Wikileaks and the battle for middle earth begins

In an erudite and compelling post John Naughton (What the attacks on Wikileaks tells us) brings from the shadows and into the foreground, some of the key issues that the current deluge of material from wikileaks has unveiled.

Naughton makes 4 keys points… [1] The first confrontation between the old order and a non-linear world, [2] The lying of political elites to electorates, [3] This is a wake up call  [4] The entropic decline of our political systems. He also says this,

Like most people, I’ve only read a fraction of what’s been published by WikiLeaks, but one thing that might explain the official hysteria about the revelations is the way they comprehensively expose the way political elites in Western democracies have been lying to their electorates.

And,

What WikiLeaks is exposing is the way our democratic system has been hollowed out. Governments and Western political elites have been shown to be incompetent (New Labour and Bush Jnr in not regulating the financial sector; all governments in the area of climate change), corrupt (Fianna Fail in Ireland, Berlusconi in Italy; all governments in relation to the arms trade) or recklessy militaristic (Bush Jnr in Iraq) and yet nowhere have they been called to account in any effective way. Instead they have obfuscated, lied or blustered their way through. And when, finally, the veil of secrecy is lifted in a really effective way, their reaction is to try to silence the messenger — as Noam Chomsky pointed out.

Why is it a battle for middle earth, or indeed all earth? Because I believe that we as a humanity are beginning, as I argue in my my forthcoming book No Straight Lines: making sense of a non linear world, to renegotiate the power relationships of how we work, trade, live, govern, educate ourselves. We are at the toxic tail-end of our industrial society, the literacy that accompanies the web, the ability to engage in the world in a different way means we, as a society, begin to ask bigger questions about that society.

For example Douglas Rushkoff points out that,

But like literacy, the open source ethos and process are hard if not impossible to control once they have been unleashed. Once people are invited to participate in say, the coding of a software programe, the begin to question just how much of the rest of our world is open for discussion, formerly esoteric subjects such as Urban Design or Monetary Policy become much more central as the public comes to recognise the power of these planning spcialities to establish rules through which society actually comes into existence… we become more conscious consequently, and more aware or how our day-to-day decisions can be better aligned with larger issues.

This leads to the idea that a Gestalt Switch has been triggered, in No Straight Lines, I write,

I wonder whether we are once again after a period of time taking matters into our own hands. I ask this question as John Keane in The Life and Death of Democracy refers to Charles Malik[1], who was renowned as someone who profoundly believed in the principles of human rights. How do we, asked Malik gain the rights of humanity on a global scale? Indeed, Malik believed that if humanity felt that the various institutions of governance failed us we would take matters into our own hands – and we did. Yet in many ways, that was still confined to regions and countries. Is it possible this time around that through communications connectivity the scope changes perspective? “This new galaxy of media has no historical precedent,” says Keane. It is: “a new world system of overlapping and interlinked media devices that integrate texts, sounds and images and enable communication to take place through multiple user points, in chosen time, either real or delayed, within modularized and ultimately global networks that are affordable and accessible to many hundreds of millions of people scattered across the globe”[2].

I sense the possibility of history in the making. In today’s world the powerful are often “feeling the ‘pinch’ of the powerless”. Politics as a consequence has become viral, even visceral, which implies that traditional frameworks of governance have become somewhat outdated, and consequently ineffectual. Therefore Keane concludes, in the age of networked communications, combined with organisations that are constantly monitoring the motives and actions of various powerful parties, “combine into something of a Gestalt switch” which makes us think differently about how we perceive power and who wields it.

As Frantz Fanon once famously said, “A people will only be free when the control their own communications”. I am not for a free-for-all anarchist existence – but I do think we are forcing a conversation about trust, power and control; who has it, and how it is wielded now and in the future.

