So, when I point to this New York Times piece about the books written by Barack Obama, “A Career Forged by Telling His Story,” it’s not a political statement, but it is an endorsement of the idea that great stories well told are the key to any cause worth joining, any product or service worth buying or any candidate worth electing.
Quote:
“Senator Obama understands as well as any politician the power of a well-told story. He has risen in politics less on his track record than on his telling of his life story — a tale he has packaged into two hugely successful books that have made him a mega-best-selling, two-time Grammy-winning millionaire front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination at age 46. According to his publisher, there are more than three million copies of his books in print — and two more on the way.
My friend Jay Graves, the CEO of the Nashville-based Hobby-Lobby International (the Radio Control airplane direct marketer, not the retail chain with the same name that sells basket-weaving materials), is all giddy today because Gizmodo has planted a wet-kiss on a new product his company is selling: a wireless video camera unit that attaches to an R/C airplane and streams video to the R/C operator on the ground who wears some funky virtual-reality goggles. In other words, it’s like a first-person pilot simulation game, but instead of “simulation,” you are watching real-time video that allows you to experience the flight as if you are sitting in the cockpit of the model airplane you are operating. Very expensive military drones have been around for a while, but this takes the concept down market with a big-boy toy that costs around $550. (Since becoming Hobby-Lobby’s CEO, Jay has been trying to entice me into getting an R/C airplane, but I told him that all my toys are from the Apple Store or Lowes. I think I’ll take him up on his invitation to join him for a trial flight “in” one of these, however.)
Here’s some video of how the PilotView FPV 2400 works:
“If the magazines published two or three years from now aren’t different, we’re in trouble. The current magazine model won’t take us into the next five years, let alone the next 100 years.”
“…being unburdened by print allowed the team at Infoworld the opportunity to focus on the changing needs of their customers and to develop online, event and mobile products.”
“Yes, print is a burden. It’s expensive to produce for it. It’s expensive to manufacture. It’s expensive to deliver. It limits your space. It limits your timing. It’s stale when it’s fresh. It is one-size-fits-all and can’t be adapted to the needs of each user. It comes with no ability to click for more. It has no search. It can’t be forwarded. It has no archive. It kills trees. It uses energy. It usually brings unions. And you really should recycle it. Wow, when you think about it, print sucks.
So what was the theme? Print is a burden. Unfortunately, saying “print is a burden” implies that there are other options out there that are not burdens. Frankly, the web is a burden. Traveling to events IDG puts on is a burden. Trying to synch my phone and computer is a burden. As Scott Karp displayed in a post yesterday, trying to discover which among 2,000 different news stories on the same topic is a burden.
Despite my love (and I use the word love very deliberately) of the magazine medium, I have never been burdened by thinking print is a hammer and every communications or marketing challenge is a nail.
Granted, my company has published magazines since the day it opened 16 years ago. But even back then, we also created lots of “interactive multimedia” (published on CD-ROM). And in those pre-web days, we also managed “forums” on CompuServe. As a custom media creator, I’ve never felt “burdened” by any medium that helps build strong relationships between our clients (associations and companies) and their members or customers. If smoke signals would help forge and sustain those relationships, we’d be all over it.
Those who know me — even through this blog — know I personally agree with Jeff Jarvis on his somewhat satirical indictment of print. I’m about as paper-free as someone can get in their personal and business practices, but I’m no print vegan (did I just create a new buzzterm?). As Jeff is writing a book and writes for newspapers and magazines, it’s not like he’s a print vegan either. But my print aversion is neither “environmental” (as I always say , if paper is the cause of global warming, someone needs to share that inconvenient truth with this guy) nor based on any belief that print is inherently bad. What I find a burden is poorly designed, written and produced print. What I find a burden is the clutter and confusion print and paper often add to my already cluttered life.
Bottomline: Print is not the burden. My time is the burden. If you publish a beautiful magazine with articles that really matter to me — that instruct, inform or celebrate something I feel strongly about, it is no burden on me. If you help me get to the information and insight I need to live a fuller life or conduct business in a more flexible and productive way, your blogging and tweeting and bookmarking does not burden me. Useless, redundant, meaningless, re-shuffled drivel is the burden. It can be delivered via print or on a weblog or a mobile device. Crap is a burden no matter what the medium used to deliver it.
The BBC has posted a feature to commemorate the 15th anniversary of CERN directors allowing the technology that enables “The Web” to be used by anyone free of charge. (Thank you, CERN.) While it’s hard to believe that so much could happen in 15 years, recall that the Internet had been around since the 1960s*. It took 20 years of Internet usage — and about that long using rudimentary early consumer-oriented systems like Compuserv and its geekier precursors — to realize that some of the hyperlinking, visual-oriented, interactive-multimedia things taking place in closed networks and on ones desktop (Hypercard, for example) could be replicated in a more open, universal way utilizing the Internet. What you’ll note when reading the observations of the experts is this: The Web is still in its infancy. We’re still playing in a giant sandbox here. I’ve written often about Paul Saffo’s thoughts on the 20-year adaptation rule about new technology (“Never confuse a clear view with a short distance”) — there is no such thing as “Internet time” — he argues. The older I get and the longer I get to observe the long arc of these things, the more I realize how slowly things move. No matter how fast you think things are moving, we’re still at Kitty Hawk. And that’s a good thing.
