This is war between two ideologies that don't have the time nor desire to sing together Kumbaya while holding hands and trying to come up with a way to help the entertainment industry legislate away reality -- even when it means turning their fans into felons.

I think people who say, “I don’t like to say ‘I told you so, but…’” are precisely the kind of people who like to say, “I told you so.” So I’ll try this another way: I don’t like being that guy who can’t wait to say, “I told you so,” but sometimes, no matter how hard I try, I just can’t help myself.

Last week, after a meeting with my congressman to discuss the legislation I oppose (and he co-sponsors) that is known as SOPA, I wrote a long post in which I included my prediction (or, more precisely, my hunch) for what would happen to the legislation.

Here’s an excerpt from that post that included my hunch:

I came away from the meeting thinking (however, this is a very personal opinion that was not stated or implied by anyone) that as SOPA’s critics turn up the heat (and the general population has seen nothing yet as to what type of heat its opponents can apply to demonstrate what some of the obvious unintended consequences could be if SOPA became law), members of Congress will look for ways to make SOPA go away, while appearing to make it look like they are doing something. Already, the bill’s sponsors have watered it down considerably from its original form. Water it down enough and it may as well be one of those Congressional proclamations declaring “National Anti-Piracy Week.”

Today, (I first saw it reported on the website arstechnica), the White House did one of those “smoke signals” things regarding SOPA (and its Senate twin sister, PIPA) when “three senior White House officials wrote that the administration ‘will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet.’”

And yesterday, also as reported by arstechnica, after the users of Reddit displayed how they could raise $15,000 in 48-hours for an anti-SOPA candidate for congress, there is a growing number of Senators and Representatives who are asking for their leadership (from both parties) to give them cover by not bringing up the legislation for any types of votes that will put them on record as being for, or against, SOPA.

Seeing White House policy people and members of congress head for cover is a clear indication that we’ll be one day celebrating National Anti-Piracy Week instead of turning over policing the internet to Time-Warner.

However, let me be emphatic:  I’m not declaring victory, nor should anyone else on the anti-SOPA side. 

One of the points that I made during my meeting with my congressman — a point that he dismissed — was that issues like SOPA end up having only two narratives — and the entertainment industry had control of the early narrative, but ultimately would lose. My congressman disagreed, saying there are many narratives on an issue as complex as this. As it was a group meeting and I was trying to be polite, I didn’t say, “This is not a complex issue, this is a war over whether or not the entertainment industry should control the internet — and by the time it’s over, nothing more nuanced than that will matter.”

The entertainment industry’s (and the coalition it has been able to enlist) narrative is this: “Piracy, piracy, piracy.” After first being caught flat-footed and far behind, the internet industry (and the coalition it has been able to enlist — for example, everyone who uses the internet who doesn’t work in the entertainment industry*) is this: “Censorship, censorship, censorship.”

Despite the desire of my congressman to turn the SOPA debate into a graduate seminar on intellectual property, this is war between two ideologies that don’t have the time nor desire to sing together Kumbaya while holding hands and trying to come up with a way to help the entertainment industry legislate away reality — even when it means turning their fans into felons.

Nor is there time for those of us who have spent the past decade actually experiencing what reality-changing benefits come from an internet that’s truly open (even more open than many of the tech companies against SOPA want it to be), to delve into the nuanced and intellectual arguments that would take apart the entertainment industry’s lies (although, this post on Freakonomics.com is a good place to start).

So “no-censorship” is the narrative of the anti-SOPA side (my side).

Of course the entertainment industry knows this isn’t just about piracy. Of course the tech industry knows this isn’t just about censorship.

But those are the narratives. And in the end, anti-censorship will win.

Frankly, I wish the anti-SOPA narrative was something more along the lines of an anti-corporate-controlled internet, but I doubt Google and Facebook would go there.

And I wish that songwriters in Nashville and elsewhere would recognize they are being dupes of the record companies and music publishers and performance-rights groups by agreeing to be their poster-children on this issue.

But none of that will happen, so Happy Anti-Piracy Week.

*Slightly exaggerated even though I know pro-censorship** advocates won’t get it.
**Those who call 14-year-old fans of Taylor Swift “pirates”

Non-pirated Bumper music available at Amazon MP3: Kumbaya, performed by Joan Baez

Related:

• What I told my congressman, a sponsor of SOPA (RexBlog.com)
• What my congressman, a SOPA sponsor, told me (RexBlog.com)

This is a shout-out for an event that takes place in Nashville every April, the St. Jude Country Music Marathon and 1/2 Marathon. This year, the event is on Saturday, April 28, and there will be 30,000+ participants in the two races.

I’m bringing this up today because it’s about 16 weeks until April 28. That’s time enough for you to start training for the half marathon, even if you’re not a runner (or, in my case, the world’s slowest jogger). I’m not saying it’s time enough for you to become an elite runner. I’m merely saying, there’s time for you to train enough to complete a 13.1 mile half-marathon between now and April 28.

