A new paradigm.

In both of my business books (Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete), the case it laid out for just how much technology, innovation and connectivity has changed business (yes, it's much more than just the media and marketing sides of things). In both books, I discuss how anyone from any city now has access to a global audience. Because of this, the concept of opening up a local retail outlet seems counterintuitive. Why sell to a small segment of people in a local town, in the hopes that they will walk into your store, when the Internet grants you access to a global customer base that allows you to sell (and stay open) even when you're asleep? Well, it turns out that there's a new convergence in town. It's not about how media converge (TV becoming connected screens or newspapers and their digital siblings). This is about a new world where the physical meets digital and the digital meets physical.

It's powerful. It's big.

Think about what Jack Dorsey is doing with Square. He's taking mobile connectivity and adding in a layer of the physical to turn ever smartphone and tablet into a merchant account. His vision statement is clear (and genius): "no more cash registers." This new business blends the digital and physical. LEGO offers the Digital Box in all of their stores. These interactive screens allow consumers to hold up the physical box in front of this digital box, which then creates a three-dimensional augmented reality build of what's inside the box. This form of utilitarianism marketing blends the digital and physical seamlessly.

We're seeing it everywhere.

Laugh at people wearing Google Glasses all you want (they're now being called "glassholes". The ability to change the paradigm of how we interact with technology (moving from holding, hands and fingers to using your eyes and voice to engage with content) is another nascent example of how digital is meeting physical and vice-versa. All wearable technology (think Nike Fuelband or Jawbone's Up) beautifully illustrate this major movement and what the present (and future) of business holds. Robotics, 3D printing push the idea of physical meeting digital and digital meeting physical to the very brink.

It's still early days.  

Ultimately, it is fascinating to see media and marketers adjust to the digitization of industry. It's still fascinating. It still fascinates me (and I'm hopeful that it fascinates you as well). What is even more fascinating is this brand new breed of startups and entrepreneurs who are truly moving The Internet of Things into a viable business model. One that is more than just profitable, but one that is setting the stage for what will be the next industrial revolution. Former Wired Magazine editor-in-chief, Chris Anderson, makes a very compelling case for it in his latest book, Makers (which is an incredible book, if you're looking for something to read this summer). New technology seems weird when it is first introduced. It feels raw. It feels nerdy. It feels like it's only suitable for a small and affluent niche. While this may be true, we are in the era of exponential growth when it comes to technology and adoption by the mass audience (consider this: the iPad didn't exist four years ago). The new convergence of digital meeting physical and physical meeting digital in a seamless and easy-to-use and adopt fashion has brought us to this magical moment when technology has removed the technology from technology. For my dollar, media convergence suddenly got a whole lot less exciting when compared to the new convergence of our digital and physical lives.

What do you think?   

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The New Face Of Content Marketing

How much content is too much content when it comes to a brand?

It's a slippery slope for most brands when it comes to their engines of content creation. We live in a day and age when the term, "content marketing" stumbles out of a brand's mouth almost as much as "big data" and "native advertising." Woe the brand that is not creating, publishing and curating relevant content. Still, many brands struggle with their digital content. They struggle with everything from the strategy to the editorial content to the creation of it, and even the best places to publish and share it effectively. Many new media pundits will tell you that the brands that are moving the needle are enabling their success by having in-house newsrooms or former journalists on the payroll to help uncover the more interesting stories to tell, and how to get those stories to spread. Regardless, we also live in a day and age when the half-life of content is shorter than ever. In a river of tweets or a flood of a Facebook newsfeed, even the most interesting of content will last a few hours (maybe a day or so... if you're lucky). This is further complicated by the fundamental nature of social media: which is the place where friends and acquaintances connect and not, necessarily, the ideal place for a brand to try to make some noise.

So, what's a brand to do?

