Mitch Joel's Blog: Six Pixels of Separation, page 363

The Drug Of "Next"

The ability to focus is an ability laden with complexity.

I'm staring at my iPhone 3GS and wondering why I didn't bite the bullet and get an iPhone 4. Because I didn't line-up for an iPhone 4 and waited so long, it seems silly to get one now. What's the point? I'm sure the iPhone 5 is just around the corner, right? To my left is my iPad. I should probably get an iPad 2 at this point as well. Right?

Do you see what's going on here?

While it's not as destructive as a heroine addiction (and not nearly as important in terms of something that needs treatment), Moore's Law seems to be picking up pace and our ability to focus on what's currently in-market (and how it's working) is being clouded and confused by our constant pursuit of what's coming next. It's becoming a huge issue for Marketers. For those who lead the brand and for the agencies that lead them, the great marketing divide between the tried and true traditional marketing tactics is very much clouded by the new and emerging channels. It wasn't that long ago when Marketers truly believed that the Internet and online advertising would be/could be a fad. Some might still argue that it's still unproven when compared to traditional mass media advertising.

Nearly twenty years into the Internet and it's still new media?

The struggle is very real. Make no mistake about it. Last week, I attended the Mirren New Business conference in New York City. It's a very niche event where marketing agency owners converge for three days to talk about new business development. What it takes to win new business - from credentials and presentation skills to dealing with procurement and adding new services into your agency model. As you can imagine, the real discussion and interest was about what's coming next. What can an agency do be viable and profitable in the coming years? What's the next "iPhone" of the advertising agency model?

Everyone was tapping the vein.

The three big revelations about the what's next for advertising agencies were around:

Digital innovation - the ability for agencies to not only offer digital marketing services but being able to deliver them with award-winning results. And, while the conversation is no longer about websites and more about Facebook and iPhone apps, it's still the same conversation about relevance and context.

Pricing models - how can these services-based industries move from an hourly rate to one that truly encompasses the actual value that this marketing work brings to the overall economic value of the companies that they serve?

Product development - no longer beholden to selling big ideas to a brand, now agencies are both developing their own products to put into market or they're creating venture capital funds to both invest in new product development or newer companies developing unique advertising solutions.

So, how's that working out for you?

With some of the hottest advertising agencies and some of the most talked about up n' comers in the room, the answers were quite startling (and yet, not surprising at all): there are still no new models that work. Agencies are - for the most part - struggling with their digital marketing success when compared to the traditional results they were delivering when this whole Internet thing didn't disrupt the model of people passively sitting by and letting TV, radio and print wash over them. They're struggling with finding a groove where their digital marketing work and results can be compared to the excitement that a Superbowl ad delivers. While some agencies are adding in additional fee structures based on sales results (or other metrics), the majority of marketing agencies are still working by headcount and the hours-per-day that their employees are working. Lastly, there has been no proven example of a marketing agency that has developed a product with tremendous success in the market.

We should not stop trying.

While some may read this and shake their heads, the message should not be taken as all doom and gloom. We're an industry that is trying. We're willing to look at all of of our sacred cows and question them. This is a good, moral and right way of being progressive in business. We have the most creative, irreverent and thoughtful people working on these problems, but true success in the real world often looks very little like our thoughts or pontifications. We also need to be very cautious of spending too much time on the drug of "next." The answer will, inevitably, be simpler than anyone of us could have ever imagined. We're quick to say that Quora is the next big thing. We said this about Cuil too (remember when Cuil was the Google killer?). We're sometimes right... but we're often wrong.

The answer?

Have a passion for the present.

Solves real world business problems.

Add real economic value to the brands you serve.

Create platforms that truly allow people (brands and their consumers) to come together.

Be interested in innovation (allow for a small percentage of the overall brand budget to tinker with new channels and tactics).

Recognize what success looks like.

Use the analytics available to you to truly drive new directions and opportunities.

Let people from all angles of the agency think and create new ideas.

Technology must be a critical part of the process (along with the creative and client services department).

This may not be as fun as chasing the dragon, but being a " Presentist " in a world of this much opportunity, diversity and room for change seems much more future-focused than trying to be a pure "Futurist."

