The importance of being visionary…and tribes…

21 01 2009

Visionary –

1 : one whose ideas or projects are impractical : dreamer

2 : one who sees visions : seer

3 : one having unusual foresight and imagination.

Recently a blog post by businesspundit detailed 25 visionaries who created empires from virtually nothing. There’s some interesting people in there — we now know them as super mega stars — captains and kings of their respective industries, sports, occupations. Artists, scientists, financiers and engineers. Titans all. But they would probably all concur that it hasn’t all been an easy ride. We just need to look at the rollercoaster career and rumors surrounding Steve Jobs to know that. So why do they do it?

The joy of creating something? The beauty of seeing it work and people using it? The reward of improving the ways we live?   The often elusive promise of riches?  We could probably place people we know in these start-up tribes in every one of these motivations, but as start-up folks know, to be successful there needs to be something else. Recently we have been privileged to be working with several start-up enterprises in multiple ways. Start-ups and social media, like sustainability and social media, have something fundamental in common. Their success depends on engaging people actively in conversations about their contribution. Social media provides start-ups with a communicative velocity and intensity they would have to spend a small fortune on (and raise) using traditional forms of communication. More than that, social media has the potential to provide start-ups with an acid test that can determine what exact combination of seer and dreamer they may be as well as the consequences of this mix for their longevity.

For the last several years, our world has been a start-up world. It’s an interesting place. The people. The ideas. The visions. Why do we like start-ups when they fail so often? Why do we like start-ups when they are so poor? Why do we like start-ups when they require us to work more hours than humanly possible? Because they are visionary. People who are serial start-up folks, whether working for them or supporting them, are a special breed — part dreamer, part seer. Movers. Shakers. The Believers. A tribe. Working in and with a start-up reminds you of the fluidity of practice, the uncertainty and dynamic nature of the environment in which we all operate and force of the people involved. We forget these aspects of humanity that are embedded in all work we do when we tie ourselves to the security and stability (however illusory) of the corporate form.

Start-ups and social media remind us of the protean, organic, risky human potential  of all creative effort.  They’re hard to measure. Even harder to predict.  We know their success only in hindsight and find it hard to pinpoint at exactly what point our efforts took on a life force of their own.  They are constantly calibrating, ever changing forms seeking their groove.  Davids in a world of Goliaths.

So if a start-up or social media strategy is in your plan for 2009, think about the ride, not the destination. Think about the people, the tribe you travel with. Think about the idea that holds you together, swarming as individuals in dynamic collective ease. Release yourself from preconceived notions of success or effectiveness. Don’t be afraid to change it up and move with your environment. Most importantly, remember that both are grounded in active engagements and conversations with others.  Make 2009 your year to be a dreamer, seer, a visionary.

This one’s for all those visionaries around Extanz — you are the world to us :) and with special thanks to rogiro and Admean for their images!

Kirsti



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What’s the old Napster got to do with the new PR?

6 01 2009

As 2009 dawns here at Extanz we have been reflecting on  some of the simultaneously insightful and frustrating conversations we have had with folks recently around the notion of PR 2.0 and what counts as “success” in such a field. Now, we know we say we do PR 2.0 and the term sits heavily with us. We use the term because it is something that people can “hold onto” and has some meaning, but like all language, it traps us in a game (as Nietzsche would argue) and it is this game that has become increasingly frustrating to us. You could argue that our view on PR is colored by our politics. You could argue it is colored by our international backgrounds. Even our language differences. But it really comes down to some very simple terms — “public” and “relations”. These terms beg the questions, we would argue, of 1)  “who is your public?” and 2) what kind of “relations” do you want to have with them? We’ve implicitly discussed these philosophical underpinnings of Extanz’ work before in our posts on Trust 2.0 and The Medium is the Message, but we thought we try and spell it out here. See what you think.

First of all, hands up all those who remember Napster? How about KaZaa? Come on now, you don’t have to be nervous…. how many of you participated in P2P activities way before it was gentrified and still considered a somewhat edgy act akin to, dare we say it, hacking? How many of us believed ‘information just wants to be free’? How many of us still do?