[1] Keane, p.733

[2] Keane, p.738

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Posted in: Alan Moore Speaking, Books, Culture, Engagement Civil Society, Engagement Politics, Ethics, Government & Politics, No straight lines, Philosophy, Politics, Society, Trends

The Next Generation of Business Engagement aka Dave Evans [3]

Dave Evans is the author of Social Media Marketing; an hour of day, and has recently written and published Social Media Marketing; the next generation of business engagement, (“The Next Generation of Business Engagement” shows you how to apply collaborative, social technology to business, shortening the innovation cycle and building stronger relationships with your customers, partners and suppliers.) in the 3rd conversation with Dave Evans, I asked Dave, who gets it and who doesn’t and why? This leads Dave onto giving a personal perspective, in which he explains why this is important to, (as my friend Jonathan MacDonald would say), every single one of us.

Who gets it and who doesn’t and why? (I say the biggest challenge companies have in adapting is more cultural than anything else.)

I believe that we all “get it” but that there is of course a caveat to this. We all “get” social media, for example, when we are shopping and want the best deal, when we want to know, in advance, that this thing we are about to buy really works for the purpose for which we intend to use it. We want to know where to look for the best jobs, and to be referred or introduced to the best contacts to improve our chances for getting those jobs. On the subject of advertising–being as it is the channel through which we might actually learn of these products and other opportunities–when we are relaxing at home we don’t want interruptions that take us away from the programs we enjoy watching. In this sense, we all “get it.”

However, this odd transformation takes place when we walk into our offices, when we don our “work hats.” Suddenly, we expect everyone to want to pay attention to us (and only us), to show an interest in what we make, and to go out and buy it: To see things our way, and to readily shift attention when our spot or print ad or dinner-time telemarketing call or highway billboard presents itself.

“But wait,” as we say in the business, “there’s more.” We also expect people–customers, employees, suppliers–to do what we say simply because we said it. How much justification, unbiased proof, or fact-based evidence can one really put into a 30 second spot or half page (mostly image) advertisement? As an example of just how little, consider the typical US pharmaceutical print ad: The primary ad components are amazingly free of actual data…but flip the page in the magazine and you’ll see 8.5 x 11 inches of fine print, which ironically contains the actual information needed to properly evaluate benefits conveyed by the smiling couple in the visual ad.

So, there is this whole notion of control–over attention, over the message, over the interpretation of the message, over employees and how they are incented to work–that in many ways, at a practical level, really shows who gets it and who doesn’t. And, it’s often the same people, just in a different context: A middle aged professional walks into an electronics store, wanting to see what’s new and innovative, and to be told, in straight terms, which of these devices makes sense given his stated needs and lifestyle. That same guy walks into the office on Monday and barks at his subordinates, expecting them to do his bidding because “that’s how we’ve always done it” and with little more actual authority than a passing reference to the “SVP” that follows his name on the office door: Same person, operating alternately between “getting it” and “not.”

Social technology disrupts authority, and it does so without regard for the particular subject. The question of “who gets it” and “who doesn’t,” when looked at this way, becomes more a question of “Is it convenient for me to “get it” right now?” This is of course the driver in the push for social technology, embedded in the fabric of the marketplace, of the workplace and in our social infrastructure: By making information available everywhere–regardless of who the actors are–then collaborative behaviors are reinforced across the full range of contexts. It’s difficult, for example, to hold a position–indefinitely and based on only authority–that contravenes the facts when the facts are known to all, and the fact that (we/they) all know this is itself known to everyone.

This is what “Social Media Marketing: The Next Generation of Business Engagement” is all about: As a business leader–where my prior book was distinctly for marketers, I wrote this book for C-level and similar organizational leaders across all disciplines–your employees, partners, suppliers and customers have knowledge that can make your products and services better, that can create a stronger brand and add economic value to your organization. Social technology, applied at a business level, is about creating a strong organizational culture that thrives on collaboration, that listens to customers, and that builds for itself a long-term pathway to profits and growth. But, you have to be willing to operate collaboratively.

So, a personal heartfelt perspective.