Tags:

advertising innovation

apple

brand

business development

business model

cuil

digital innovation

digital marketing

facebook

google

ipad

iphone

iphone app

marketer

marketing agency

mass media

mirren new business

moores law

new media

online advertising

presentist

pricing model

product development

quora

technology

traditional marketing

venture capital

web analytics

How To Be Rich (It's Not What You Think)

Episode #249 of Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast is now live and ready for you to listen to.

If you don't take what you do at work very seriously, Tim Sanders has some thoughts for you. Tim is the former Chief Solutions Officer at Yahoo! and later their Leadership Coach. Since he left Yahoo!, Sanders has been on a journey to become a modern day Napolean Hill or Dale Carnegie. Through the digital channels, speaking and his three best-selling business books (Love Is The Killer App, The Likeability Factor and Saving The World At Work), Sanders is on a mission to make every person - everyday - really think about their purpose and what they're bringing not only to their work, but to the world. HIs newly published book, Today We Are Rich, is meant to foster and develop complete confidence in everything that you do. It's a powerful read and it was a pleasure to catch up with Tim again. If you need a push, this is for you. Enjoy the conversation...

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 #249.

Tags:

advertising

bite size edits

blog

blogging

blue sky factory

book oven

business book

cast of dads

cc chapman

chris brogan

christopher s penn

dale carnegie

digital dads

digital marketing

facebook

facebook group

hugh mcguire

in over your head

itunes

julien smith

librivox

love is the killer app

managing the gray

marketing

marketing over coffee

media hacks

napolean hill

new marketing labs

online social network

podcast

podcasting

pressbooks

saving the world at work

six pixels of separation

social media 101

social media marketing

strategy

the likeability factor

tim sanders

today we are rich

trust agents

twist image

yahoo

Why I Don't Like You

Here's a true story about Facebook and the "like" button...

I was recently having dinner with a very senior marketing executive when the conversation turned to brands and how they handle themselves in online public forums. In this instance, the senior marketer had a customer service issue that was not being resolved. Not unlike many other people, they turned to Social Media to air their grievances in hopes of getting resolution. They were quite pleased with the outcome after posting to the brand's Facebook page, but made it clear that even though they got the resolution they were looking for, it had left a bad brand taste in their mouth and that they would no longer be buying from them. Not long after that incident, they kept seeing this brand in their news feed and became extremely irritated by this. The senior marketer thought that they were spammed by this brand. The senior marketer didn't realize two important things:

In this instance she had to "like" the brand to be able to post on their page.

Once you like a brand (or anyone) you can moderate how much content you see of theirs on your wall.

Pimping for likes.

It's kind of weird, isn't it? You have to "like" a brand to complain about them? Sure, it's just nomenclature, but it's important to know and understand that the majority of people probably have no idea what it actually means when they "like" a brand on Facebook and what happens after that. This is not some uncommon rarity either. In fact it's becoming more and more commonplace, as brands seem to be that much more interested in getting people to like them on Facebook than getting them into their own loyalty program or trying to build a direct relationship with them.

Another true Facebook story...

Not long ago, a major retailer contacted our agency, Twist Image, because they wanted a strategy around how to get 50,000 people to "like" them on Facebook. My obvious question was, "why?" and their answer was, "because that's how many likes our competitors have and it's frustrating our CEO." The brand was even willing to give a unique discount to each person who clicked the like button for them. Yup, they were willing to "buy" Facebook likes. No joke.

Who do you like?

My new role as a Media Hacker (still loving that title) is one where I force myself to think not of the brand and its strategy, but to think of the consumer. To be a consumer (in fact, I'm a huge consumer - on all fronts). Who do I really like? It's a small, few and trusted brands. However, there are brands that I have been using forever that I would never like on Facebook, and I would certainly never like a brand just to get a discount, enter a contest or because they asked me to (no matter how nice). The truth is that many people are not like me. The majority of people will complain about privacy and the use of their personal information, but will then divulge everything to save a dollar. It's not an indictment on our society... it's simply a fact.

I don't like the big Facebook like button gold rush .

There. I said it. Every brand I come across on Facebook smacks you in the face with the product and then a huge arrow pointing upward with copy akin to "like us and win!" or "like us to get more information!" It feels cheap and it is cheap. Social Media is interesting because it forces brands to connect in a more human way (I call this, "real interactions between real human beings"). It's not about bumping up numbers because suddenly the amount of people following you looks like some sort of National Debt Clock for the world to see.