Gary Vaynerchuk has a platform (or two). He built his initial following by producing an irreverent wine tasting video podcast that he converted into a massive Twitter following (closing in on one million followers), two best-selling business books (Crush It and The Thank You Economy) with a third one on the way (Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook), a lucrative speaking career and his ever-growing social media marketing agency, VaynerMedia. He responds to almost all of the inputs he gets (from tweeting to leaving comments on blogs) and created a tiny tempest in a teapot last week by declaring that he plans on, "tripling down" on content - because doubling down doesn't begin to describe how important he thinks it is," according to the Forbes article, Why Gary Vaynerchuk's New Social Media Strategy Should Change The Way You Do Business. With that, he has also hired a social media content assistant to help him capture, create and nurture whatever is brewing under those eyebrows to keep the pace increasing. And, that's where the tempest started brewing. Ford Motor Company's global head of social media, Scott Monty, responded with a blog post titled, The Last Thing The World Needs, citing this as more "digital clutter" in a world where individuals are struggling to capture anything and everything they already have in their feeds. What are these poor consumers going to do if every brand follows the Vaynerchuk strategy of tripling down? Will this push consumers to the breaking point? Will this have them running for the virtual doors at Facebook, Vine, Tumblr, Google + and beyond? 

In a word: no.

Some will find themselves having an internal dialogue about the classic "quality versus quantity" debate. In rebuttal to the pushback that Vaynerchuk's comments received, he astutely asks, "why not both?" Why can't brands create a lot of high quality content? Sure, some of this content will work and some will miss the mark. Not all attempts will result in a viral homerun, but we live in a real-time world, where individuals are increasingly looking for more context from their content. Content providers are going to have to play a very different game. A personal case study comes to mind. On May 21st, I published my second business book, CTRL ALT Delete. Along with a digital experience to compliment the launch of the book, my digital marketing agency, Twist Image, took the interesting stats and data from this experience and created a SlideShare titled, 25+ Mind Blowing Stats About Business Today - CTRL ALT Delete. Instead of simply tweeting and sharing the link throughout my online social spaces, I respectively shared some of the unique stats (which would be akin to Vaynerchuk's tripling down theory). My impression was that this deluge of content would upset my online community, and that there would be some semblance of negative comments and pushback. Much to my surprise, the SlideShare quickly surpassed 100,000 views, and the amount of new followers and friends coupled with the retweets and shares sent my overall analytics through the roof. Yes, creating what Monty refers to as "digital clutter" seems to have been the most effective strategy to get the word out. How did this happen? People aren't "on the ready" just because I decided to hit a publish button. The frequency of posting matched with the quality created a greater attention and focus on the message. It's a tough lesson for new media thinkers to hear: traditional tactics like frequency and repetition work.

What we think vs. what is.

Those who follow Gary Vaynerchuk, respect him. They like him. They seem to want more. By creating more, he is not only appeasing his most heavy users, but he is also giving them (and those who don't even follow him) additional opportunities to find out more, share his thinking and help him spread his own gospel. Tripling down on mediocre content helps nobody. Tripling down on relevancy, being contextual and adding value will always help a brand to expand its audience. Is this hard to scale? Absolutely. Will every brand get this right? Absolutely not. What Vaynerchuk (and other successful content creators) knows is this: the pulse of his audience. Through the years, the smartest content marketers are the ones who understand not only the pulse of their network, but how to pulse out that content in a way that is congruous with the audience. Vaynerchuk may be gambling by tripling down on his content creation, but while some may rightfully see it as clutter, my guess is that Vaynerchuk (and other successful content creators) will be analyzing the results and tweaking it until they uncover a formula that works better than their old one, which is a million times better than those who have no vision, no formula and are simply worried about the clutter that they're creating.

What do you think? Is the future of content a tripling down effect?

The above posting is my twice-monthly column for the Harvard Business Review. I cross-post it here with all the links and tags for your reading pleasure, but you can check out the original version online here:

Harvard Business Review - Marketers Are Not Publishing Enough Content.

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The Pageview Industrial Complex

Eyeballs still matter.

Ultimately, advertising has two objectives:

Create awareness that something exists.

Sell something.

Do pageviews still matter?

Whenever you pull up a piece of content, you are creating a pageview. The frustration that certain marketers have with pageviews are well-placed. Unlike a physical page (in a newspaper or magazine), clever online editors do sneaky things like create slideshows or paginate articles so that consumers have to click through multiple webpages for content that would have traditionally appeared on one page. In short, they've turned one page of content into many. This generates the ability to serve an incremental amount of ads for the same piece of content. Good for the publishers (in terms of revenue), good for the brand (looking to get their message in front of as many eyeballs as possible) and questionable for the consumer (lots more ads and lots more clicking around for a single piece of content). Due to the exponential growth of mobile (driven by both tablet and smartphone usage), content publishers are struggling to figure out what will replace these banners ads and/or how to make their pageviews as lucrative as possible in a post PC world.