Back in the radical early days of Napster, I was lucky enough to be around some super smart media  and cultural studies people and we wrote a paper on just what it was about Napster that made authorities’ blood boil and music lovers rejoice. Napster and its P2P friends, peers and offspring reminded us that systems of enclosure such as copyright, patents, and property deeds are artificial creations, the tools of the powerful to become more powerful; weapons of exclusivity, designed to keep their users in “in their place” in an artificial order of things; instruments of selfish wealth creation for some individuals. Now, one of the reasons Napster and KaZaa and the like were so popular was because we all knew we were being sold 2 good tracks on a CD for the price of 10 and there was nothing we thought we could do about it until we realized that if we just set those tracks we liked free, or if our friends had them and we traded them for others, then everyone could win. And win we did. Heck, even the bands cut out the middle people which made them, well you know, discontent. And then vengeful.

Around the same time, I was torturing myself over my ‘original contribution’ to academic knowledge as I toiled through my PhD program (with those smart types I was mentioning earlier). Frozen like a deer in the headlights, I was whining to one of my mentors one day about my desperation of not finding my unique contribution when she reminded me that, “there is no such thing as an original idea. There are only original combinations and articulations.” That’s academic speak for what we know now as, ‘the mashup rules; and the more creative the mash, the better it is’.

What’s the old Napster got to do with the new PR? Everything. Napster then and now serves us a reminder of the true power of the Web (it is called a web for a reason, folks). It reminded us of its original conception, its unique brilliance– its power to connect and create mutually beneficial relationships with others. At the same time that Napster ruled as a radical force and disruptive technology, we both had the honor of working for a data storage company. While sadly unaware of what would come to pass in its industry, the company had a slogan at the time –  “information made powerful”.  Napster was information made powerful. Facebook is information made powerful. Web 2.0 is information made powerful. Napster ushered in the age of the bricoleur; the artist who weaves different forms, different objects and different ideas together to create something new and useful to share with others. PR 2.0 is about the bricoleur; the individual who creates relationships between people, objects and ideas.

The new PR is not the PR of our parents’ generation. It is the PR of the Napster Generation. The Millenials. Gen Y. Gen disrupting the workforce. Gen ADHD. In the eyes of Extanz, PR 2.0, the new PR, is conversations made powerful. People made powerful. Participation made powerful. Relationships made powerful. As the Zen Buddhist Teacher Shunryu Suzuki, in Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind states, “when you forget all your dualistic ideas, everything becomes your teacher, and everything can be the object of worship.” (p.44). PR 2.0 Extanz-style.

With thanks to Today is a good day  ,  jm3 , and of course Napster, for their inspiration!

Welcome to the brave new world — ready to share?

Kirsti


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I read your twit, therefore I [and you] exist.

8 10 2008

Earlier this year, we wrote about whether to twit or not to twit and what that decision meant. As Twitter and the whole concept of nano :) blogging has started to take off, more questions have been raised about the particular ’social media order’ to which all these kinds of activities, like blogging, vlogging,  twitting etc belong.

TweetDeck helps you manage your tweet stream

TweetDeck helps you manage your twitter streams

An acquaintance passed comment to us recently that ‘blogging is the mothership’. This is indeed, an interesting way of putting it. In our own practice, often we use twits to connect others to a larger blog post (cos let’s face it, 140 characters does not provide much of a summary!). In this respect, we can think that Twitter is to blogging what a headline is to a newspaper article or what a title is to an essay. The twit, as it were, acts as an attention getter, an opening statement, an entree to another conversation.

But twitting is also an indicator of passionate users, an indicator of how connected and committed they are to different topics, communities, groups and others. Yann was at a marketing dinner lately and people were making comments about twitter like “I signed up for twitter and nothing happened. Then in the space of 3-4 hours, multiple people were following me arrgghhhhh!!” But this is the beauty of Twitter. In the real world, we exchange business cards to start a business relationship. Twitter does the same by following people. Someone follows you, you follow them back. It’s built on reciprocity. There’s nothing creepy about it. Ok, well maybe something a little creepy… Or should we say creeping…..it’s about rankings, people…

For example, Yann (not that he can vote) recently started following Barack Obama (just for kicks) and he followed right back! Barack Obama has 92,000 people following him and he follows 96,000 people. You just can’t do that with a blog where it is less fluid. Now, here is the gravy, on the first page of google organic when you search for Barack Obama, the 6th ranked URL link is Twitter, above CNN and everything else. The first and second are his own sites, the 3rd is Wikipedia, the 4th is ggoogle news, 5th is his .gov official senator site and then Reuters and then Twitter.  Get it?! Twits matter in the eyes of Google! The social media sphere is increasingly more important than traditional media. Note to self. Our friend Steve Outing recently had a quick post on the same subject.  So perhaps those analogies between twits, blogs, headlines and newspapers are not doing us justice after all…..