Brands need to quit the cheap games to gain likes and need to focus on developing tangible relationships and publishing valuable content that makes them worthy of following and liking.

(in a strange twist of zeitgeist, my Podcasting brother, Joseph Jaffe, just Blogged about this as well: Hawking For Likes).

Tags:

brand

customer service

facebook

facebook like button

facebook page

facebook strategy

jaffe juice

joseph jaffe

like button

loyalty program

marketing

marketing executive

media hacker

national debt clock

online privacy

online social network

personal information

podcasting

publishing

social media

twist image

Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #43

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, the author of Complete Web Monitoring and Managing Bandwidth: Deploying QOS in Enterprise Networks), Hugh McGuire (The Book Oven, LibriVox, iambik, PressBooks, Media Hacks) and I decided that every week or so 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:

The Periodic Table of Google . "Every startup's dream is to become a platform, creating an entire ecosystem of developers and users that rely on their product. Foursquare , Twitter , Amazon and others work hard to convince developers to build on their programming interfaces. But nobody comes close to Google . This diagram shows the vast array of tools and services that help developers build modern web applications, from commonplace components (search, maps) to the more esoteric (machine learning) It's no coincidence that Android , the Hydrogen of Google's world, reacts with pretty much everything." (Alistair for Hugh).

Your flaws are my pain - LabSpaces . "We feel the pain of others. Which worked great in tribes, but in a Reality TV world - where millions can peer into the bedrooms and cat-fights of carefully chosen, meticulously edited human trainwrecks - our empathy makes prime-time TV positively cringe-worthy. FMRi scans of reality TV audiences showed an activation of the brain's pain centers when a model tripped or a participant did something unknowingly embarrassing." (Alistair for Mitch).

We need a GitHub of Science - marciovm's posterous . "GitHub has become one of the most important platforms for open source coding projects. It combines a social network of coders with tools for managing (and showing), the codebase of software projects. This great article explores how the GitHub model could be applied to science." (Hugh for Alistair).

To Whom Do We Owe This Money, Exactly? - Sturdy Blog . "UK blog Sturdy Blog asks one of those questions that makes you say... 'wait a minute!' The question is: 'To Whom Do We Owe All This Money?' That is, the UK has gone into huge debt bailing out the banks. But it looks as though much of that debt is owned by... the banks that got bailed out. Whaa? The post is a great starting point, and the comment thread is filled with much good explanation." (Hugh for Mitch).

How Genius Works - The Atlantic . "The more I read, the more I believe that true genius can most easily be found and understood in art and creativity. Thinking about that concept a little more, it does feel like our work has now become our art (for many of us... and my hand is raised). This is especially true for people who come up with an idea and then launch a start-up. So, where does art, creativity and true genius come from? This amazing special report from The Atlantic looks at artists, ideas and how true genius manifests itself." (Mitch for Alistair).

About That Lawsuit... - The Huffington Post . " Arianna Huffington and her business partners at The Huffington Post sold the company to AOL for for $315 million dollars. Now that the deal is closed, Arianna is facing a class-action law suit on behalf of more than 9,000 writers and other content providers for at least $105 million in damages. This is Arianna's rebuttal and it might surprise you to know that I agree with The Huffington Post's stance. Some people are calling what HuffPo did to writers slavery. Rubbish! No one put a gun to anyone's head and every writer has this little thing called, 'freewill'. As someone who has been writing professionally since I was 17 years old, I've written for free, for pay and for barter and understood (and chose) the terms and conditions with each writing opportunity. These writers are pissed because Arianna made $315 million on their backs? She was making revenue before that and nothing was ever promised to them (and they knew that). I wonder how many of these writers have received speaking opportunities, book deals and paid writing assignments because they had something credible like The Huffington Post on their resume? I also wonder if the people who did benefit from this monetarily ever gave any of those proceeds back to HuffPo considering that they may not have received these opps had they not used the Huffington Post's reputation?" (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.

Tags:

alistair croll

amazon

android

aol

arianna huffington

art

bitcurrent

bite-sized edits

bloggers

complete web monitoring

creativity

developers

fmri

foursquare

gigaom

github

google

great links

hugh mcguire

human 20

journalism

labspaces

librivox

link

linkbait

managing bandwidth

marciovm

media hacks

online social network

open source coding

pressbooks

reality tv

rednod

startup

sturdy blog

the atlantic

the book oven

the huffington post

twitter

web applications

writing

year one labs

Control... That Old Thing

Can brands be in control of their message?