The complexity and challenge of new media.

This struggle is real. Publishers are feeling the pressure to generate revenue in a world where print advertising is struggling to return to its former glory. Because of the lack of scarcity in online advertising, online publishers are trying every trick in the book to generate substantive advertising revenue, in an attempt to validate online publishing as a credible revenue model that will match (and, hopefully, surpass) that of traditional print advertising. Still, the reality is the reality. We live in a digital world that has an ever-growing abundance of advertising inventory. It can pushed and manipulated to create more (as needed). The cost of standard run of network advertising is relatively low. Consumers have never been fond of clicking on these ads (so much so that we changed the nomenclature from "banner advertising" to "display advertising" in the hopes of validating the model as an amazing engine for branding purposes). Banners have become digital clutter. Even the most refined of webpages seem engulfed in images that blink, ping and prod for attention in a world where every eye-tracking advertising test to date has demonstrated that consumers have developed a keen "banner blindness" ability.

Is ignorance bliss?

It's hard to argue that most content-based webpages aren't all that annoying, but there is a cost for access and there is a cost for this content that must be paid by the consumers. Whether this is a paid-subscription model to underwrite the profitability of the business or ad-supported as the model, consumers have to accept that advertising and pageviews are going nowhere. Recently, DigiDay ran an article titled, The Pageview is Dead. Sadly, nothing could be further from the truth. Pageviews may be a poor metric. Pageviews may be something that most online publishers manipulate for their own revenue-generating endeavors, but pageviews are as important today as circulation is to newspapers.

We have to suck it up.

Yes, our world needs better digital advertising creative. Yes, our needs the ability to track engagement and create more contextually relevant advertising for consumers. Still, even the hottest forms of online advertising (think native advertising or Google's AdWords platform) still require consumers to generate pageviews. On top of that, while earned and owned media are the new darlings of the new social media world, let's not forget that there is still a vast majority of businesses and brands that absolutely must pay for that quick impression (be it online or otherwise). It's doubtful that a thirty year-old bran cereal brand is going to get much earned and owned media simply because they're launching a new line with dried strawberries in it. All they really need is a hefty media spend and something that will capture the consumer's attention but for a moment. They are paying to share their corporate information.

New media is hard to reconcile.

It's admirable to want the metric of pageviews to die. It's admirable to desire that brands do a whole lot more to engage their consumers, rather than disrupt them, but it's also hard to bucket all brands into one homogenous group. If someone is looking at content and multiple display ads are pushed to them, instead of screaming that pageviews are a wrong metric, perhaps the marketing industry needs to take a greater step back, and ask even more profound questions: are display ads and the pageview model the most compelling way for a brand to create attention online? Is there a better way to create attention in a world where consumers are connecting to content on a myriad of screens in a vastly different contextual experience? Ultimately, the problem may not be the pageview, but rather the entire financial and creative structure that the pageview is simply a minor player in.

What's your side? Do you see a day when the pageview goes away? 

The above posting is my twice-monthly column for The Huffington Post. I cross-post it here with all the links and tags for your reading pleasure, but you can check out the original version online here:

Huffington Post - The Pageview Industrial Complex.

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The Truth About Social Media And Selling Stuff

Episode #361 of Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast is now live and ready for you to listen to.

Brands are pushing hard on social media. All too often, they will complain that social media doesn't work or Facebook advertising doesn't work. In short, they're missing the point. Social media is not a catch-all for marketing and advertising that will cure what ails the aching brand. Nobody knows this better than the founder and CEO of Monetate, David Brussin. Monetate is an amazing marketing optimization platform that has taken the e-commerce world by storm. I've been friends with Brussin since the early days of the company. They've been releasing their EQ Report (E-commrce Quarterly) for some time. The latest edition was recently published and, along with Jay Baer (Convince And Convert and the author of the soon-to-be-published book, Youtility), I was asked to editorialize on the data. In short, social media does not drive to sales... but it kinda does. Confused? Don't be. Take a listen and enjoy the conversation between Brussin, Baer and me... 

You can grab the latest episode of Six Pixels of Separation here (or feel free to subscribe via iTunes): Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast #361.