Finally, information is coming of age – Twitter, micro-blogging, blogging, and social media is giving

total power to the reader. I read your twit, therefore I [& you] exist. Brand managers, this should matter to you. If not, your competition will reach out to your customer and their digital footprint will be larger and faster than yours. You have a chance to own the distribution of the message, if you take it.

Next up….coming to a blog (and several twits too) near you – digital footprints (or is that feetprint) and the social graph (the mighty XFN)……

Thanks Vu Bui for the cool pic!

Kirsti


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Beware the list…

7 10 2008

“Don’t judge a book by its cover” the saying goes…..

In the last few weeks, we have seen list after list of ‘top 50 social media sites’, ‘top 50 blogs’, ‘top 50 communities’, ‘top 50 new cool toys you need to play with and waste your time on’…… the list goes on and on….we read through them…. some we recognize, some we have no idea about and some we click on just to see what all the fuss is about. And here is what all the fuss is about most of the time…. NOTHING!!!!!!!!!

That’s it. A big fat zero. Nada. Rien. Which makes the more critically literate amongst us in the social media sphere ask the following questions…..

1. Who is the source?

2. Why are they telling us about these sites and not others?

3. How did they choose the ones on the list – what were their criteria?

4. Should we be on the list?

5. How the heck do we get on the list? [You know, just to be disruptive and all that.]

I wish there were comment boxes where we could ask these questions of the list creators and propagators, but alas.  There is not. Because then we would ask them some seriously discerning questions in a seriously discerning tone. Because that’s the kind of people we are. We’re not looking for some ‘quick list’ here people, we want some in depth analysis. But we suspect that that is not the goal of such list makers. Google loves easy stuff and so do some of the “not-so-critical, just give me the answer, easy peasy lemon squeezy, I am out to make a fast buck” charlatans out there.

So, next time a list invades your inbox, RSS feed, Twitter account, stop. Look at the source. Track it back if necessary. See if there is a comment box. If there is, ask them how they got that list. See if they respond. Then make a mental note about their credibility. Because transparency counts. Transparency builds trust. Then tell us and we’ll make our own list of incredibly reliable, worthwhile, kick ass sites you can work with (maniacal laugh here).

With well deserved kudos to Mr Mark , Jon Hicks and Saxsolrac for their images!

Kirsti


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The medium is the message, (stupid).

9 09 2008


Ah, yes, who remembers Marshall McLuhan and his famous statement in Understanding Media (1964)?

In claiming that “the medium is the message” McLuhan expresses the sentiment that there is a symbiotic relationship by which the medium influences how the message is perceived, creating subtle change over time…. a medium affects the society in which it plays a role not only by the content delivered over the medium, but by the characteristics of the medium itself.” (wikipedia.com)

We have been blessed to have multiple inspiring and challenging conversations with people over the last few weeks/months. As you may have guessed from reading some of our blog posts, we are a little fed up with how the web has been and continues to be used. We are also find the lack of vision and willingness to interact openly on the part of those who communicate for organizations, more than perplexing. But perhaps what Extanz finds most concerning is how underestimated, and you could say, diminished the power of social media tends to  become as it is relegated to interpretations of ‘all about me blogging’, ‘a group of drunken college students and their photos’ and ‘meaningless noise in 140 characters’. You know who I am talking about here….:)

Let’s face it, we remember the days of Napster, Kazaa and all the aggravation of the record companies. We remember how P2P was considered radical, dangerous and controversial. We remember the origins of the Internet, when it was known as the Arpanet and designed for information sharing, collaboration, and institutional and community coordination. These ways of organizing and communicating are built into the very fabric of the web, its DNA if you will. That’s why web 2.0 has come on so fast, because those technologies are moving the web away from its reliance on experts, on one way transmission of information and to some degree, away from producer control. What Napster and its comrades initiated was the rise of the prosumer = part producer, part consumer. It highlighted the connections between the relationships we build and the technologies that can serve, support and sustain them. It forced us into conversation with each other and it also raised the critical questions of authority and control. Information wants to be free, or so the battle cry suggested.