About a week after everyone got their hands on the seminal new media book, The Cluetrain Manifesto by Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls and David Weinberger in 1999 (yes, that's almost twelve years ago), a new meme starting bursting out of the Intertubes and into the boardrooms of companies (small, medium and large) across the globe. These companies were being put on notice: they were no longer in control of their brands. The war to control the message had been lost. Because of connectivity, the Internet and online publishing, anyone, anywhere could say whatever they wanted about a brand in text, images, audio and video and there wasn't much a brand could do about it except listen, and - if they were really good - engage and connect.

Was it ever really about control?

In my first business book, Six Pixels of Separation, I made the argument that brands still do control the message. The shift in this world was less about control and more about the volume/loudness of the message in the marketplace. Brands simply could not scream louder than their consumers because the Internet and it's ability to instantly publish to the world equalized this volume. Brand still controlled their vision, mission and the marketing materials that go along with it, while consumers could now say whatever they wanted to about the brand and mash-up those materials as they saw fit.

What happened to control?

You rarely hear Marketing theorists talk about the brands inability to have control over their message anymore. It seems like even discussing who has control is a topic that is dead on arrival. You see, it doesn't really matter if a brand opens up anymore. They don't need customer reviews on their websites, they don't have to Blog and they certainly don't have to be active on Twitter, Facebook or YouTube. Why? Because consumers don't need the brand's platform to publish what they think about them. They don't even need a third-party platform (like Yelp!) to post their accolades or dissent. Publishing has gone from expensive to cheap to free to ridiculously free in the blink of an eye. Nobody just consumes content anymore online and most people have multiple publishing platforms to post their thoughts in multiple media formats. Not only can brands not control that, if they choose to ignore it what are they really saying about their ability to be customer-centric? We're at this strange new intersection where the expectation is that every brand has relinquished the control over their messaging and that they're listening (and hopefully reacting) to this ever-growing chorus of feedback.

Control may well be dead on arrival.

Isn't that at all interesting to you? It is to me. Control goes away and we don't even talk about it anymore. Like it never mattered. Like it never happened. Like no one really cares. This is a big deal. This is a game changer. This is changing business (and it continues to do so daily). It amazes me that companies are now forced to answer to their public... in public. That these online channels have become the court of public opinion and that individuals are changing the rules of business each and every day. Let's not kid ourselves either, the majority of businesses are being forced (kicking and screaming) into this new world (which in and of itself tells us something about the true nature of business).

If we're this laissez-faire about control disappearing, I'm left wondering what's next?

Tags:

brand

brand messaging

business book

christopher locke

control

customer reviews

david weinberger

doc searls

facebook

marketing materials

marketing theorists

mash-up

media format

new media

online channel

publishing

rick levine

the cluetrain manifesto

twitter

yelp

youtube

Your Marketing Drivel That Is Supposed To Be Content

What makes content dance?

Whether it's a Twitter feed, a Facebook page or a corporate Blog, I'm often asked for my thoughts and perspective on not just the design and usability, but the quality of the content. And - much like this season's judges on American Idol - I find myself towing the line to find only the good in what is being done. As you'll note, I have thin skin. I don't deal well with criticism and this makes it very difficult to criticize others. So, I'd make a terrible judge on American Idol and I  tend to be light on content criticism. Back when I was a music journalist, I'd actually not review albums that I didn't like. You know the old saying, "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all." I have no problem being critical internally of the work we produce at Twist Image (only the best for our clients), but I tend to shy away from criticism when I'm asked on a more ad hoc basis about the content that an organization is publishing in the Social Media channels.

Confession time.

In most instances, when a brand is not getting the traction, attention, or getting their content shared as much as expected, the diagnosis is obvious to everyone but the brand itself. The content is not resonating because it actually looks less like authentic content and much more like Marketing blather that is thinly veiled as content.

Objectivity.

If your content can't be objective and the ultimate goal of publishing it is to get people to buy from you, that will be the way in which it will be consumed. The brands that are seeing their content get shared and recommended are publishing content that looks and acts a lot more like the content you would find in other online publications (or something you might read in a magazine or a newspaper).

Shy away from advertorial content.