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Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #155

Is there one link, story, picture or thought that you saw online this week that you think somebody you know must see?

My friends: Alistair Croll (BitCurrent, Year One Labs, GigaOM, Human 2.0, Solve For Interesting, the author of Complete Web Monitoring, Managing Bandwidth: Deploying QOS in Enterprise Networks and Lean Analytics), Hugh McGuire (PressBooks, LibriVox, iambik and co-author of Book: A Futurist's Manifesto) and I decided that every week the three of us are going to share one link for one another (for a total of six links) that each individual feels the other person "must see".

Check out these six links that we're recommending to one another:

It's a beautiful thing when free data meets free analytics - GigaOm . "I hesitated to post something this hardcore geeky to our weekly list, but it's worth the investment. Last week I sent something about Jaron Lanier , and his worries over the concentration of the data of the many in the hands of the few. GigaOm 's Derrick Harris points out that BigML (a machine learning service) and Quandl (an open data provider) have teamed up. You may not know other open services like openstreetmap.org (an open version of Google Maps ) and CommonCrawl (an open repository of the web's contents), but collectively, tools like these create a 'shadow' version of the Internet tools on which we rely (think OpenOffice versus Microsoft Office ). As people want to analyze the chaff of their digital lives--without the scrutiny and profiteering of commercial tools and social networks--these kinds of tools will become increasingly important." (Alistair for Hugh).

Timelapse - Time . "This Google / Time Magazine interactive feature shows an amazing amount of detail on how our planet is changing. It makes me realize that, for maybe the first time, we have the visibility from space to see; the computing power to analyze; and the networking to distribute a truly global view of our planet. Some of the imagery is a sobering reminder that we've achieved such power at a high--maybe unrecoverable--cost." (Alistair for Mitch).

Could IBM Be The Next Google? - Forbes . "Big data for the people (Google) vs. big data for companies. Is IBM (a company with astounding staying power) poised to bring big data smarts into their vast network of huge corporate accounts?" (Hugh for Alistair).

Facebook users in Japan losing interest and heading for the exits - RocketNews24 . "Facebook is invincible, right? How could a company that controls the online social interaction of 500 gazillion people ever lose relevance? Well, take a look at what's happening in Japan: a 20% decline in Facebook users in the past 5 months. In it's place, LINE has emerged as the dominant social networking site in Japan, with 41.5 million Japanese users (vs. 14 million for Facebook, down from 19 million at the end of 2012). Will LINE grab the imagination of Facebook users in North America? Maybe not, but something else will, eventually." (Hugh for Mitch).

How does Apple keep secrets so well? - Quora . "I spent the past few weeks in Toronto doing media appearances for the launch of CTRL ALT Delete . I found myself one night in a restaurant sitting next to a couple. One of them works at a competitive agency and they're pitching for the same piece of business. This individual was talking - in detail - about a lot of confidential information. Both about the agency they work for, their team members and the client that they are hoping to represent. None of it positive. It made me wonder how a company like Apple manages to keep things so secret and then - poof! - here comes this amazing little piece of content on Quora ." (Mitch for Alistair).

Is Quartz the Very Model of a Modern Publisher? - DigiDay . "I often get asked what traditional print media publishers must do to remain viable in this digital age. There are not many answers or examples to point to other than the Huffington Post or BuzzFeed (and those two answers seem to make hardcore journalists squirm). Quartz could be the beginning of an answer (the jury isn't out yet). For my dollar, this is less about the content and how it looks on a smartphone versus a computer screen and much more about finding a sustainable business model that isn't predicated on advertising as the sole (and greatest) form of revenue. Why? Because print advertising was based on a model of scarcity and the Internet is a model of complete abundance. Still, Quartz may have a shot, and here's why." (Mitch for Hugh).

Now it's your turn: in the comment section below pick one thing that you saw this week that inspired you and share it.

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alistair croll

apple

bigml

bitcurrent

book a futurists manifesto

buzzfeed

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google

google maps

huffington post

hugh mcguire

human 20

iambik

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line

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managing bandwidth

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quandl

quartz

quora

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social media

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time magazine

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twitter

year one labs

Reboot Life

What are you going to do with your life?

Can anyone remember where that line is from? The year was 1985. The band was Twisted Sister. The song was 'I Wanna Rock.' For your reference...

Do you wanna rock?

