Do you ever read something and wish you had written it?

I just read an amazing Change This manifesto from Bob Gilbreath, “Meaningful Digital Strategy: The Next Evolution of Marketing.” There are so many brilliant points in this manifesto and I encourage everyone to read it.

“People were choosing to engage with their marketing and they were using marketing itself to add value to their customers’ lives.” Bob makes the point that in this new digital paradigm marketing must have meaning and you must build an experience that people find valuable. AGREED. The two key requirements of this are:  it must be marketing that people choose to engage with, and the marketing itself must improve people’s lives.

The consumer is overwhelmed with information and saturated with choice. How can you differientate yourself in this competitive market? Create a customer experience that sparks a strong emotional connection and inspires them to be passionate. Build a relationship that gives them the tools to play an important role in conceptilizing your brand, and spreading the word. It seems so simple…

Photo courtesy of SXC.

Creative Elegance: The Power of Incomplete Ideas
Each month, the site ChangeThis.com publishes a series of “manifestos,” authored by innovative thinkers from a range of disciplines.

This month, Matthew E. May, author of The Elegant Solution: Toyota’s Formula for Mastering Innovation and the forthcoming In Pursuit of Elegance: Why the Best Ideas Have Something Missing, has produced a 13-page classic on creative minimalism. I say classic because he is able to find the common thread of artistic excellence between things as diverse as the Tao Te Ching, the series finale of HBO’s “The Sopranos,” Leonardo da Vinci’s paintings and the “secret menu” available at In-N-Out Burger.

He begins his manifesto with a clear assertion that less is more:

“It is nearly impossible to make it through a typical day without exchanging ideas. Whether deciding on something as simple as a restaurant for a long overdue night out, or as complicated as the design of an entirely new product, we are forever involved in sculpting and selling our creative thought. Conventional wisdom says that to be successful, an idea must be concrete, complete, and certain. But what if that’s wrong? What if the most elegant, most imaginative, most engaging ideas are none of those things?”

Along the way, May also points to focus as a strong promoter of creative productivity. His mention of business expert Jim Collins use of a “stop doing” list is an especially important point—I made much the same argument in a guest post I made on the Positivity blog about the importance of a “to-don’t” list.

Photo Books & The Kindle: Is The Writing On The Wall?
This link from the Jim M. Goldstein Photography blog features an intelligent post and reader commentary about the technological progression of e-books and what this means for professional photographers who produce books of their work.

Goldstein, a nature, landscape and travel photographer, notes that the current iterations of Kindle and its big brother, Kindle DX, are not ready for photo-book prime time, but that won’t remain the status quo for very long:

“Kindle still strikes me as having a lot of room to grow particularly when it comes to real world use beyond text heavy books … Don’t get me wrong; I know the Kindle DX and Kindle use innovative parts, but compared to what is to come it will look quite primitive. Much can be said about any product I suppose, but in this case the best is yet to come, particularly with flexible OLED displays poised to become mainstream.”

He posits the two main questions for professional photographers interested in the future of e-books to be how quickly will photographers be ready to provide their photos in a purely electronic reading media and to what degree will the audience for fine art photography adapt to purchasing e-books. One reader also points out the potential for secondary sales (download this photo to your desktop, print a postcard, etc.) through hyperlinks in e-books.

All in all, the post is a robust discussion about how the rise of e-books will change how artists work to produce their content.

Are You an Idea Addict?
Mitch Ditkoff of the training and consulting firm Idea Champions recently broached an important point about the downside to becoming too attached to one’s own ideas, no matter how creative, on his company’s Heart of Innovation blog.

He relates the buzz we can experience when we develop a particularly tantalizing idea, but warns that we’ve crossed the line into addiction when we refuse to modify our idea because it’s become too deeply associated with our personality, it’s become so familiar that it would be uncomfortable to alter it, or because we’ve already invested mass quantities of time in its development and don’t want to feel that time was wasted.

He points to the example of Apple’s iPhone, which reached a late stage of development before CEO Steven Jobs realized parts of the design didn’t work for him, and wouldn’t work for customers, either. Although Jobs is quoted as saying he realized asking for change in the basic concept behind the phone at the last moment was a risk, everyone on the Apple team signed up to make the changes.

Jobs said:

“Sometimes when you’re in the middle of one of these crises, you’re not sure you’re going to make it to the other end. But we’ve always made it, and so we have a certain degree of confidence, although sometimes you wonder.”