I’m also bringing it up because I know there are some half marathoners from around the country who have heard about the Country Music Marathon — and I wanted to let you know that what you’ve heard is true: It’s a great event. (I’m addressing this to half-marathoners, as I figure marathoners have already planned out their year and, to be honest, I’m not sure they know what town they are in after about mile 21. )

As this is a part of the Rock ‘n Roll Marathon Series, there are about 40 bands along the route of the race. And the route of the half marathon is laid out in a way that provides a participant with a perfect site-seeing run (or, jog). It passes by or through nearly every major landmark people from around the country associate with Nashville: Music Row, the Country Music Hall of Fame, the Ryman Auditorium and Vanderbilt University.

The only iffy thing about the Country Music Marathon is the weather. That part of April in Nashville can be ideal (it was three four years ago, the last time I “ran” in it) or it can be a disaster: last year in 2010, there were tornado-strength winds and torrential rain and the previous year (2009), the temperature was well into the 80s by the time many of the slower runners were into the heart of the route. (Last year, the weather was great [see comments].)

This year, I plan to be in good enough shape to handle any condition — but I have lots of miles to go before getting there. But there’s plenty of time for me to do that — and for you to, also. (Okay, I started around Thanksgiving, just to be sure.)

I won’t be blogging about my preparation very often, but about once a month, I’ll report how it’s going. And while I’m a user of a “social training” service (runkeeper.com), I don’t use the social part for sharing my training publicly — except with my daughter, who will be running the marathon and is the captain of the Hammock family team.

Yesterday, I wrote about a meeting I attended with my congressman and friend, Jim Cooper.

I shared in that post my opinion of the legislation known popularly (and unpopularly) as SOPA. In short, I oppose the legislation and view it as nothing more than an attempt by the entertainment industry to out-regulate what they can’t out-innovate. I also believe that by fighting battles on the field of copyright and intellectual property law and by using the term “piracy” to label activities that may not only  be legal, but be beneficial to the copyright holder, we are in a place where a lot of bandwidth is being directed at trying to convince the other side(s) (no matter what side you’re on) rather than finding ways to evolve our understanding of what the internet is and what its potential can be.

Yesterday, I wrote that Jim Cooper is a very smart and intellectually curious individual. I appreciate, also, that he believes big problems can be broken down into parts so that they can be better understood. I agree with that approach, as well.

He suggested that those of us around the table probably agree on 95% of what’s in the legislation. I have no reason to believe his statistic is correct or in-correct, but I agree there’s probably a lot of fluff included in the legislation, most of which is designed to bury the contentious parts. (I also believe what I just said was a snide way to say, I agree with him.)

I also agree with the most important take-away and challenge Jim Cooper provided the group. In essence (I wasn’t taking notes), he said, “This is Nashville. We have the music industry here. We have a lot of talented technology people here. We should try to work together to address the issues we don’t agree on here. If there’s a way to solve the issues by working together, then Nashville should be where that happens.”

While I’m not quite sure we have the tech chops in Nashville equivalent to the music chops here, I do know that inside and outside those Nashville music companies that are endorsing SOPA are lots of extremely smart tech people who understand what their executives don’t. I know there are lots of creative, entrepreneurial and tech-savvy students and recent graduates from schools like Belmont’s music business program and Vanderbilt’s engineering and business schools who completely comprehend all the facets and nuances of the issues, musically and technically and business(ly?). And I know that if there are good alternatives to crappy technology (say, the MP3), then people who care about music (say, customers and fans) are willing to pay for it if they understand the value.

So, what Jim Cooper said perhaps should be listened to by those in Nashville who want to embrace the reality of the internet today and look for ways to innovate rather than legislate wherever possible.

Perhaps someone should write a song about this.

(Illustration: Polar bears having a snowball fight. It’s a Nashville thing.)

Related articles:

• What I told my congressman, a sponsor of SOPA (RexBlog.com)

[See follow-up post: "What my congressman, a sponsor of SOPA, told me"]

This morning I attended a meeting with my congressman and longtime friend, Jim Cooper. The small gathering was one of two he held today to hear from people who have let him know they support or oppose legislation that’s known popularly by its acronym, SOPA. As with any legislation, the name of HR 3261 was christened by its original sponsors who titled it officially, “The Stop Online Piracy Act to promote prosperity, creativity, entrepreneurship, and innovation by combating the theft of U.S. property, and for other purposes.”

As I think all of us apple-pie eating Americans can agree on the prosperity through property part, it’s the and for other purposes that is now generating enough controversy to cause members of congress to reach out to people they may think can provide various points of view on the legislation.

There were about eight or so of us in the meeting this morning (there was another meeting at 1:00 p.m.). As this is Nashville, the music industry was represented. There was a successful song-writer representing the songwriters association and a senior executive from a music company who still claims the company is a small startup, despite its current status as a financial juggernaut thanks to its embrace of a business model that would not have been possible before the advent of the internet — an irony apparently missed by the company.

As (and this may surprise you) there are other industries in Nashville that have nothing to do with music, other groups and points of view were represented. The Nashville Technology Council’s new CEO was there and a couple of developers who were well-versed on the evils of SOPA. I was there because I happened to mention SOPA in passing to Jim during a Thanksgiving Day gathering we both attended. (Note to self: Don’t do that again.) At the time, I knew little (nothing) about SOPA, except for my long-held theory that I should be against anything that is jointly supported by a consortium of unions, big corporations and the entertainment industry. (Like I said, it’s a theory.)

