The Communication Ideal

I met Jonathan MacDonald whilst working on the launch of Blyk last year. You might say it was love at first sight.

I can remember on one occassion a particuarly charged group meeting, with J-Mac sitting on my shoulder egging me on as I was overcome with the desire to speak my mind in a passionate debate about mobile and advertising and in fact what those two words meant when they were stuck side by side.

We had symbiotic world view, that at time perturbed me as we had never met before.

As I have been leading the charge on the imperative to rethink communications to a model I describe as Engagement, since 2002, its great to find someone with a V12 engine (carbon neutral) with more gears than a transcontinental lorry. We all need a helping hand.

That person is Jonathan MacDonald. He has published a book called the Communication Ideal

And I strongly suggest that you buy it

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The Craftsman and the special human need of being engaged

I have been reading Richard Sennett’s book The Craftsman. And is something that I want to dwell on in a few posts.

Defining craftsmanship far more broadly than “skilled manual labor,” Richard Sennett maintains that the computer programmer, the doctor, the artist, and even the parent and citizen engage in a craftsman’s work. Craftsmanship names the basic human impulse to do a job well for its own sake, says the author, and good craftsmanship involves developing skills and focusing on the work rather than ourselves. In this thought-provoking book, one of our most distinguished public intellectuals explores the work of craftsmen past and present, identifies deep connections between material consciousness and ethical values, and challenges received ideas about what constitutes good work in today’s world.

And in this Pro-am culture, the craftsman represents the special human need of being engaged believes Sennett. And interestingly in communities that really work, participation is high, and skills are multiple and low. There is an interesting dichotomy and parallel here.

Craft, as Sennett sees it, belongs to the category of ’social capital’: knowledge and skill that are accumulated and passed on through social interaction, and which are easily lost when social customs change.

The RSA writes

Richard Sennett, professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics, will discuss the idea that there is a craftsman in all of us, which can be enormously motivating and inspiring.  History has drawn fault-lines between practice and theory, technique and expression, craftsman and artist, maker and user; and modern society suffers from this.  But the past lives of craftsmen also suggests ways of using tools, organising bodily movements and thinking about materials, which provide viable alternative proposals about how to utilise one’s talents. In The Craftsman Richard Sennett argues that we need to recognise this if motivations are to be understood and lives made as fulfilling as possible.

And the lecture can be heard here

Sennett also writes that… more than a technician, the civilizing craftsman has used his tools for the collective good. He points to Linux programmers as but one post modern example of that. Social cohesion comes from this and we can all observe that we suffer from a lack of that social cohesion today.

There are important deductions to be made from Sennett’s story about us: as people, as governments, as businesses and the wider society.

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Is this news or PR?

How the Millennial Generation connects is an article in the FT…

E-mail is so 1998. IM-ing, texting, Twittering? Now we’re talking - or to be more specific, that’s how the next-generation workforce is talking.

As the “Millennials” establish themselves in the workplace, they are by-passing the conventional enterprise technology tools thrust upon them, including e-mail. Instead, they are relying on a host of new collaboration tools - many not sanctioned by corporate IT.

Those attitudes emerge loudly and clearly in new Accenture research examining how young people think about and work with information technology. The findings demonstrate how important it is for CIOs to recognise - and accommodate - the technology expectations of Millennial workers.

There is nothing new in here for me, and I guess for many others. Its a bit like McKinsey now proclaiming their deep knowledge of social media and how it all works…is this news or PR? I wonder…

And now a new term for the Community Generation that is described in Communities Dominate Brands is the Millenial Generation.

There is no mention of Manuel Castells, Communities Dominate Brands, Wikinomics, Clay Shirky, Euan Semple, and a load of others that are already well ahead of this story.

The one bit of this which is interesting is from the Aberdeen Group that show best of class capabilities in workforce collaboration - including the adoption of web 2.0 tools, acheived a 34% average reduction in the time required to complete projects.

Remember, people embrace what they create.

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Robert, Flickr and the $235 Paul Smith sweatshirt

In the networked world, the only thing worse than being sampled is not being sampled.

said Siva Vaidhyanathan.

Which brings us nicely to the story of Robert, Flickr and a Paul Smith sweatshirt costing $235.

Robs design compared with the $235 Paul Smith design

The story goes like this - Rob goes to NY, meets some mates they take him to a Paul Smith shop he buys a sweatshirt as the design looks uncannily like his own design. He takes a pic with his iPhone, gets a bit bugged as how alike his design is to the Paul Smith one, and then discovers it is a direct copy of a part of his design.