I would agree. Sometimes it’s important to keep a few playful devil’s advocates associated with your business or on your personal “board of directors” to help you see the downside to your ideas, no matter how visionary or useful they may seem to you and your supporters. The point isn’t to have them shoot down your best ideas, it’s to help you see how your best ideas could be better.

Bonus Links!

Brain Freeze? How to Thaw Your Mind With Mind Maps
From SitePoint.com’s blog. Good intro to mindmapping and lists different software packages that help you do it.

15 Unusual and Creative Bus Stops
A public works design feast for the eyes from the Toxel.com blog.

O site ChangeThis fez uma pesquisa com seus leitores e obteve 1.400 respostas sobre a crise nos EUA.

As perguntas foram:

• Em uma palavra, como você está se sentindo?
• Como isso está te afetando?
• O que você escolheu fazer a respeito

Muito bacana, uma pesquisa pequena, simples, e direcionada a uma turma boa, que lê o excelente site ChangeThis. A imagem que ilustra o post e é o primeiro slide da apresentação abaixo é um resumo a primeira pergunta. Os outros slides são algumas das principais/melhores respostas.

Algumas coisas me marcaram, ressoaram. Tem gente:

• vendo que há oportunidades
• contratando
• bebendo (é sério)
• pensando em abrir um negócio
• sabendo que não dá mais para viver no piloto automático
• trabalhando mais
• escolhendo/revendo o que é mais importante mesmo
• que não sabe o que fazer
• lembrando que o mindset correto é fundamental
• reconectando a antigos amigos/contatos
• buscando satisfação nas coisas simples, gratuitas da vida
• não entrando em pânico e agindo como idiota
• desligando a TV
• entregando mais valor para seus clientes
• escolhendo viver

Revendo essa lista, parece que até que a crise é uma coisa boa, não? Fora a bebida, é claro.  Aproveite a crise, no bom sentido.

Like so many companies, the F50C has been aggressively managing expenses.  One of the practical outcomes is that everyone’s training budgets have been cut back to zero, at least through the first 6 months of 2009.  However, as a management team we are still committed to being career development partners for our employees, and training & continuous learning is an important component of development.  So we’re seeking free and creative ways to connect our team to learning. Here are some that we’re using, and some that I’m just brainstorming – -but if they make sense or I get other ideas in the comments, I’ll use them!

1. Webinars. So many of our vendors and consulting partners routinely offer free webinars via their websites on topics that are actually useful — and a surprising number of them are NOT all about selling us more of the vendor’s product or service.
2. eNewsletters. There are free eNewsletters out there on every topic, from IT to trend forecasting, to market research to career development.  Even Harvard Business Review (boucoup bucks to subscribe to the print version, BTW) offers an eNewsletter with links to the latest HBS research.
3. bNet. While a litte buzwordy, there is genuinely good content on sites like bNet if you care to look for it.  A good place to go for research.  Consider also WSJ’s career site, Change This, 43Folders, blogs on topics in your industry, etc for free content.
4. White papers. Like webinars, many of our vendor & consulting partners offer free white papers for download. Currently I’ve got one in my queue to read tomorrow on developing meaningful performance metrics.
5. Memberships in local chapters. Company is a member in your local chapter of an IT, marketing, sales or etc organization? Go to their local meetings or organize to host the meeting on your campus. You usually get free or cheap great content AND good networking.
6. Read the Book. My company is a member of the Institute of Management Studies (IMS) which puts on really good full-day offsite trainings on a vareity of topics in cities all over the USA.  I routinely scan their site for classes that look good and see if the trainer has a book.  The class is usually about what the book is about — that’s how good x-marketing works.  I always read the book first (from library!) to determine if the class seems worthwhile since the classes are NOT cheap.  In a down economy with no training budget, just the book will have to do.  Besides IMS, there are other training content delivery companies out there – use Google.
7. Cold-contact content owners and barter for their services. We’re trying to stay free, right? Is there an author or industry leader that you’re passionate to learn from? Why not email them and propose a trade, a benchmarking session, a mini-conference, or some other way to put them in touch with you & your team, while giving them back something of value that’s not actually, um, cash.
8. Peer training. Have folks on the team offer brown bags or round-robin training to broaden everyone’s skill set.  Or set up learning groups that meet and dive into topics of interest on a regular basis.
9. Mentoring. Hook everyone on your team up with a mentor in your company or your industry organization, with a specific eye towards working on a developmental opportunity. Or, go out and find your own mentor for the same purpose.
10. Stretch assignments. It’s been proven that 70% of effective adult learning comes from hands-on, on-the-job activity. Or at least that’s what my HR/Organizational Effectiveness departmnet claims, but I believe them.  So make sure every last person on your team has at least one stretch assignment. If you yourself don’t have at least one stretch assignment, ask for it and keep asking until you get it.