It didn’t surprise me that Jim is a sponsor of SOPA. If I were a congressman representing Nashville, it would be hard for me not to support legislation backed by every company that has a big building along the two streets in Nashville that comprise our most famous landmark avenue: Music Row.

What’s more, when the objectives of the legislation are listed, it would be hard for anyone who gets goose-bumps whenever they see the American flag waving in the breeze to be against it. However, as David Carr explains in a column earlier this week in the New York Times, “The bill has exposed a growing fracture between technology and entertainment companies. Digitally oriented companies see SOPA as dangerous and potentially destructive to the open Web and a step toward the kind of intrusive Internet regulation that has made China a global villain to citizens of the Web.”

(For a great bibliography of writings for, and against, SOPA, the reference section of the SOPA Wikipedia article will provide you with several hours of reading enjoyment covering all sides of the issue.)

My friend, Jim Cooper, is very, very smart (as in, Rhodes Scholar smart) and, frankly, if you didn’t know better, you’d think he is a university professor (which he is) and not a politician. I like him a lot and have supported him since he first ran for Congress when we were both in our 20s. Our children grew up together. He is intellectually curious and has a commitment to congressional reform that even Larry Lessig, as reported by Cory Doctorow, recognizes as genuine and forward-thinking. (I hope that’s enough of a caveat before the word “but.”)

But currently, he’s wrong on SOPA. While he explained today that sponsorship of the legislation is not necessarily a commitment to vote for it, the  shading of language in that explanation is the type of nuance that encourages cynicism among citizens who may not be schooled on how one can “sponsor” something but not support it.

Jim represents a congressional district with more songwriters per-capita than any place on earth. (I made up that stat, but feel free to use it and say you read it on the internet.) The backers of SOPA in Nashville have brilliantly positioned songwriters as the poster children in their fight for SOPA. (If Pew Research had a survey about songwriters, no doubt they would rank right below soldiers and firemen as the people we most want to give a hug of thanks to.)

This morning’s SOPA meeting was, at least to me, an encouraging airing of the issues that alarm those who are against SOPA (like me) and those who support it. There was passion in the room, but no rancor.

I came away from the meeting thinking (however, this is a very personal opinion that was not stated or implied by anyone) that as SOPA’s critics turn up the heat (and the general population has seen nothing yet as to what type of heat its opponents can apply to demonstrate what some of the obvious unintended consequences could be if SOPA became law), members of Congress will look for ways to make SOPA go away, while appearing to make it look like they are doing something. Already, the bill’s sponsors have watered it down considerably from its original form. Water it down enough and it may as well be one of those Congressional proclamations declaring “National Anti-Piracy Week.”

Source: Distrust, Discontent, Anger and Partisan Rancor (http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1569/trust-in-government-distrust-discontent-anger-partisan-ranco

The biggest challenge that will face SOPA when awareness of it spreads from the geek community to a broader audience of internet users is this: SOPA is currently a bill with so many hypotheticals and economic theories swirling around it, no one can honestly say what the outcome will be if it is enacted. And (going back to my earlier-stated theory), those theories are provided by big business, unions and the entertainment industry.* Now, if you take a look at the chart accompanying this paragraph (if you’re reading this on my blog), you can see the relative levels of trust Americans place in different institutions, according to a Pew Research survey about 18 months ago. In other words, this legislation comes from a consortium of the institutions who Americans inherently distrust the most (except bankers).

That said, the entertainment industry is doing a great job of humanizing SOPA by focusing on protecting songwriters (have I mentioned how much I love songwriters?) who have been the biggest losers in the shift away from physical music to digital (especially in Nashville). I’ll admit, however, when I hear songwriters complain of their plight, it sounds just like former reporters from newspapers who have had their world change also (but for some reason, we don’t love them as much as we do songwriters).

SOPA is, in my opinion, nothing more than an attempt to wrap the word piracy around the preservation of a business model that has left the building. The entertainment industry should seek ways to work with their fans to help them understand the ramifications of piracy  (and to find ways to give a bigger share of their revenues to songwriters). However, the entertainment industry seems more interested in turning their fans into convicts and the internet into something that can help bring back their good old days.

Lots of musicians in Nashville have figured the internet out. They are making it work for them.

They have figured out that obscurity is worse than piracy.

They don’t view people who love their music as the enemy.

*Later: This post from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, one of the groups leading the fight against SOPA, explores some of the specious stats regarding the negative impact on jobs caused by piracy. For example, the film industry claims piracy has caused the loss in jobs that is greater than the entire number of jobs in the industry before piracy. While I’m always hesitant to believe anyone’s self-serving statistics, my point in this post is to underscore the fact that the entertainment industry’s statistics are as believable as Disney Studios fairy tales.