Later that evening, Lance, Tara and I went out to dinner at Cookshop. I wore the new Paul Smith shirt. How could I not! At one point during the meal, I went to the mens room. As I stood at the sink, I looked up at the mirror and saw my collaboration with Paul Smith. I couldn’t stop laughing.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I must admit I am not completely innocent in all this. The birds I used in my coding study were culled from other people’s Flickr photos. I didn’t ask permission. I searched Flickr for images of flocking birds and traced a total of seven small silhouettes which I used in the original flocking study. However, I did not then go on to print my versions on clothing and sell them for hundreds of dollars each.

So what now? I have no idea. I am not angry. I am not feeling vindictive. I am flattered and amused. This isn’t like that Urban Outfitters/Johnny Cupcakes incident. I don’t actually feel wronged. I do feel that some designer for the Paul Smith brand committed an embarrassing act of laziness. This should not be excused and I imagine they will be dealt with accordingly. I don’t get a ton of blog traffic but I would be surprised if this didn’t eventually get back to the Paul Smith organization. And Mr. Smith, if you are reading this, Lance and I have always wanted to spend a week in London.

In the networked world, the only thing worse than being sampled is not being sampled.

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How social analytics benefits consumers

The complexity and beauty of social network theory

Using new social tools, consumers can decide, what information they want to reveal to the advertisers and what to keep private. For marketers and advertisers, this is a unique opportunity. They can concentrate on promoting their products and services to those who have already shown interest to them.

Definitely worth a read and you can get the paper by clicking this link

Ajit has some thoughts that contribute to the whitepaper [here]

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ProPublica versus the Grocers

ProPublica.org aims to make up some of the ground lost to journalism by the current crisis of advertising revenues bleeding to the internet. In particular, it seeks to preserve the skills and value of investigative reporting one of the first casualties of cuts by dint of its relative costliness.

Wrote Ed PIlkington and Scott Rosenberg asked

As the business model that supports traditional journalism erodes, with digital distribution dissolving the bonds that held together the elements of the old paper and broadcast product bundles, one refrain has been constant: How, ask the elders of the profession, can we protect the most important work that we do — investigative journalism? It’s costly and politically sensitive and hard to justify on the bottom line; it’s also what gives journalists the right to claim a valued and sometimes privileged spot in the civic landscape.

ProPublica says about themselves

ProPublica is an independent, non-profit newsroom that will produce investigative journalism in the public interest. Our work will focus exclusively on truly important stories, stories with “moral force.” We will do this by producing journalism that shines a light on exploitation of the weak by the strong and on the failures of those with power to vindicate the trust placed in them.

Investigative journalism is at risk. Many news organizations have increasingly come to see it as a luxury. Today’s investigative reporters lack resources: Time and budget constraints are curbing the ability of journalists not specifically designated “investigative” to do this kind of reporting in addition to their regular beats. This is therefore a moment when new models are necessary to carry forward some of the great work of journalism in the public interest that is such an integral part of self-government, and thus an important bulwark of our democracy.

Pilkington writes

The investigation of Alhurra is a model of how things might go. The first blast of the story on 60 Minutes was sufficiently powerful to catch the attention of Congress, where it was raised in the foreign relations committee. ProPublica then kept the story running through the week with a series of follow-up articles on its site. The editors can even claim their first scalp - by forcing the resignation of a journalist who a year ago had reported for Alhurra from a Holocaust deniers' conference in Tehran, and had himself questioned on camera the existence of the Holocaust. Alhurra managers had told Congress that he had been dismissed a year ago, but ProPublica tracked him down to its US-funded sister radio channel where he was still working.

Almost all its resources will go directly into journalism, compared with a mere 10% of the budgets of the average paper. There will be no editorial pressure from the Sandlers, and no commercial pressure either as all the income will be philanthropic.

The first major investigation by ProPublica was broadcast on 60 Minutes and continued on the website thereafter. It looked at Alhurra, the US-funded Arabic TV station broadcast across the Middle East. The film was made by Dafna Linzer, hired by the site from the Washington Post. It uncovers how a US attempt to put its viewpoint across in the region, as an alternative to al-Jazeera, has been poorly managed and ineffective. The network reaches barely 2% of the population, and has given air time to groups classed by the US government as terrorist.

More from the New York Times

Jeff Jarvis observed

What’s particularly nice is that they will not only investigate on their own — with their staff of 20 journalists so far — but are also aggregating, following, and commenting on other investigative journalism available on the web. This is about journalism’s link layer and sending audience to journalism at its source.