My latest book, CTRL ALT Delete, came out on May 21st. The book is divided into two parts. The first part (Reboot: Business) is about the five movements that have changed business forever, that brands are doing little (to nothing) about. The second part of the book is called, Reboot: You. In this part i talk about what kind of people we need to be in this brand new (and ever-evolving) business landscape. Right before the book came out, it was announced that Yahoo would acquire Tumblr for over one billion dollars. The founder and CEO of this contemporary blogging platform-meets-online social network is a web developer and entrepreneur by the name of David Karp. Karp is 26 years old and is the embodiment of this new generation of worker. He has the digital-first posture, he believes in squiggly careers and he's not too concerned about things like pension plans (especially now that he's a multi-millionaire). Shortly after the acquisition, Karp made his first appearance on the Charlie Rose show. It's a stunner. Put aside his age and his passion. Watch his story. Hear how his parents encouraged him. Try to understand what motivates him. Karp is a exemplary case study for the second part of CTRL ALT Delete. It's also a story we should all watch, share and talk about.

Ready to Reboot You? Watch David Karp's story... 

Charlie Rose interviews Tumblr's David Karp.

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Want To Join Seth Godin And Me For A CTRL ALT Delete Book Launch At Google In NYC?

It's actually a private book launch party for CTRL ALT Delete.

On June 17th, 2013, Google in New York City will be hosting the official book launch for my second business book, CTRL ALT Delete. This is a very private and intimate event for the industry and media (sponsored by Google and my publisher, Grand Central Publishing - Hachette Book Group) and it is by invitation only. The usual fare for these events is come in, mingle, have some cocktails, listen to the author wax poetic about their latest and disperse. In thinking about doing something different, unique and fun, I thought it might be more lively (and interesting) to have a fireside conversation about what's in the book (and what's not) with one of the people I admire most in this industry, Seth Godin (author of amazing books like The Icarus Deception, Linchpin, The Dip, Purple Cow, and on... and on). Seth graciously agreed to take part.

A special evening.

There will be some other goodies and surprises as well. In speaking with Google, they suggested that we invite 10 loyal Six Pixels of Separation community members/friends to come along (and a bring a guest). So, here's what we're going to do to give these ten slots away: in the comments below, answer this question: what company do you think has made a great reboot and why? We'll comb through these comments and choose 10 winners who will be given a pair of tickets to attend this book launch event in NYC.

The fine print: 

Entries will be accepted up until 11:00 pm eastern on Wednesday, June 12th, 2012.

Winners will be notified via email.

Winners are entitled to bring one guest.

Winners must cover all travel, accommodations, etc... The only thing you are winning is a pass for two to the event.

So... take a shot!

Word is that the Authors@Google team will be on hand to film the event, but regardless this is going to be all new content and a fascinating conversation about the state of business, marketing and innovation. The event will take place from 5-7 pm and winners will be given the full details when they are notified. We're hoping to make this a special evening to launch CTRL ALT Delete.

Over to you...

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the dip

The End Of Work-Life Balance

We have a problem when it comes to work-life balance. There is no such thing.

This past month, I attended a conference in New York City called, Mirren New Business. It's about as niche of a conference as they come. This one is solely focused on the role of business development for marketing and communications agencies. Along with learning new skills to build and win the perfect pitch, the hallway chatter is second to none. You can sidle up against some of the sharpest ad agency people in the business (our modern day Mad Men) and ask them the questions that your agency has been struggling with. There is no shock in knowing that the marketing agency business has a terrible reputation when it comes to burnout. In leading up to a big pitch, it is not uncommon for certain agencies to break out the folding beds and have people bring their toothbrushes and towels to hunker down for a handful of days/nights that would make cramming for a high school exam seem like a trip to the movie theaters to catch Star Trek Into Darkness in IMAX 3D. At the conference, I approached the global chief creative officer from one of the world's hottest advertising agencies and asked him what he does when asked for feedback from his team when the client presentation is the next day, and there is little time for changes to happen? This was his answer: "If they come to you at noon and the presentation is at 11 am the following day, they still have eleven hours to fix things... that's plenty of time." 

Technology makes this even more complicated.