Related articles:

• Previous RexBlog posts about Jim Cooper
• Web Titans Contemplate “Nuclear Option” Against SOPA (reason.com)
• Find Out Where Your Legislators Stand On SOPA, PIPA (readwriteweb.com)

Admit it. You blew the entire weekend before Christmas not getting out there and expressing your consumer spirit — the spirit necessary to send this old Scrooge of an economy packing. Fear not, for I bring you tidings of great joy — especially if you think economic joy begins at home. And by home, I’m referring to Tennessee, my home for the past three decades.

Thanks to some geographically-close and friendly elves of mine on Facebook, I’ve put together the following list of gift-ideas for the procrastinated shopper. Each item, in some way, has a connection to Tennessee. It turned out that most of them ended up being from Nashville and Middle Tennessee — that may reflect a statistical bias of my Facebook friend list. I looked for items you can purchase pretty much anywhere in the U.S., generating sales tax revenue for your local economy. Of course, if you purchase them on Amazon.com, I’ll get a commission on my affiliate account (I’m up to $5.75 for the year) and Amazon may ship them to you FedEx (Memphis), making the purchase a Tennessee economic twofer. As a bonus, I’ve tried to find items (or the stores that sell them) that represent a unique (uh, I need one of those German words, something like gestalt or zeitgeist) essence Nashville and Middle Tennessee artists and entrepreneurs seem to have perfected: the ability to create brands and products that evoke an American folk or heartland tradition, while being packaged and marketed with astute, savvy and, sometimes, market-distrupting innovation.

So if you’ve been naughty in putting off your shopping to the last few days before Christmas, go ahead and be nice to my home-state’s economy by choosing something from the following list:

Racks of Rendezvous ribs to die for (and from)

12. Pork (Various locations): There are lots of websites that offer food from Tennessee, much of which seems intended to clog your arteries with fat, delightfully cured and created in all sorts of enticingly blissful ways. Here are two pork ideas that I personally endorse and that would happily clog my arteries with any day: Loveless Cafe Gift Baskets (Nashville) or a rib dinner shipped via FedEx from The Rendezvous (Memphis twofer). While several people suggested hickory cured country bacon from Benton’s Country Hams (Madisonville), their website suggests a backlog of up to four weeks, so they didn’t make the list. Some non-pork Tennessee-related food basket ideas can be found at the website, PickTNProducts.org. Last, last minute and desperate Tennessee-related food gift idea: Buy anything from one of the 60+ Cracker Barrels in 42 states or online at CrackerBarrel.com (Lebanon – the Tennessee city, not the country). Still desperate for a Tennessee-connection to food but don’t care if it’s primarily varieties of corn fructose blended and packaged in various ways and sizes? There are 9,600+ locations of Dollar General (Goodletsville) in 35 states you can stop by for some holiday Cheetos.

A guitar-shaped cast-iron skillet from Lodge. Just think of the possibilities.

Team caps and more logo'd items than you can think of can be found at Lids, the Genesco-owned chain.

9. Griffin Beacon Universal Remote (Amazon link) : What could be more traditional that watching TV? What could be more innovative than replacing every remote control with one device and iPhone/iPad/Android app (Dijit) that actually fulfills the perpetual promise of combining every remote control you have into one gizmo. And, as you’ll see several more times on this list, it’s from Griffin Technology (Nashville). Best thing: You can purchase it just about anywhere cool electronic gizmos are sold. (The link above is to Amazon and when I linked it there, it was priced aggressively and it is in stock.) I saw one at Target last week, where I purchased it to ensure that my stocking has something other than lumps of coal in it. (Bonus idea, just because it’s a geek toy and everything else on this list isn’t, and also because you can buy it at Target on the way home today: The Griffin Helo TC, an indoor remote control helecopter you control with an iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch.)

8. A Gibson instrument, hand-made in Tennessee, with legal wood the EPA should get the hell off Gibson’s back about: I bet $10,000 Mitt Romney could afford the pictured $10,000 Sam Bush Signature Mandolin. But fortunately, Nashville-based Gibson has a wide-array of musical instruments at most any price-point you need. However, when it comes to the hand-made classics, Gibson still shines. A mandolin officiando can pick up a Sam Bush signature and hear the echo of the 1920s Gibson luthier, Lloyd Loar, who would be known as the Stradivarius of the mandolin if Stradivarius hadn’t made mandolins, grabbing the Stradivarius of the mandolin title before Loar came along. By the way, if you have no idea what that pointed political jab at the end of the title of this gift suggestion was all about, let’s just say, Stradivarius was lucky he didn’t have the EPA around back then.

7. Music (Nashville): Surprising suggestion, huh? Nashville is filled with the artists and business-types who create and package the music you hear at cheap honky-tonks on Saturday night and in mega-churches on Sunday morning. In other words, you don’t need this list to find music from Nashville (in the form of CDs or iTunes gift cards) to stick in a Christmas stocking on Christmas eve. However, if you want some Nashville music that’s not by Taylor Swift, here are four ideas (note: this could have been a very long list) that may not have been the type of music you’d think of as being Nashville:

• Daugherty’s Metropolis Symphony / Deus Ex Machina, performed by the Nashville Symphony and recorded at Nashville’s Schermerhorn Symphony Center: If you think I’m just suggesting this recording to make Nashville sound high-falootin’ or something, I’ll add this endorsement: In February, the recording won three classical-category Grammys for the five-movement piece inspired by the Superman comics. Yeah, and you thought you knew what “Music City” referred to.
• El Camino, The Black Keys: Let’s say you were from Akron, Ohio, and you were a super star and could play anywhere you wanted. You’d choose Miami Beach, right? Well, Akron natives Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney (The Black Keys) decided to move to Nashville. In 2011, they won the same number of Grammys the Nashville Symphony won (3). El Camino is their first Nashville-recorded album. Rolling Stone Magazine ranked it one of top rock albums of the year. Heck, even elitist listeners of NPR like me ranked it #7 on the list of top albums in 2011.
• The Goat Rodeo Sessions: When you want to talk about innovation and tradition merged, well, don’t talk. Just listen to this album created (in Nashville) by whoever your personal higher-being-of-choice might be and Yo-Yo Ma, Stuart Duncan, Edgar Meyer and Chris Thile, with vocals by Aoife O’Donovan. Nothing I can say about it will come close to describing what happens when you combine the talents of individuals who each have boundless talent.
• Own Side Now, Caitlin Rose: I wanted to add a country album from someone who might sound like you’d hear from Nashville if country music artists in Nashville didn’t have to create music that was packaged to appeal to soccer moms and their pre-teen daughters. But then I got scooped by Time magazine who included Caitlin Rose’s album in their top 10 albums of 2011. Frankly, Caitlin’s style of acoustic Americana-fused with alt.country and pure twang is something you’d usually discover far away from Nashville — say, Austin. Fortunate for us, Caitlin is one of those rarest of Nashville country music phenomena: she’s actually from Nashville. So no matter where she goes with her career, she’ll be Nashville. (Sort of how the Black Keys are still Akron.)

6. Third Man 45 iPhone case (Nashville): This is the list’s first Nashville “three-fer,” as this iPhone case was created and is being marketed by two Nashville companies, Griffin Technology (if you’re keeping count, this is the third of four Griffin mentions on this list) and Third Man Records, the indie music idea factory created and run by the official 2011 Music City Ambassador Award Winner, Jack White. Throw in the fact that the case is made from a Third Man Records 7″ single custom-cut vinyl record pressed by another Nashville company, United Record Pressing, and you have a hat-trick. Consider that Nashville still has a vinyl record pressing plant and a working letterpress print shop and you’ll begin to see why you couldn’t replicate Nashville in, say, Silicon Valley.

5. The Family Fang: A Novel, by Kevin Wilson (Sewanee):: When this book by Sewanee author (and creative writing professor at the University of the South) was published in August, New York Time’s Janet Maslin gushed over it. It went on to become a Times bestseller and is on lots of Top Books of the Year lists, including Amazon’s, so that means it’s 50% off the list price at the link above. Need more Tennessee connections? The movie option for the book was acquired a couple of months ago by Nashville soccer-mom, Nichole Kidman.

4. Nissan Leaf (Middle Tennessee) or Volkswagen Passat (Chattanooga): If you need a Leaf by Christmas, you’re out of luck, but the Nissan Leaf can be reserved for delivery later. While the Leaf won’t be manufactured in Middle Tennessee until late 2012, it is still quite a Tennessee car, as the North American headquarters of Nissan is located in the Nashville suburb of Franklin and Nissan Manufacturing is based in Smyrna, another nearby community. And thanks to $1.4 billion from the tax-payers of the U.S., Nissan will also be making the batteries for the Leaf and other electric cars in Smyrna soon, as well. So you may think the Leaf, the 2011 World Car of the Year, is from Japan. But when I see one, I’m thinking about all the good ol boys and girls from Tennessee who’ll be making them — and creating marketing material and websites and on and on. As for the Passat made in Chattanooga, it’s Motortrend’s Car of the Year, or what we say in Tennessee, the car’s got some far-out fahrvergnügen. Also, the Pssat’s Darth Vader commercial (see embed) was not only the best Superbowl commercial of 2011, it is one of the best commercials of all time (according to my wife). 2012 Prediction: Next year if I have one of these lists, a likely entry will be the Chevrolet Equinox as GM’s Spring Hill plant is being prepared to start cranking them out in early 2012.

3. Anything bearing the Col. Littleton brand (Lynnville): Lynnville, Tennessee, a small community about an hour south of Nashville, is home to the savvyist marketing colonel since Col. Sanders invented fried chicken by the bucket. Just visit the company’s website, ColonelLittleton.com, or its “official outpost” store called Abernathy Road on Second Avenue in Nashville (named after the Col.’s address in Lynnville), or check out the Col. Littleton Channel on YouTube. The guy captures the essence of what I’m referring to about the unique grasp some folks from ’round these parts seem to have on Americana marketing. And, hold on to your Col. Littleton hat, if you mix up the brand and line of goods from Col Littleton with the tech-accessory design and distribution savvy of Griffin (my fourth, and last, mention of the company), well, you’ve got one of the most amazing Tennessee combinations since Elvis met Col. Tom Parker. From a MacBook Pro case Griffin offered a couple of years ago, to this year’s complete line of Col. Littleton products for iPads, iPhones, MacBook Airs and more, Col. Littleton and Griffin are the best duo since Dolly and Porter broke up.