I really hope these guys make it.

Nick Davies in his book Flat Earth News excoriates the owners of newspapers (describing them as Grocers) because their interest its not about community, its not about quality journalism is about one thing and one thing only - MONEY - PROFIT AND SHAREHOLDER RETURN. And that's all well and good until the quality of the product is so inferior it devalues itself. This is life in a news factory says Davies whilst writing about one journalists experience of working for a local news paper. These are corporations that think greatly about commerce and casually about journalism. This is the heart of modern journalism, the rapid repackaging of largely unchecked second-hand material, much of it designed to service the political or commercial interests of those that provide it.

And that is why we need ProPublica

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Doing the right thing

How the Credit Crisis Could Forge a New Financial Order

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The bull market for humility

This disproportionality has been tested to destruction by the recent
hysteria of City incomes. The result is that, after a decade of
widening wealth differentials, they should start to narrow.
Non-economic components of what we vaguely refer to as the good life
will take more prominence. The hedge-fund speculator will learn, with
Voltaire, that it is best to cultivate one's garden. This will surely
be a good thing.

Economists will move away from their failed models to study human history and behaviour. Britain might inch up the University of Michigan's world happiness survey from its present miserable ranking of 21st, below Mexico and the US.

Read more here

We might even see a resurgence of the "happiness" movement of the early
1970s; of Schumacher's "small is beautiful" economic theory. We might
find a new appreciation for the king of Bhutan's edict on the
importance of "gross national happiness", and for John Ralston Saul's
remark that the American mission of "life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness" was nothing to do with money. Saul called for a more subtle
understanding of contentment, "to escape the 20th-century idea that you
should smile because you're at Disneyland".

Here's to hope

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There are more keys on my piano Mr McCain

I do say that Americans have looked long and hard at the candidates
this past month and are now minded to conclude, in the fine phrase used
by Garrison Keillor of a speech he heard the young Kennedy give long
ago, that Obama just has more keys on his piano than the other guy.

Writes John Kettle

I agree with Kettle - McCain looked out of depth, and out of ammunition in the presidential debate, oh and my other fave comment

 His name is Joe Wurzelburger," McCain said, getting his Wurzelbachers in a twist.

No doctor I said, prick his boil!

By mentioning him more than 13 times in the first 10 minutes of
Wednesday night's third and final presidential debate, the Republican
candidate, John McCain, sent Wurzelbacher into a media stratosphere the
likes of which most publicity-starved brands can only dream of. Groups
sprang up on Facebook with names like Joe the Plumber for President and
Fans of Joe the Plumber.

Or is that Wurzelburger?

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Crowdsourcing creates friction

Kevin Potts recently did a review/critique of wundersite www.99designs.com - which appears to be a simplified spin of other such sites like Elance and what Kevin calls it’s “malignant brethren”. The site, which uses less than ideal techniques to get designers to connect with businesses, requires spec work and encourages horribly low prices. In his article, Kevin removes the usual sales pitch and business jargon and brings out the underlying truth:

Hmm. Yes, by all means, we want to avoid the time and consideration professional designers offer and go right to the lowest common denominator of grade-school dropouts whose portfolio’s crown jewel is a logo for their dad’s wholesale llama manure clearing house. We definitely do not want any in-depth communication. We do not want any understanding of the company, the brand, or the direction andaspirations of the organization.

It is the following comments on the post that makes this an interesting conversation, such as

This reads like someone who is quite pissed that their precious world-view is in danger - perhaps your creative skills are not up to the requirements to keep you competitive in a global market. The internet obviously opened a vast market…play ball or change jobs.

And

Man! Spec work is spec work and it’s BAD! BAD1 BAD! How about looking at it like this: make me a burger and fries. I’ll eat it. If I like it I’ll pay you a small sum for it. If I don’t - oh, well!

There is no easy answer here, except that for many people access to a global market place otherwise denied to them is mana from heaven. And a means to earn money that to them would be otherwise denied. For others the idea of working on spec is morally outrageous.

I remember working as a young designer and I was constantly asked to provide work on spec. but also as a Creative Director in Ad Agencies.

Personally I hated it - and I made a choice that was not the way I wanted to work. But that is my choice.

But I am a great believer in harnessing collective intelligence, and in C'mon everybody I referenced the book on Crowdsourcing that provides some underlying principals which are definitely worth considering.

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