It's hard to do this. Your boss is reading the content and wants to ensure that the brand integrity stays in tact. The entire reason you were given the latitude to publish anything was because there was a promise that content is critical to success in Social Media, but that it should always be in the best interest of the brand. It's hard to create great content. It's hard to create objective content. It's also hard to create content that must be skewed or manipulated in a way that ultimately promotes your brand in the marketplace. The masters of it (those that toil in the branded content arena) understand how to do this in a more balanced fashion.

The brands that work.

There are many brands who understand this. Some of the ways in which their content "wins" is by focusing less on the products or services that they sell and much more on the industry they serve and why it matters to their constituents. Producing objective content isn't easy. The other reason for this is because Marketers have a hard time thinking like a Publisher (or a Journalist). They often don't have the passion or care that a Journalist or Publisher brings to content creation, and the content winds up being created much in the same spirit as their other Marketing materials. Be cautious. Great content is honest, real, objective and adds much more value to the person reading it than the person who wrote/published it.

Think about your content. Is it objective or simply thinly veiled Marketing blather?

Tags:

advertorial

american idol

blog

brand integrity

branded content

content

content creation

corporate blog

facebook

journalist

magazine

marketing

marketing drivel

music journalism

newspaper

objectivity

publisher

publishing

social media

twist image

twitter

An Open Letter To Conference Organizers

Dear Conference Organizer,

It's rare that you will get a letter from someone like me. I speak professionally at over 60 events per year, due my industry involvement I also help to organize a handful of high-profile events every year and, top of that, I am a willing, happy and paying participant at many conferences per year. As the years pass and the events management industry continues to evolve, I would like you to consider the following concepts...

Be careful how you market your events... 

In the past, there were many great conferences that simply struggled with their marketing and positioning. Lately, I've been to several conferences that have been marketed so well that the actual content did not live up to the marketing of the event. What does that look like? Session titles and descriptions that are written so well, I would feel stupid to miss them, only to show up and not have the content match the description. It's better to undersell and over-deliver than to hype a session and not live up to the marketing of it.

Prepare your speakers...

Spend a serious amount of time on the phone with the speakers who are struggling with the content they have to deliver. Don't rely on the handful of your keynote speakers to save the entire event. People are paying good money for the entire event, so each session has to be amazing.

Pay your speakers...

I'm sure this one will be controversial (especially because I am a paid/professional speaker), but it's true. Covering expenses and offering free access to the event is not enough. You know the saying: "you get what you pay for." Beyond that, if your participants are paying to attend and you stack your program with free speakers who don't deliver because they're not professionals and have not worked with you to perfect and craft their presentations, you're making your paying clients feel like they have been hoodwinked.

Prepare your panels...

I hate seeing panelists converge next to the stage twenty-minutes before their session for the first-time. If they're not prepared or have not spent any time speaking to one another about how their session is going to run, what level of confidence do you think I'll have in them as a participant? Just like any other performing artist, it's probably wise that they spend some time rehearsing before the big event.

Keep in mind that participants do more than pay to attend your event...

Outside of the registration fee, there are expenses (travel, hotel, food, incidentals), but beyond that there is a hard cost to a professional who is not billing their hours or working for the day(s) that they are attending your event. I wonder how many conference organizers do the math to figure out what their average attendee will earn for each day and if they are delivering more value to them than if they were in the office working? Wouldn't that be the best/easiest metric to use to establish whether or not your event is worth attending?

Surprise and delight...

As prices to attend these events go up, it seems like all of the goodies that used to go along with that price have all but disappeared. From quality nametags and interesting delegate bags to the food and beverage service and the comfort of the session rooms. People are paying money and the expectation is that they are going to be treated as royalty. Don't go cheap on them.

Know your customer...

Many organizers run the same event each year. Instead of bringing back the speakers and sessions that really worked, they try to bring new speakers and different topics in the hopes that the participants from last year come back. That may not be the best strategy. If you run an event and every participant tells their entire team that it is "the event not to be missed," but the next one is completely different and starts suffering from content fatigue, everyone loses: the participant from the first year loses credibility and the new participants don't get the same quality as the year before. Spend some time studying who really attends your conferences (newbies vs. regulars).

Let people connect prior...

At the Radian6 User Conference, Social 2011, last week in Boston, the website had live links to each speaker's Twitter profile. They made it simple and easy to connect to people prior to even attending. You can do this with Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc... and you can even open this up (with permission) to the participants as well. Adding people via Social Media prior to the meet-up is both super-easy and really does allow people to connect and make newer connections.