During yesterday’s Country Music 1/2 Marathon, I used my little Canon TX1 (the ‘rex-cam’) to shoot some video from a participant’s point of view. The video below is very shaky and raw — no editing except to put all the clips together — but I think it gives a flavor of what the race course and event are like from a first-time, non-competitive participant’s vantage point. Obviously, I am not a distance runner — I was joining in with several members of Team Hammock because I’m easily swayed by peer-pressure. I’m glad I did it.
Sidenotes: This was the 9th Country Music Marathon & 1/2 Marathon and attracted over 30,000 participants. The race start uses a “wave” approach and times are kept using a device one attaches to their shoe. (The operation of a race with 30,000 participants is worthy of an episode of Modern Marvels on the Discovery Channel.) My wave started approximately 37 minutes after the first wave (the one with the Kenyans) and I finished the 13.1 miles in 2:29 which put me in 12,699th place — although it was 404th in my “old guy” division. Most of the participants were from outside of Nashville and I enjoyed playing tour guide for some of my fellow racers. The 1/2 marathon route is a great way to see Nashville, by the way. I was impressed.
Over on my “People Page” at Hammock.com, I’ve posted an Earth Day message that says, basically, enough already with arguing over who’s green and who’s not. We live in complicated times with complicated problems. Problems aren’t solved by name-calling and shouting down those who believe differently than you. Problems are not solved by merely being “symbolic,” either. Problems are solved when you focus on finding common ground — and common interests.
Bottomline: I’m growing tired of companies telling me how green they are. And I’m tired of activists who can’t see the forest for the trees. I’ll continue to encourage myself, my company, our clients and vendors and friends to find ways to lessen our impact on the Earth’s environment. I find that much more productive than shouts or symbols.
If you are a high school or college student, here is how you are being described in the media these days: You are a super-brilliant over-achiever who scored a perfect SAT and found a cure for cancer by age 16 so you could be one of the 5% of applicants who got into an elite college. Of course, you and all of your friends served concurrently as class president, were class valedictorian and even though you were only auditing that ROTC class, won of the Congressional Medal of Honor. Despite all that, you are hopelessly ignorant of anything newsworthy and can’t write worth a crap.
I did my ranting early this year so I’ll skip my annual post marveling at the paint-by-numbers blog posts that certain tech publishers believe are funny. If April Fools Day proves anything, it is this: Funny is in the eye of the beholder.
Wikipedia’s list of 2008 pranks (but where’s the list of pranks being done on Wikipedia?)
This list of Info World attempts at prank articles should convince anyone that tech-writers should sleep-in on April 1. Actually, the InfoWorld articles are funny, but only because they are so not funny. The formula is this: __________ buys ___________. or ______________ sues ___________. or ___________ launches ______________. Fill in the blank and hit publish and call it a prank.
Pranks I think are actually funny:
YouTube is rickrolling all its featured videos. If you don’t know what this means, it won’t be funny, proving once more, funny is in the eye of the person being rickrolled.
The blogger behind “A Photo Editor” has a funny post about Annie Leibovitz signing a deal with Flickr, complete with screengrabs. Sure, it’s formulaic, but the titles on the Flickr sets make up for it.
I love The Onion. They have talented and very funny writers who know how to create news parodies that are biting and clever — in other words, not stupid or cruel.
For some reason, during several days surrounding April 1, those who maintain blogs feel compelled to give the whole fake-post humor thing a shot. Inevitably, many (if not most) of the people reading such posts fail to pick up the joke and point to the post, thinking that it’s news. And then, there is a round of posts about how stupid people are who point to fake news.
If you blog or Tweet or bookmark, consider this the kind of reminder you get twice a year to move up or back your clocks: April Fools Day is next Tuesday.
To track fake stuff, Wikipedia users typically have a page like this (just change 2007 to 2008). [Later: i wonder if there is another place that tracks stuff Wikipedia users do the site on April Fools Day?]
Ironically, everyday on the blogosphere and in the news (and on Wikipedia), I read stuff that sounds like April Fools jokes. Unfortunately, it’s often true.
Side advice for anyone with a product to launch or news to announce: Don’t do it during the next few days as the cliche lede on blog posts will be, “Is this news some sort of April Fools Day joke?”