My driving ideal remains: To see my son and his generation grow up in a world with less interruption, where the information needed to make a smart choice is available. This is, for me, what the web, and now the advent of social technology is all about. When I talk about “engagement” in terms of business, for example, I talk about it not in terms of “engaging with an ad by clicking it” but rather by “engaging with a business b becoming a part of it.” That is an entirely different proposition, and one that radically redefines the objectives of organizational leadership.

I think it brings people closer to your work?

In the end, we are all a part of this, and we all have a stake in it: Social technology is, in a sense, the infrastructure that will facilitate realization of the solutions needed by the next generation of thinkers, leaders and people everywhere. By connecting, friending, sharing…we can get to know each other, and learn to operate our markets in ways that raise value everywhere through appropriate transparency rather than seeking to exploit information (resources) for the benefit of a few.

If there is one book you should buy to understand what next generation business engagement looks like, using social media then, this is the book. You can follow Dave on twitter @evansdave. Digital Voodoo is Dave’s company

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Posted in: Books, Darwin, Economics, Engagement Marketing, Marketing, Media, Networks, Participation, Social Marketing Intelligence, Social Networks, Strategy, Trends

The Next Generation of Business Engagement aka Dave Evans [2]

This is the second installment of my conversation with Dave Evans about his new book Social Media Marketing: the next generation of business engagement (“The Next Generation of Business Engagement” shows you how to apply collaborative, social technology to business, shortening the innovation cycle and building stronger relationships with your customers, partners and suppliers).

What has changed and what has not!

What has changed since 2007 when I wrote the first book (released in 2008) is that social technology has gone mainstream. As I was writing the first book, Twitter was in use by primarily among digital technology fans and those concerned with the intersection of society and technology: SXSW 2007 was one of the first really notable Twitter events that started to catch mainstream attention, still far in advance of the big uptick in member growth that happened in 2009. Similar story for Facebook: In mid-2007, with 50 million or so members globally, Facebook opened its API to developers, driving new social technology. In 2008 membership crossed 100 million and in 2010 it crossed 500 million.

I started writing the second book in early 2010 while working with 2020Media (Public Relations) in India. It became really clear that this next wave of social technology was truly global at a societal–and not just technology production–level. I saw people doing things with social technology in India, Asia and South America, where I work with video community startup Looppa, that were essentially identical to what was happening in Europe and North America. People were playing off of each other, sharing ideas and experiences to make more informed choices.

In this view, the big change is simply the “now mainstream” adoption of social technology, and as such the mainstream expectation that businesses are likewise participants on the social web, an expectation that is still only partly met in actual practice.

What inspires you and what leaves you feeling a bit glum?

What inspires me is the continued, frenzied growth in applications–across a very wide range is uses–that encourage the sharing of ideas, experiences, and information. In 1995, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, speaking at MIT for the 50th Anniversary of the publication of Dr. Vannevar Bush’s seminal Atlantic article “As We May Think,” remarked that the web should be “a sea of shared knowledge” wherein people could work together on the problems facing the world, and could do so in a context that encouraged “those who followed to accept, adopt or correct” these collaboratively developed solutions. Looking around today at the both the significant challenges and outright problems along with the incredible opportunities and boundless capabilities, the promise of social technology is truly inspiring.

That said, the majority of the social applications are still based on a fundamentally questionable assumption: If one amasses a sufficient audience whose attention can be systematically interrupted, those interruptions can be used to promote or sell goods and services. In other words, in the most cynical view of the social web it’s all about regaining control over the (global) “TV” audience for the purposes of advertising, a business model that is at the heart of the majority of social platforms and technology startups.

If you have a point of view why not leave a comment or question for Dave, or maybe tweet your question to Dave Evans @evansdave.