Now, it's your turn: what can conference organizers do to make their events more relevant to you?

Tags:

billable hours

conference

conference organizer

event

event management

event planning

facebook

keynote speaker

linkedin

marketing

networking

online social network

professional speaker

public speaking

radian6

social 2011

social media

speaker

twitter

Human Business In The Social Media Age

Can Saving The World At Work Make Sense?

When former Chief Solutions Officer and Leadership Coach at Yahoo!, Tim Sanders, was about to launch his third book, Saving The World At Work (the follow-up to the best-selling business books, Love Is The Killer App and The Likeability Factor), the business world was turned on its head. The official launch date for Saving The World At Work came the day after Lehman Brothers filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2008. The world now looked at businesses in a completely different light, and while Saving The World At Work made a strong case for better corporate social responsibility and sustainability initiatives (and was eventually named one of the top 30 business books of 2008 by Soundview), the world had forever changed.

It has been an interesting few years (as in a "may you live in interesting times" kind of way).

The financial crisis, mortgage debacle and global economic meltdown (coupled with wars, uprisings, earthquakes, tsunamis and other major planetary crises) have forced many people interested in business to think differently. One of the more interesting changes that have occurred is a movement toward a more "humanization" of business. The idea that businesses are made up of real people and in a hyper-connected world - where we're all just a tweet, Facebook status update or text message connected to one another - perhaps we should leverage the new Social Media and collaborative capabilities of the Internet, mobile and touch devices to not just use business as a means to drive more revenue, but as a means to create a much more personal, human and authentic life for ourselves and our fellow citizens.

Don't panic, we're not talking about Communism 2.0.

This concept of the humanization of business in a technology-driven world is core to Sanders' latest (and fourth) business book, Today We Are Rich (Tyndale House Publishers - March 2011). "There is a huge shift happening in our world and business today," says Sanders on the line from his Los Angeles home. "What drives all of this is a paradigm shift in our collective conscience where we've moved as a society from independence to interdependence. So, it's almost like this huge movement from 'I am brand' to 'the Dalai Lama'... I'm using extremes here," he laughs. "Traditionally business was built on the idea that as an entrepreneur you follow your passion, and as a business person, you create a profit. This was the long standing working model of capitalism, but the shift has occurred and the Internet drives it, current events drives it, and there has been a lot of teachable moments driving it. Now, what people seem to be responsive to is driving towards purpose, developing a passion for purposeful work, achieving significance and letting profits only be the thing that lets us judge the success on 'keep the lights open' and 'make the investors happy' type of metrics. Those traditional metrics have become the means, but it's not the end. I'm seeing this shift and the good news is that it's happening in the field. Dan Pink writes about this in his latest book, Drive. Purpose is the thing that gets people to stay engaged at work and drives the most innovation in organizations. When we come to work we need to be human, we need to engage in the law of reciprocity at work, trust people more to give back on our investments and - at the end of the day - think much further out than ninety days. On top of that, we need to do what our kids do: march to the beat of something bigger than all of us."

Think and grow...

While it's easy to transpose the work of Sanders as this generation's Dale Carnegie or Napoleon Hill, he does not seem to be saying, "Think And Grow Rich," but rather, "Think And Grow." Because of the Internet, we have many more inputs, thoughts, pieces of content and the ability to publish ideas everywhere for free. Many thinkers who never had the business acumen to connect with a literary agent or print publisher are now sharing their thoughts - in text, images, audio and video - with the world because of technology. Who would have believed that all of this technology didn't relegate us to a dark, cold basement where we aimlessly click away on a lone keyboard and build up a hefty Doritos stain on our t-shirts, but to a place where technology is actually bringing people, new ideas and businesses closer to one another?

It's not just Sanders or Pink leading this evolution of business.

The last business books by leading management thinker/doer, Seth Godin, titled Linchpin and Poke The Box also focuses on this topic. Your standard self-improvement business books have become a call-to-arms for people to think of their day-to-day work as their art, and to leverage the many Social Media afforded us to connect and build global ties and opportunities. Chris Brogan (one of the most celebrated Bloggers and co-author of the New York Times bestseller, Trust Agents, along with Julien Smith) has his newly minted business, appropriately called, Human Business Works, which is attempting to put "relationships and people first. Human business cares about the lifespan of the business relationship and not simply transactions. We define human business as sustainable, relationship-minded work."