2. Jack Daniels 2011 Holiday Select: A little east from Col. Littleton’s hometown, you’ll find the place where they make what is, without a doubt, the most successfully marketed Tennessee-made product that’s not music. Anything bearing the Jack Daniels brand is 80 percent proof of what I’m saying.

1. A Donation to Susan G. Komen for the Cure: Make a donation in your hometown, in honor of someone you love who is battling breast cancer. I first had a Bible chosen for this #1 gift idea from Nashville and Tennessee. It seemed so obvious, considering the holiday and the fact Nashville is the bible-publishing center of the universe. However, late last week, a Nashville Bible publisher inspired me to make a donation to the Susan G. Komen for the Cure chapter in Nashville instead of recommending a Bible published by them. It’s one of the few times in my life when I’ve known without a doubt, that’s what Jesus would do.

Merry Christmas.

(If you’d like a little Christmas bumper music for this post, I can’t think of a better one than this one from Nashville-native Amy Grant.)

Note from the legal department: This is a parody of the iconic Peter Steiner cartoon that appeared in the New Yorker in 1993. It can be purchased here: http://www.condenaststore.com/-sp/On-the-Internet-nobody-knows-you-re-a-dog-New-Yorker-Cartoon-Prints_i8562841_.htm

There’s a story by Anita Wadhwani appearing today on Tennessean.com regarding the efforts of a company called Klout to create a measurement of someone’s influence online about a particular topic. As the company is backed by the influential (in ways more important than may be indicated by its Klout score of 50) VC firm Kleiner Perkins, the company Klout has been gaining momentum (recognition? influence? — Klout has a Klout score of 86) in the past six months or so. With its success, the company has drawn criticism for a wide range of reasons, most of which are covered in the this October Gigaom piece by Mathew Ingram, so I’ll skipped all the “Klout is evil” stuff in this post.

Anita did a great job capturing the essence of what the company is all about, and added a local angle to the story by analyzing some people in Nashville who, for whatever reason, are liked by Klout’s algorithms. In the story, I got to play the role of the “humble bragger” (see: @humblebrag), wherein I say, in essence, “Klout is a joke — unless you’re talking about my score.”

There’s a reason for my ambivalence towards a service like Klout (beyond the humble bragging one). I completely understand why people — especially marketers — want a measurement, or even a currency, of influence to exist. The topic of such an online social currency has been around for as long as online communities have existed and was popularized in a very geekish and entertaining sci-fi way by Cory Doctorow in his novel Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom (free download), a book set in a future in which there is a “post-scarcity economy” based on a reputational currency called Whuffie. In the past, I’ve described Whuffie as similar to the role reputation management plays for those who buy and sell on eBay. On eBay, your reputation (or let’s call it a marketing term, “brand”) has a direct impact on your ability to sell something at all — or to sell it at the highest possible price. (For example, you’ll pay a premium three days before Christmas to purchase from a seller who has a 100% ranking and lots of comments about how they ship things when they promise to.)

However, unlike your reputation on eBay, a Klout score is, at best, some not-ready-for-prime-time Whuffie for many reasons. First off, Klout depends on algorithms that analyze expressions of influence, not measurements of actual influence. Expressions are, at best, a proxy of influence. No doubt, from a business-model standpoint, “expressions” are extremely valued by marketers. Google has become one of the most valuable companies on the planet by making search recommendations based on expressions (clicks and links) and not necessarily transactions. Nearly every measurement marketers depend on (TV ratings, for example) are measurements of proxies of influence — how many people may be watching a TV show may measure something, but it doesn’t measure how effective an specific ad is in making me want to purchase a product. Likewise, the circular nature of such proxies of influence — the more Google points to your content and generates clicks (expressions), the more expressions of influence you generate, influencing the algorithms of Google even more — is a challenge that will also impact Klout scores and those who will no-doubt want to game them.

(Note: There is an exception to that generalized observation of Google advertising: Some advertisers, online direct marketers for example, do know when a specific Google ad works and can measure precisely the return-on-investment of each ad they place — for them, the use of Google Adwords is a near-scientific practice akin to arbitrage. You know who you are, if this is the way you use Adwords.)

Let me try to simplify this: Buying something on eBay and then rating and reviewing the quality of the transaction and your opinion of the seller (or the buyer), is far more than a proxy measure of influence. It is currency that can add measurable value at the point of transaction — or, as we marketers like to call it, “conversion” (as in, conversion from freemium tire-kicker to subscriber). A click or Retweet or follow or friending are expressions of popularity and familiarity that, no doubt, represent something that might be termed “influence.” But a purchase that is then translated into a metric that captures both quantitative and qualitative data could be a source of influence that could serve both buyer and seller alike in ways only imagined today (or long-ago, in Cory Doctorow books).

Another challenge Klout faces is one that Google and its competitors must address daily. The algorithm that measures influence for you may not be the algorithm that measures influence for me. Consider the Google results page of 2011 (for a logged-in user) compared to the Google results page of ten years ago, the point about where Klout might be today, by comparison. Today, it is nearly impossible for you and me to search the same terms and receive the same Google results because the company’s algorithms take into consideration information I have provided it through my active request or passively permitted by my acceptance of their terms of usage.