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Posted in: Books, Convergence, Culture, Darwin, Data, Economics, Engagement Marketing, Link Economy, Marketing, Media, Networks, Social Marketing Intelligence, Social Networks, Strategy

The Next Generation of Business Engagement aka Dave Evans

Many moons ago, I evangelised the need for companies to move from a world of Interruption to Engagement. That resulted in Tomi Ahonen and I co-authoring the book Communities Dominate Brands: business and marketing challenges for the 21st Century. The year was 2005, the same year Facebook, YouTube and myspace came onto the scene, with bebo, and faceparty lingering with intent either before or after the event. All, the poster children for something that had in fact been long in gestation. But these platforms were the “gestalt switches” which mean’t there was no…

There is No ctrl + z

Not that you would believe it – the roll call of companies, and even industries that lined up to be deniers, defenders, accusers, litigators, jailors even, were emphatic. Yet the transformation (or the emergence of transformative cultures, enabled by communication technologies) of nearly society on this planet cannot now be ignored. I argue we are in a process of renegotiating what kind of world we want to live in. Something Richard Sennett believes is a return to the Enlightenment but on terms more appropriate to the world we live in today. The spectrum is extraordinary, those that embrace what this new non-linear world can bring and those that wish it dead, like a Parrot in a Monty Python Sketch. The end is inevitable for companies premised upon a linear world – that refuse to embrace a new world view. But how are they going to transition? How are they going to get stuff done?

Pragmatism in these times is always a worthy companion, and so I commend to you a book and project by Dave Evans called: Social Media Marketing: The Next Generation of Business Engagement. (“The Next Generation of Business Engagement” shows you how to apply collaborative, social technology to business, shortening the innovation cycle and building stronger relationships with your customers, partners and suppliers.) I met Dave Evans two years ago in Austin Texas @sxsw, via Andy Hunter. Dave struck me from day 1 as a unique person, low key and modest but it was quite clear he had a clear perspective on the world. We connected and although approaching the world from different perspectives, I felt we had arrived a the same place.

Dave’s new book is a true ‘how to’ in a sea of hyperbole, it speaks of how to tack your organisational mainsail as the turbulent end of the 20th Century goes on around you. I asked Dave where he had come from and what has changed for him on the journey he has undertaken. Our conversation will be episodic.

I was thinking where you started with social media and hour an day to this next project.

“Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day” was a starting point for two ideas, important for both marketing–where I’ve spent about half of my career–and for business in general, which is where I’ve spent most of my time. It became clear to me (and of course a number of others) that the Internet, and the web in particular, had changed the context in which businesses operate and as such changed in a fundamental way the mechanics and many of the truisms of marketing. The leveling of the playing field between those with information (sellers) and those who needed it to make smart choices (buyers) for example underwent an upheaval as the web made the spread of information nearly frictionless. So, my first book focused on how a marketer might make sense of this–shifting thought patterns from “talking” to “listening” for example–and then, once that mindset was adopted, to how this new form of media may be incorporated into the existing planning models and measures that guide business marketing.

This necessarily led to the second book: “I’ve got my head around this, and I’m actively participating on the consumer-facing social web. Now what?” My second book, “Social Media Marketing: The Next Generation of Business Engagement” tackles the “now what” and asserts that the same technologies that connected consumers in the marketplace can be used to connect entire businesses with their supply chains, with their influencers, with their employees and of course (in even stronger ways) to their customers.

The result is an holistic look at the relationship between businesses and their marketplaces, and a redefinition of the concept of engagement as it is used in a business and marketing context.

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Posted in: Books, Engagement Marketing, Engagement Organisations, Ethics, Generation C, Marketing, Media, Participation, Society, Trends

How do you design for commercial success in our non-linear world?

How do you prepare for and design business success in a non-linear world? I was invited to give a keynote on how companies are beginning to discover and design new pathways/model/processes that truly harness the potential of our networked and non-linear world – @ Incubate 2.0

Here is the presentation that I gave.