But here’s the issue. Where does information live? It lives within you, me and we. And herein lies the rub. Recently some bloggers have been talking about risk and trust and how they collide in the implementation of social media. Social media is seen as risky, Amber Naslund contends because of its ability to influence the multitudes = people may critique what you do, say something bad about you, you lose control over the message etc etc. Naslund does an equally good job of providing defenses to these contentions which she says, are largely based on the open, organic, ubiquitous nature of this particular medium. On the other side, as we have stated before, social media depends on trust and the cultivation of same. As Rex Lee puts it “A lack of trust will cause people to withhold information, to waste effort validating each message instead of integrating, to be less receptive to compromise, and to just be overall less committed, often choosing the least amount of commitment possible. Ultimately this means organizations are, less agile, less innovative, of average performance, and peppered with incomplete analysis.”

The fact that social media is open, is organic and is ubiquitous can provide some level of trust as there is a certain level of transparency in a relationship based medium.The power of social media, that collection of technologies born out of and through web 2.0, lies in their persistent commitment to participation, connection and interaction. All technologies, web 1.0., 2.0, 3.0 etc carry the values of their creators. That we see these technologies and forms of media ascend now says much about the people producing-consuming them. So can we reframe the title to ask – what is the message we are sending about who we are when we choose social media as our medium of communicating….OR perhaps more importantly, what message are we sending when we DO NOT?

Kirsti


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Social Media and Extanz – Together we rise

3 09 2008

The whole is greater than the sum of all its parts

As someone intrigued by the ways in which individuals, communities, organizations and societies coordinate and communicate themselves, raising Extanz and the adoption of social media has provided much food for thought and opportunities for reflection. As someone deeply committed to the practice of good work and also intimately involved with the creation and continued growth of Extanz, I have participated in many an interesting conversation about these issues. As I tell my students in my Good Work class, it really starts with an idea of spirit, or the vision, values and rationality of any group or organization. These collective values are always derived from the people having those conversations and so our ongoing evolution of Extanz reflects the values of its principals. Here is a list of some of the things to which we are committed, as individuals as well as Extanz….

1. good work – that is, work that is excellent and ethical – to engage in work that is meaningful for us, our partners and our communities
2. inclusivity/community - this value comes from our cultured backgrounds – to engage in work that brings people together, in support of a larger purpose and collective
3. sustainability – at both an individual and collective level – to engage in work that encourages the continued sustenance of us as individuals, partners and communities
4. extra-ordinary – this value comes from our cultured experiences – to engage in work that is beyond the norm, edgy, visionary, creative, that stands out (the meaning of Extanz)

Wow, kinda lofty, right? Yes and no. I recently read a blog about parallels between the push for social media and sustainability by Max Gladwell. According to Gladwell, these two movements have some interesting things in common — both are motivated by a new politics, both are driven by a democratization of information and energy, both are determined to lose the adjectives (so that we no longer think of social media but all media as social, nor green energy because all energy will be green), both pose integration challenges for corporate culture, both localize culture as we grow our own ‘content’ and become activated as participants, both are grassroots movements but with top-down results, and the virtues of both are constrained by how we use them.

When I think about the folks who engage with Extanz and social media, I end up with a ‘composite prosumer’ (c.f. Revolutionary Wealth, The Digital Economy, The Cluetrain Manifesto etc). In our experiences, this producer-consumer is also a philosopher-pragmatist; activist-artist; local-global; individual-communal. As Gladwell points out, the often missed but ultimately important part of the phenomenon we call ’social media’ is the social part. It’s about meaningful and interactive content, meaningful conversations, and meaningful as well as interactive community. As we have discussed in the blogs, it is not about ‘you’ and ‘your organization’. It’s about the ‘us(er)’.  So if you’re looking to be part of some thrilling conversations, if you’ve ever wondered just what your ‘audience’ is thinking, it is time to get out there and have a ‘naked conversation’ a la Robert Scoble and Shel Israel.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re for-profit or non-profit (like we can distinguish this way, right?), social media can and will change the/your world. I’ve seen it happen here at Extanz and with our partners.