Later: Here’s a great example of why I don’t like April Fools posts. This article on the website of the BBC with the headline, “Magazines harm male body image,” is obviously an April Fools joke, right? Or, if not, they should have saved it for another weekend as it seems like a parody that would appear in The Onion. (Although, in the The Onion, such a story would be much more clever — even if 11 years old.) In the BBC article, “Dr Giles from the University of Winchester” has surveyed 161 readers of “lads” magazines and concludes that the content “may” drive them to “try to become more muscular.” (How can evidence be both conclusive and conditional (it may)?) Dr Giles and “specialists” call the “maybe” condition, “athletica nervosa.”
Upside if the article is legit: Magazines are relevant to an important demographic…and images that appear in magazines can trigger consumer behavior.
I’m pleased to note that the really smart guy in this interview at WSJ.com is my friend and Congressman, Jim Cooper. I wish the WSJ.com did a better job at time-stamping their video as I don’t know when they posted this interview regarding the potential next steps that should (or should not) take place with regards to a “housing bailout.”
And speaking of smart politicians from Tennessee, the state’s governor, Phil Bredesen, is omnipresent in the national media these days for his suggestion that the Democratic Party hold a mini-primary/caucus/convention for Super Delegates in June. Sidenote: Both Cooper and Bredesen are Super Delegates. Cooper is an Obama supporter and Bredesen has not committed to a candidate yet.
Even though I thought your interview-approach was instructive for how not to conduct an interview, I still think you’re a good writer and I want to read your book. Also, I know how tough it is when you’re on stage and you have no idea why people are groaning.
Anyway, I just want to let you and the ten people who read this blog know I pre-ordered a copy of your upcoming book (here’s my e-mail confirmation):
Delivery estimate: May 19, 2008
1 “Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good: The Rebirth of Silicon Valley and the Rise of Web 2.0″
Sarah Lacy; Hardcover; $17.16
Sold by: Amazon.com
Also, I’m sorry if it sounded like I was attacking you when I was melting down with the rest of the audience the other day. I didn’t mean to be a part of any mob when I twittered to others what I was thinking at the time.
And while I like you and will never again say anything negative about you, ever, I will note this: Not being liked by bloggers and people who use Twitter can be the foundation of an extremely successful book-marketing plan and can help drive-up speaking fees. So, I’d view all of this as an opportunity rather than an obstacle.
This is not a political post.* It’s an observation of an ironic application of the term “public financing” as it is used in this article in the New York Times (my bold for emphasis):
Mr. Obama’s startling success (at raising funds from small contributions online has) now put him on the spot, tempting him to back away from indications he gave last year that he would agree to accept public financing in the general election if the Republican nominee did the same.”
Read the whole article. If you’re fascinated with online commerce or social media or web-based advocacy, it reports a phenomenal (a word that doesn’t come close to capturing its gravity, however) accomplishment: The Obama campaign collected $36 million in January “overwhelmingly by small online donations.” As in, contributions from “the public.”
Okay. Here comes the irony. I can’t think of a political point of view — right or left — that would disagree with the notion that the most perfect form of campaign financing is that whereby individual citizens make small donations to the candidate of their choice. The kind that the Internet enables. The kind that anyone with a phone who knows how to dial an 800 number can make. Even those on the left must surely agree that what Obama is doing beats a government-run “public” method. Those on the right must surely admit what Obama’s contributors are doing is an incredible display of patriotism and individualism. Isn’t this the kind of citizen-generated financing that both conservatives and liberals should applaud? No $1,000 a plate fundraisers. No fake survey direct mail. No Labor-Union or corporate fat-cat PACs. (Note: I’m sure the Obama campaign had its share of traditional fund-raising activities, but the recent explosion of funds came by from small contributions pouring in online.)
Again, this is not a political post.* It’s merely an observation that I believe we’re seeing what “public” financing probably should be — and it’s not exactly comforting for some on the right — or left.
*Whenever I start out a post saying, “this is not a political post,” it’s a surefire indication that it is.
Print is dead, you say. Are you smoking crack? When will you people stop denying the fact that in the future, all videogames — indeed all media — will migrate to print. Just accept the facts, okay: People don’t want “virtual reality,” we want reality.
What? Do you need more proof that human beings are wired to want digital media converted into media made of atoms? Why is it that the artists among us are the first to figure this stuff out. Here’s a video from a couple of years ago:
Note for the humor-challenged: This is a joke. I don’t actually believe digital media will be extinct in the next decade or so. However, I do believe Google has plans to place giant push-pins on every square foot of the world.
Bonus link: I’m not sure I can connect the dots, but here’s a link to a story in the NY Times about new attractions at a Disney theme park that will focus on “bringing to life” things that were created digitally.
Observations, opinions,
and occasionally news on
magazines, new media,
marketing and life from Rex Hammock, founder & CEO of the custom media firm, Hammock Inc.
During yesterday’s 
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