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Posted in: 7th Mass Media, Advertising, Alan Moore Speaking, Culture, Darwin, Data, Distribution, Economics, Education, Engagement Civil Society, Engagement Education, Engagement Marketing, Engagement Mobile, Engagement Organisations, Ethics, Events, Generation C, Government & Politics, Green tech, Greentech, Identity, Law, Link Economy, Marketing, Media, Mobile, Networks, No straight lines, Participation, Philosophy, Social Networks, Society, Strategy, Trends

Chimpanzees, dyslexia and creativity

Steve Edge speaking at the Do Lectures – the Do guys and gals write,

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Posted in: Culture, Engagement Marketing, Events, Marketing

Straight Line Thinking Stops Here, sxsw keynote

This is the slide deck from the keynote that I gave at sxsw this year. You can listen to the podcast Alan Moore sxsw keynote. And if you want more insight into Local Motors see Jay Rogers founder of Local Motors Do Lecture.

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Posted in: Alan Moore Speaking, Convergence, Culture, Darwin, Economics, Engagement Civil Society, Engagement Marketing, Engagement Organisations, Engagement Research, Ethics, Green tech, Link Economy, Marketing, Media, Networks, No straight lines, Participation, Philosophy, Social Networks, Society, Strategy, Trends

Jay Rogers of Local Motors @the Do Lectures

The Do Lectures guys and gals write, Jay Rogers is a modern day Henry Ford. He is going to change the car industry. He has created a community company that will spark a revolution in this capital and time intensive industry. He is changing both things with a revolutionary approach to the industry. Can David beat goliath? Can a crowd beat a corporation? Jay believes they can.

I have to say I don’t think I have ever met such a driven individual whose sense of mission is so crystal clear and a lovely man to boot. Whilst many talk about this stuff, Jay has gone and done something to see if its possible. Today I will be speaking at Incubate 2.0 and Local Motors will be part of my story – it as NSL (No Straight Lines) approach to solving life’s seemingly intractable problems. Why is it NSL? Because Local Motors combines, not just the buzzword of the moment “co-creation” and “social media”, but; legal frameworks, a blended reality of online and offline engagement in R&D, design, engineering innovation, sales and marketing. Using low cost media and communication capability to make that possible and to reach and harness the collective intelligence of many people.

And perhaps what really attracts me to Jay, and people like Jay, is their passion, their desire to make the world afresh, to be bold. what we can learn from Jays company – many things I would argue. All SME’s should study Local Motors in understanding that taking a NSL approach to finding a sustainable solution without compromise would be well worth the time and the effort. More on SMLXL (open innovation, co-creation and Local Motors) Local Motors on YouTube

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Posted in: Convergence, Culture, Darwin, Economics, Engagement Organisations, Generation C, Government & Politics, Green tech, Greentech, Marketing, Media, No straight lines, Participation, Society, Trends

Vodafone and the indoor pirates

I while back I wrote a post called Barclays Bank, the real indoor pirates. In that post I explored the shameful way Barclays had abused tax rules, even offshoring to avoid paying the tax man a considerable sum of maoney. But it seems we have a new contender for the title. Nick Cohen wrote a piece entitled: How Vodafone made tax dodging respectable. I am not surprised people got angry @Millbank the other day, not in some ways these two stories are related other than there seems to be no level playing field – yet we are told by our PM that we need a fair society. Nick writes,

Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs is once again demanding money with menaces. If you haven’t completed your 2009/10 self-assessment tax return, says its latest press release, you must “file online or you could face a £100 penalty”. If you hide your wealth or make an honest mistake, it will hit you with fines, interest payments and, ultimately, a criminal prosecution.

That’s the way it goes. Or, rather, that’s the way it used to go. Under the freewheeling, happy-go-lucky leadership of Dave Hartnett, the Revenue’s head of tax, readers might now think about trying their luck. Suppose you have an outstanding bill of £7,250. You phone Hartnett and arrange to meet him for dinner. It is ridiculous for the Revenue to expect you to pay the full £7,250, you say. You will give him £1,250 instead. Not right away, of course. Times are hard and money is tight. The best you can manage is £800 now and the remaining £450 some time before 2015.