Klout recently threw out an early generation algorithm that was terribly flawed. I know it was flawed because I was the beneficiary of a flaw in it. No matter how much flack they received by scrapping the old algorithm, I can tell you that it’s far closer to something half-way indicative of a certain type of influence today than it was before — but it’s still not close to what real influence is. But, like Google proves, algorithms are a long-distance journey.

Anita’s article points out another challenge a marketer might have in converting a Klout score into something of value. In Nashville, for example, there are a few high Klout scores that I would say are direct results of how actively the person plays good with social media (blogging for ten years and five years of tweeting goofy tweets that others re-tweet has been my strategy to influence Klout — except I was doing it long before Klout existed).

But other Nashville examples are more about the offline expertise and popularity of the individual, and how well they’ve integrated social media into their relationship with those who know them as, well, Taylor Swift or an expert in something related to church or parenting or a topic like cattle husbandry.

Pure online influence, or offline influence that has been converted to online influence — they’re both valid forms of influence, I guess.

So, bottomline, the Klout score is, at the end of the day, about as valuable as some of the metrics it tries to replace: sheer numbers of followers or “likes” or whatever. Until you can measure actual transactions (conversions) or the roles of offline vs. online sources of influence, when you measure a big basket of metrics all based on different expressions of the same sorts of likes and follows and retweets, you’re going to find out that a high Klout score is directly correlated to how long, how helpful and how actively a person uses the full set of tools social media provides.

In the end, Klout is another company that borrows all those social media things people do online and packages them up into something a venture company might fund and marketers might buy. But all it is at the end of the day, is us: users of social media. We are, as my friend Dave Winer sometimes uses as a metaphor — playing in Klout’s hamster cage.

No more, no less.

If you want to play with Klout, go ahead. Just don’t pretend it’s real influence. (Oh, unless it’s mine.)

Addendum:

When working on her story, Anita emailed to ask me who I would suggest as influential Nashville social media users, I didn’t have to think more than a second to respond the following:

Dave Delaney is the glue that holds together lots of those of us who have geekish tendencies. I have no idea what his “klout score” is, but I’d
give him a 100 for the influence he has earned and uses on behalf of
the company he works for, Griffin Technology, and for social media in
Nashville, in general.

This past week marked the fifth anniversary Geek Breakfast, just one of the many Nashville geek community activities Dave has created or fostered. Geek Breakfasts are now monthly traditions in cities around the country and internationally.

Dave’s a great evangelist for his employer — and for Nashville.

Thanks, Dave. You’re the real deal with it comes to influencing me (as you’ll see in a post I’ll add to this blog on Monday.)

As is the custom on this blog, let me first provide a few paragraphs of rambling background before actually getting to the point of this post. Nearly all of the music-related blogging I’ve done over the past decade has been about bluegrass, a genre of music I discovered through a fun (except when they didn’t want to practice) musical journey my children took me on as they grew up. Through sheer luck (and the mom-tastic gifts of my wife), my children participated in what now has turned out to be the early foundation of the Mark O’Connor violin method. If you read the eight principles of the method and you’re familiar with the Suzuki method, you’ll instantly realize that they’re the same, except Mark’s method begins with “Boil Them Cabbage Down” instead of “Twinkle, Twinkle.”

Now, if you are a parent and you believe that a musical instrument should be a part of any child’s life; and if you happen to be a parent in Nashville; and if you happen to think that classical music is wonderful, but not likely the best segue into a life-long love of an instrument for children of the current era; then you are indeed a lucky person if you happen to live in Nashville. While the city’s nickname is Music City and we have an incredible spectrum of musical resources that include classical, those types of musical styles and instruments that origninated in America’s folk tradition (and the old-world traditions that inspired them) are clearly in our wheelhouse. (Or, in bluegrass, wheel hoss.)

For example, because they played the fiddle and mandolin throughout their childhood, my children had the chance to jam with some of their genre’s legends. (Or, merely the chance to stand in line at a Macaronni Grill with Earl Scruggs — an experience my son had when he was 14, that he will recall one day with surreal awe.)

Because of my children’s journeys and the people I met because of them, one of the young “bluegrass” musicians I learned about and have been able to marvel at during the past decade is the now, 30-year-old banjo picker extraordinare, Noam Pikelney, who is probably best known as being a member of the Punch Brothers, or for his dueling banjo appearance with Steve Martin on David Letterman’s show about a year ago.

Or perhaps you didn’t know that it was Noam, but maybe you saw a funny cartoon in the New Yorker a few weeks ago that featured a business executive stuck on an elevator with Noam an un-named banjo player who looks exactly like Noam in which the caption reads, “I’m trapped in an elevator. Wait, it gets worse.”

It would be sacrilegious (about Fleck) to declare Pikelny as the successor to banjo-god Bela Fleck, as that would imply that Fleck has been succeeded. And frankly, Fleck is still doing incredible things.  So, really, even though Pikelny is to Fleck what Lady Gaga is to Madonna, you’ll never hear me saying it.