Kirsti


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When will we get serious about virtual/web based/online conferencing?

8 07 2008

So for a couple of hours today I have been looking at conferences on Health 2.0 or Medicine 2.0 to attend this year as I want to go and see what’s out there, what kind of work people are doing, have great conversations etc…Aside from the cost of travel, the registration prices for these conferences are staggering to me, a recovering academic. Maybe in the corporate world, people feel $1500 for conference registration is a good deal for a bit of knowledge and conversation but for where I have spent the last 10 years, it is nothing short of excessive. Of course, as one of the academic realm, I am eligible for a “discount” of a “not to sniffed at” sum of $500, taking my registration fee to $950, but taking into account time away from work and the ever increasing air fare game we are in, I am looking for other ways to have that great conversation….

Earlier this year, I co-hosted an international virtual conference on “global visions of organizing and communicative practices” on a shoestring. We had courageous participants from Nigeria, Nepal, India, New Zealand, Japan, Brazil, Australia and China. Part of our drive to hold our 3 day conference on the web was to provide a venue that all could “access” without the economic, immigration, political or institutional burdens we usually have to bear. We looked everywhere for software which could support us. There were some such as Icohere and Elluminate which manage your conference for you from start to finish, but we were paying for it out of our own pockets. Some people use blogs like this, which also work well. There are also those companies such as Eventvue and Crowdvine which will support an online community for your conference (but not the conference). In the end, we went with Ning and built a community there where people could have pages, post their presentations, have group discussions, forums, post videos, blog etc. Schweeeeeeet!

It was simple, it was interactive and it was one of the most intense learning experiences of my life. For a communication scholar like me, it doesn’t get much better than that. This experience has made me think twice about going to a carbon conference for $3000 where there are 5000 other people present, the presentations are 10 minutes long, there is no time to network and you are perpetually running to your next presentation. There is no doubt we will do things differently for our next conference, mainly because we constantly seek that conversation, but in terms of financial, familial, institutional, political and environmental pain, it just goes to show that if 3 academics in 2 different countries can build a conference online without institutional or technical support, there’s got to be a start up out there who can bring this game to the next level……:) Kudos to Mike Wesch for the following commentary on the information revolution…

Kirsti


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To Twit or Not to Twit….

3 07 2008

It’s easy to be inundated by social media….as one radio commercial suggests about HD radios, sometimes you feel like you’re in a zombie movie, you know the one where you still can’t out run them even though they have no legs. If you’re old enough, you’ve probably flashed back to Michael Jackson’s Thriller video…yeah, you get the picture. ….everywhere you go, on any given day, someone else has come up with a new social media tool.

One recent entrant to my daily life is Twitter. I first noticed it on a blog about a year ago where someone was using twitter during a conference in Europe, and basically as they toured the city where the conference was held, would report their whereabouts on Twitter. How absurd, I thought! Why would you want everyone to know where you are and what you are doing every single moment of the day? Still, I was curious and Twitter really makes very good use of the ‘curious george’ moments we all experience = oh, I wonder what so and so is doing right now? Why call them and waste a good 10 minutes on the old phone and email? Apart from the fact these devices could sometimes be considered ‘low tech’ when up against their web 2.0 younger and let’s face it, more hip siblings, who has that kind of time these days??? :)

So what to do? You get on twitter and you go hunting for said friend, you add them to your list of ‘twits’ (pardon the irony) and you too can enter the world of the micro blog and short stumpy sentences giving everyone who wants to know the lowdown on you at that very minute. Yep, Twitter answers that well known question ‘what are you doing?’ or perhaps most importantly, ‘what is (fill in the blank) doing?

Now those of us who are late adopters might fear an invasion of privacy. Not to worry, you can organize Twitter to make sure you are not interrupted. Maybe you’re afraid of folks stalking you on Twitter. Twitter has that covered too, you can chase them right back! (nice marketing tool by the way)….As the folks at Twitter.com put it ‘real life happens in between blog posts’. It sure does. So check it out, catch up on the VIPs in your life and their lives and form your own opinion…http://twitter.com/

Kirsti


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