Alas, I regret to inform you that Dave is unlikely to cut you any slack. He may not even return your calls. You, after all, are an ordinary British taxpayer, who must pay on demand or face the consequences. If, however, you were multinational company, Hartnett would be indulgence personified. For Vodafone, HMRC reduced a potential liability not of about £7,000 to a little over £1,000 but of about £7bn to a little over £1bn and left the second-largest company on the stock market with a remarkably light tax bill.

And this is what Private Eye has to say,

HM Revenue & Customs spent nearly a decade arguing in court over the way Vodafone funnels its gargantuan income into a tax-free Luxembourg subsidiary – and heard the court of appeal reject Vodafone’s argument that British anti-tax avoidance laws were neutered by European law. So why did they then cave in?

HMRC accepted a mere fraction of what it was due. The “deal” followed discussions earlier this year between HMRC boss Dave Hartnett, Vodafone finance director Andy Halford (a member of George Osborne’s “business forum for competitiveness and tax”) and David Cruickshank, a tax avoidance guru from Deloitte, brought in bizarrely by Hartnett to act for Vodafone.

Right now as the political temperature rises, everyday people in this country are going to get very pissed off, its a dangerous game to play to say “fair” on the one hand, and then do something completely different. Nick Cohen observes,

I don’t think that HMRC realises it yet, but the Vodafone scandal is as devastating for its reputation as the banking crisis was for the reputation of the financial regulators. It shows that the Revenue is prepared to have one law for the wealthy and another for the rest and undermine the moral basis of the system over which it presides.

When there comes into the world a visceral and common spirit of distrust, things can go wrong very quickly – the 21st Century is over and so is the behaviour that many large companies adopt, and hope they are not caught out. Cohen says, the effect on British attitudes of HMRC’s sweetheart deals for the rich is hard to gauge but it could be severe. Apparently its only the little people that must pay their taxes in full.

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Posted in: Engagement Civil Society, Ethics, Government & Politics, Society

Britain’s £3 trillion horror story

I watched this C4 programme Britain’s trillion pound horror story, last night and I have to say I found it very thought provoking. what’s it all about? @ C4 they write

Film maker Martin Durkin explains the full extent of the financial mess we are in: an estimated £4.8 trillion of national debt and counting. It’s so big that even if every home in the UK was sold it wouldn’t raise enough cash to pay it off. Durkin argues that to put Britain back on track we need to radically rethink the role of the state, stop politicians spending money in our name and introduce, among other measures, flat taxes to make Britain’s economy boom again.

This polemical film presented by Martin Durkin, brings economic theory to life and makes it hit home. It includes interviews with academics, economic experts, entrepreneurs, no less than four ex-Chancellors of the Exchequer and the biggest stack of £50 notes you’ll never see.

What’s your opinion? Have your say below, or discuss on Twitter using #Trillion.

I suppose we do polemics differently to the US. As I did not feel we were in Michael Moore, Naomi Klein or even George Monbiot territory. I was left wondering what all this meant and why had we got into this position? Is it a very conservative / republican agenda wrapped up in something more appealing was a nagging hanging thought? But the argumentation was very coherent, and indeed credible.

The example of the work ethic of Hong Kong inspired by a British Civil Servant was, eye-brow raising. I felt myself asking where did it all go so wrong? As having read a little about the demise of our manufacturing and engineering sectors – it does beg the question. Simply put how did we inspire Hong Kong to become the economic power house it is, and fail to take the medicine ourselves. That said Milton Friedman, the arch villan in Naomi Klein’s view, described Hong Kong as one of the greatest experiments in laissez-faire capitalism. That, and when the state is bigger than the private sector how do we generate revenue and growth? Is taxation the way forward at all? How do you inspire entrepreneurs to give their creative best which ultimately should bring in more money for all. That said we don’t see the trickle down effect, or has the system per se become unworkable as was argued with the case of the NHS? I don’t have the answers, but it seems we have to go on a journey to collectively answer the question(s).

Watch: Britain’s trillion pound horror story

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Posted in: Darwin, Economics, Ethics, Philosophy, Politics, Trends