The performance at the Station Inn was in support of Noam Pikelny’s recently released album, Beat the Devil and Carry a Boat. Wednesday night’s performance is part of two-week tour (hurry, it goes through the end of next week) and, this being Nashville, included some walk-on performances with Pikelny by folks like Tim O’Brien, fiddler Luke Bulla, John Cowan, six-time International Bluegrass Association Guitar Player of the Year, Byran Sutton, and some guy named Dierks Bentley and Jon Randall, who produced Bentley’s 2010 accoustic album, Up on the Ridge.

In other words, just another evening at the Station Inn.

Lest I overlook them, the performers on the album and on tour with Noam are no slouches. In essence, they are 3/5ths of the Punch Brothers, fiddler Gabe Witcher (who produced Noam’s album) and guitarist Chris Eldridge (Critter) are touring. “Pickup” artists Jesse Cobb (mandolin) and Mark Schatz (bass) round out the tour’s all-star band.

With the angelic-voiced Aoife O’Donovan providing vocals.

However, the real reason I’ve named Pikelny the RexBlog musician of the year is the Funny or Die “album promo video” embedded below. For someone from the world of bluegrass banjo and accoustical “roots” music to have the circle of friends and fans to pull off such a hilarious video is worthy of the award. That, along with the cameo appearance in a New Yorker magazine cartoon a few weeks ago in which Pikelny represents the butt of all bluegrass jokes, the banjo, is more than enough to make him this year’s Rexblog Musician of the Year.

 Bonus: In doing some link searching for this post, I discovered that a collection of Christmas music by Mark O’Connor has been released this year: An Appalachian Christmas. If you’ve read this post down this far, you may be into bluegrass music enough to realize how wonderful this should be.

Bonus 2: I don’t know how, but this somehow showed up on my iPhone and then on my YouTube account. It’s  the Bill Monroe song, “I’m Blue, I’m Lonesome too” performed at the Station Inn Wednesday by Tim O’Brien:

If you live in the Nashville area and you’re in product development or management, product marketing or involved in a startup, you should attend this Saturday’s inaugural ProductCamp Nashville to be held at Belmont University. It’s free and there are product development people from several great Nashville companies planning it and attending. And this is the first year — the one that people always look back and say gloatingly, “I remember how great it was back-in-the-day before X-camp became just another corporate trade show.”

I know, I know. One more of those suffix-camps.

But this will be a little more old-school Darwinian in its approach. The session topics are being suggested by participants who are willing to lead them, but instead of online voting, the presenters (discussion leaders?) will each make a 60 second “pitch” on their topic Saturday morning and then everyone selects three topics they’d like. If your topic doesn’t make the cut, you can “re-pitch” for some additional slots. (Do I need to make this more clear: You could prepare for a session that participants decide they don’t want to hear.)

(First “How to Hack ProductCamp” tip: If you have one-or-more people who want to discuss your topic, but you don’t get enough votes for an “official” session, find those people and have what I think used to be called a conversation.)

Sign up for the conference here. (Say I referred you and maybe I’ll win something.) You can make a suggestion for a session here.

By the way: I’ve put in a suggestion for a session I could lead about current approaches to online user support — Specifically, on the need to start planning a user-support and help strategy as soon as you start planning a product. After a quick overview of different ways four currently popular user-support platforms can be used in different types of customer help needs (GetSatisfaction, ZenDesk, WordPress and MediaWiki) I’d like to learn how others are helping their users succeed, after the sale.

[Note: It goes without saying, the following post is a personal opinion -- like everything else on this blog.]

While I’ve made fun of some of the political theater and in-articulate nature of the people I call occupyists, let me be clear about this: I think it is outrageous that a group of protesters in Nashville were dragged off the Legislative Plaza and arrested a few hours ago.

I could argue against the move on the basis of why it is a sure-to-fail strategic blunder on the part of the governor or whomever came up with it, but I’ll skip that advice.

My argument is on behalf of freedom. Freedom to blow your horns and drive around the Capitol if you don’t want a tax increase. Freedom to camp out and protest in front of the Capitol if you’re upset about the direction of the country.

I believe the action of ordering the Tennessee Highway Patrol to drag protesters off Legislative Plaza is a bigger threat to the citizens of Tennessee than any threat posed by the protesters.

[Related: "Things I no longer believe, and some I do," a post from March 1, 2009.]

When I first met Doc Searls many years ago and he learned I was from Nashville, one of the first things he asked me was if I knew Gil Templeton. “I certainly know about Gil,” I said. I explained to Doc that I had met Gil and we had many mutual friends — but his fame for me came from the legend he left at an advertising agency where he worked, and where I would later spend a few years.

Doc Searls, for whom Gil worked in North Carolina, has written a wonderful tribute to Gil, who passed away over the weekend at his home in Nashville.

Many Nashvillians, especially veterans of the Nashville advertising and marketing community, knew Gil — or knew of his work on campaigns like Jim Varney’s “Vern” character.

Like those stories Doc shares from his days of working with Gil at a North Carolina ad agency, there will be many funny stories recounted about Gil in the coming days by those with whom he grew up and worked with in Nashville.