How do you get free training content & experiences?

Not that it comes down to this often, in most lines of work. But an ultimate reason to be kind to a customer, or even a vendor, is the off-chance it’ll be the last time you interact.

Opening the Times this morning I saw what no business owner ever wants to see: my customer’s face looking back at me from the obits. A customer we were all proud to work with here, a well-loved veteran of our industry.

Somberly, I took a moment to look over my notes of our last interaction – hopeful, at least, that we had done right by him.

Here’s what I found looking over my notes: a project that had actually started with a small bump, and a customer who was gracious in giving us a chance to make things right. On what nobody could have known was to be his last project.

To speak with precision, he made our error seem small and merely bumplike, because that was his way: starting out a letter of very valid grievance with “First the good stuff– your staff has been excellent” before getting to the meat of what needed to be addressed.

So the transaction felt roundly satisfactory in the end, through his gracious way of bringing our attention to the issue, and, I’m hopeful to think, our way of resolving it.

That’s a nice way of leaving things, because you’re a long time gone.

BrightSight Group Speaker and author of BIG Ideas to BIG Results: Remake and Recharge Your Company, Fast, Mike Kanazawa has recently written an article for changethis.com

From the article..”Because so many of these programs fail, some executives and managers start to believe the old saying that “people hate change” must be true. That is not true. In fact, employment surveys reveal that the top reason good employees leave companies is over a lack of new opportunities and boredom with stagnant, never-changing, dead-end jobs.”

Post SXSW, I’ve thought about some of the inconsistencies highlighted by the event:

Just because you can doesn’t mean you should. By now few people haven’t heard about the Zuckerberg/Lacy keynote. For those unfamiliar with the details, Jeff Jarvis does a fair write up. At its core, the crowd’s reaction wasn’t about actively joining a conversation, but about disruption. I didn’t realize that heckling the person on stage was acceptable until I started attending tech conferences.

I totally understand why the audience was frustrated with Lacy’s interview, but please explain me to how yelling at her from the audience accomplished anything. Rachel Happe perfectly captures the disconnect between the positives we normally associate with social media versus what happened in the keynote:

I’m not disturbed that there was a great deal of criticism of the interview – that is completely fair. What I am very disturbed by is that the audience aggressively heckled Sarah during her interview….based on the social validation they got through Twitter to do so. Ironically in this case, social media is enabling people to be extremely disrespectful and anti-social. If people didn’t like the interview, why didn’t they quietly leave?

Sometimes revolutions are called for…over the lack of civil liberties, economic freedoms, fair wages. But not over a poor interview. We all need to remember that what makes for good social experiences is a little respect —for everyone. (link)

The best things didn’t always happen in panels. Unlike my first year at SXSW where I went to a panel 95% of the time, I only made it to panels about 50% of the conference this year. I did have some client work that demanded attention, but the rest of my time was spent talking to people. While SXSW probably offers one of the most diverse and talented panel options, I found that creating my own mini-panels was as, if not more, rewarding.

Part of this experience was enhanced by the Bloghaus, a meeting room set up with wi-fi, plug-ins, food, and great people. My very good friend Chris Brogan, who spent even less time than me in panels, twittered, “The BlogHaus is worth $500 to me. You?” (link) The tweets in response were generally positive. I’ve decided that while panel options are important for determining which conferences to attend, the other attendees are just as important.

Technology doesn’t always provide the answer. I suspect most everyone knows this fact. However, given how excited we get by the latest gadget or gizmo, I think we sometimes forgot how often humans solve the problem. For example, the previously mentioned Chris had his site crash during SXSW, right after he and Julien Smith published a Change This manifesto, Trust Economies.

After fighting with customer service reps who kept saying everything would be fixed in an hour, we ran into Scott Beale of Laughing Squid in my hotel lobby. During our conversation, the website issue came up, and Scott offered some options not previously suggested by Chris’s many interactions with customer service. While the advice didn’t correct all the hosting issues, the relief that Scott had some helpful advice made a huge difference to Chris.