It started with the pervasiveness of cellphones then took on exponential growth with the popularity of the BlackBerry, and now smartphones and tablets have created a blurring between the work that we do and the lives that we're leading. There are currently studies looking at people's "time to device," or how long it takes you from waking up to make a reach for your mobile. As you can imagine, we have shifted from touching our spouses last before bed and first thing in the morning to our devices (and this includes the people who are still married). The bemoan of many to unplug, shut it down and take a break is often squelched by our desire to respond to every ring, beep, chirp, buzz and ping on our devices. We reach for these devices with the same Pavlovian reaction as those conditioned dogs. What's a Type A personality to do?

Find your blend.

Patrick Pichette  is the Chief Financial Officer of Google. While attending a private function, a few of his former colleagues from Bell asked Pichette what his work-life balance was like at Google. Without missing a beat or batting an eye, Pichette said: "you don't take this job for work-life balance." Later in the evening, I asked Pichette to elaborate on what he meant. He believes in "blend" and not in work-life balance. He went on to explain that while attending a meeting in London, he would tag on a few days to spend with his family, or he may duck out of the office to grab a workout and then play catch-up later in the evening. In short, work is no longer something you do during the day - especially if it's something you're passionate about. Work isn't something that resides outside of life, it is an integral part of it. How many hours a day do you work? Is it simply predicated on the standard industrial complex of nine-to-five or do you find yourself more and more connected to the work that you do (both physically and technologically)? How do you make this work?

How do you find your blend?

There are many layers to blend. Along with running a digital marketing agency, I blog every day, podcast once a week, contribute a bi-weekly column at the Harvard Business Review, and for Huffington Post, remain fairly active in my industry and community and have a very young family. It's not easy, but I have also spent a large chunk of my time prior to making any of these commitments to establishing my rules for blend in a world where the work that I do is a massive part of who I am. Blend can best be defined by using the visual of a three-legged stool. Each leg stands for something:

Leg Number One: Family and friends. Without a focus on your family, extended family and friends, you will never have the support you truly need to be successful.

Leg Number Two: Profession. Whether it is the job you're doing to pay the rent or the work that you were meant to do, having a profession that makes you satisfied - in however you define your satisfaction - is critical.

Leg Number Three: Community. Locally, nationally and internationally. You must be an active contributor to both your community and your industry. Without a strong community, there will be nothing to support the infrastructure of the company that you serve.

The secret to blend...

If one of those legs on this three-legged stool is unbalanced or out of check, the stool with topple over. Forget work-life balance and focus on your blend. Ensure that all three legs on this stool are balanced. Have the humility to know when things are falling out of place and react - as quickly as possible - to correct course. Understand that without you sitting on top of the stool (with a good posture), everything crumbles as well. This means that you have to ensure both a strong mental and physical state of mind. No, this isn't some kind of motivation piece or the type of thinking or hyperbole you will usually find coming out of an Anthony Robbins book. All too often, we think of work-life balance as if our work should fall outside of our lives, when - in our new digital reality - it's just about finding the right blend. And, always remember that workaholics have no balance... or blend. They just work and there's a whole lot more to life than the work.

And furthermore...

It's a topic that Jonathan Fields and I discussed in-depth during our Good Life Project conversation:

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work life balance

Good Life Project

Where does Jonathan Fields come from?

I am fascinated by people who are great at having conversations. I have a deep admiration for people like Charlie Rose and Howard Stern (say what you will about both of them). In the new media world, there are few people that have made that kind of ascent. Jonathan Fields from Good Life Project, could well be one of them. I have been following his video show from day one, and if you haven't caught any episodes, go ahead and check out his conversations with Brene Brown, Seth Godin and Dan Ariely. Those should be enough to send you deep down into the worm hole. Yes, you will get lost for days. You will learn. You will grow. You will be compelled to share these conversations with everyone you know. When people tell me that they're down, not sure what to do next or simply looking for some smart new ways to think, I'll immediately point them to Field's Good Life Project. Jonathan is also the author of the book, Uncertainty - Turning Fear and Doubt Into Fuel For Brilliance, which I also love dearly. When I was offered the opportunity to appear on Good Life Project, I immediately said, "yes!" and I could hardly contain myself. We recorded this conversation in New York City in the middle of May, and I'm thrilled that Jonathan published it today. If you have yet to subscribe to Good Life Project, you can now subscribe to it as a podcast as well.

Here it is: Time to Ctrl Alt Delete Your Life...

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