We spend the majority of our waking days at work. Lehman Brothers be damned... maybe we should put some energy into saving (or at least, connecting) the world at work?

The above posting is my twice-monthly column for the Montreal Gazette and Vancouver Sun newspapers called, New Business - Six Pixels of Separation . I cross-post it here with all the links and tags for your reading pleasure, but you can check out the original versions online here:

Montreal Gazette - New buzzword in business: interdependence .

Vancouver Sun - Not yet published.

Bonus: My full conversation with Tim Sander will appear this coming Sunday (April 17th, 2011) as episode #249 of Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast . Make sure to look for it on Sunday.

Tags:

business book

business column

chris brogan

content

corporate social responsibility

dale carnegie

dan pink

doritos

drive

economic meltdown

facebook

financial crisis

human business

human business works

humanization of business

julien smith

lehman brothers

linchpin

literary agent

love is the killer app

montreal gazette

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The Art Of Immersion, Digital Storytelling And Transmedia

Episode #248 of Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast is now live and ready for you to listen to.

I've been a long time admirer of the journalism that Frank Rose puts out into the world. A long time contributing editor to Wired Magazine, Rose just released his latest book, The Art Of Immersion - How the Digital Generation Is Remaking Hollywood, Madison Avenue, and the Way We Tell Stories. Rose always sat at the intersection of technology, new media and entertainment and his latest book pushes the concepts of Digital Storytelling and transmedia even further. If you're interested in Marketing, New Media and the future of advertising, buckle up! And if this content isn't enough, be sure to check out his Deep Media Blog. Enjoy the conversation...

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 #248.

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Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #42

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, the author of Complete Web Monitoring and Managing Bandwidth: Deploying QOS in Enterprise Networks), Hugh McGuire (The Book Oven, LibriVox, iambik, PressBooks, Media Hacks) and I decided that every week or so 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:

Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1% - Vanity Fair . "The many conflicts raging around the world -- from violent ones in the Middle East, to less physical, but equally polarized, ones here in North America -- have one thing in common: they're about the distribution of wealth. Too much disparity between the rich and the poor, and you have a media that can convince the downtrodden that they want the freedom to be poor and sick. Too little disparity and you destroy the incentives that fuel a healthy economy. Where's the balance? This superbly written essay in Vanity Fair is well worth a careful read." (Alistair for Hugh).

How "The Fighter" shot 35 days worth of fight scenes in only three days - Signal Vs. Noise . "For anyone trying to get things done fast, this blog post from the guys at 37 Signals is a good reminder not to accept conventional wisdom, and to really consider what you're trying to accomplish. 'The goal was to make the fights seem real. Not to make them look good.'" (Alistair for Mitch).

Cry havoc! And let slip the maths of war - The Economist . "The statistical patterns of warfare, with insurgency attacks in Afghanistan as the dataset." (Hugh for Alistair).

On the Set of Apocalypse Now - Maureen Orth . "Maureen Orth's 1977 article about the (insane) making of Apocalypse Now." (Hugh for Mitch).

The Sleepless Elite - The Wall Street Journal . "'When do you sleep?' It's a question I get asked more often than I care to admit. The truth is, I sleep as much as I need to - mostly because I don't stress about it. I made a promise to myself when I first became an entrepreneur: I would go to sleep when I was tired and wake up without an alarm. With the exception of some very early morning flights, I've stuck to this promise. Some people are just wired to be happy about life and everything that's going on, but is there science behind how much sleep we need? Are those who sleep less more inclined to be successful? Are you one of the sleepless elite?" (Mitch for Alistair).

What Do Kids Say Is The Biggest Obstacle To Technology At School? - ReadWriteWeb . "To think that kids in the future will carry a backpack overfilled with textbooks, notebooks, pens, calculators or whatever is crazy. Let's face it, an iPad will/should do the trick. We have to accept that young kids using computers and technology is not the same as when we were kids and watched TV as a distraction from learning, etc... To kids, an non-interactive screen is broken. So, where does that leave us now? How well are we truly serving the workforce of the future, today? If we take away modern technology or raise an eyebrow when young people have a smartphone (let's put aside the potential health issues, because I have no insights on that topic), are we passing our traditional values on to them or are we able to rethink what education can (and should) be in 2011?" (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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