For all the power of groups, sometimes one on one matters more. I spent most of my lunches having great conversations with Dave Seah. We met last year at SXSW and became friends when I gathered up the courage to approach him after recognizing him from his blog. While we’ve communicated frequently throughout the year, there was something extra special about spending time together in person, sharing ideas and talking about current projects.

I also had time this year to reconnect with Rachel Clarke, the person responsible for getting me to SXSW in the first place. Then, I had the pleasure of meeting Jane Quigley (she blogs here and here), a classy lady who took the time to share her insight of the industry. These quiet conversations were absolute bliss after the sometimes loud and chaotic interactions that can happen at SXSW. All told, as much as I enjoy the varied and interesting back and forth within a group, sometimes, one on one matters more.

I think that’s what drives SXSW success: each attendee ultimately determines their conference experience. The inconsistencies I’ve noted don’t take away from the experience, except, perhaps, for the first one. The first inconsistency focuses on something necessary to make conferences work: respect.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

If panelists believe that they’ll be yelled at by the audience because they aren’t “delivering,” how long until people say, “no thanks?” If attendees didn’t feel confident that they could approach each other without being blown off, how long until they stop registering? (BTW, hypothetical @SXSW. I haven’t seen or had this happen).

Each of the things I like most about SXSW hinge on respect, respect for the individual, respect for his or her work, etc. Perhaps the people who heckled during the Zuckerberg keynote believe that they were in the right or that they wouldn’t mind if someone did the same to them. However, I think the other things we take so much pleasure in are put at risk when we forget the basics. I think the old but true saying still applies, do unto others as you would have them do unto. I sometimes wonder why this community appears to forget it.

Comments?

Postscript: During the next two weeks, I’m in the process of moving into a new house. Between my business and painting, posting might be a little light, so please be patient. I’ll post pictures of the finished project.

Yes, I have been away. Viral fever helped me become Mr Grumpy last week and he never wanted to communicate. Come to think of it, I wanted so much to write but ended up procrastinating. The trigger for Mr Grumpy was the bad traffic management at the newly opened toll plaza on NH 8. Sometimes, when a lot of these feelings well up, one sheds the Mr Grumpy coat and starts all over. It’s the threshold. Critical mass attained.

Today was that day for me. For no particular reason.

So I decided to change from Mr Grumpy. It was not easy. Web 2.0 was help at hand. Let me explain.

What do we usually do with our thoughts all day long? Mind Chatter is constant and ideas keep popping. I handle part of this by talking, communicating. Blogging is also part of this communication effort.

I found an amazing way to use this medium by getting to know ChangeThis. How do YOU promote your logical and rational thinking into a communication that can be shared and will have effect on others?

Simple….use ChangeThis. Make your manifesto or read the many available absolutely great ones online. Share and spread the word. You have manifestos from Guy Kawasaki, Tom Peters, Seth Godin and yes Hugh Macleod is also there with his HTBC (How to be Creative) thoughts.

And whooosh!! Mr Grumpy vanished. Some of the manifesto’s are so awesome that you would want to download them (for free). I loved the concept and the way its turned out to be in the websphere.

Miss it and be left out… Go ChangeThis !! 

Patricia Martin has an interesting Change This piece — The RenGen Manifesto – about the new Renaissance Generation.   You need to read this and here’s an excerpt titled, It’s about fusion, not fission:

“If the last century was defined by fission—the segmenting and dividing of people and things—the new century is defined by fusion, in which consumers fuse a dizzying array of disparate choices. Consumers want to fit in and stand out at the same time.  They want to share values with the communities they form, but also express their individuality.

They may cleave to the religions they were raised with, and embrace new mysticism simultaneously.

Businesses will miss some of the juice of this movement if they continue to apply old-school market segmentation of age, gender and household income. Today, punk rock might appeal to both a fifty-year-old male and a sixteen-year-old female.

Lesson: The old rules of marketing by age, sex, income and other identifiers no longer dominate.  Targeting the consumers’ interests and appealing to their sense of creativity in a way that leaves room for their self-expression wins the day. They will do the work of customization for you.” — The RenGen Manifesto by Patricia Martin

If this generation, and I think it spans more than one, is fusing stuff — think remixes for your life — then what does that say about our typical age-group ministries divided into Men’s, Women’s, Children, and Youth ministries?  Or age/sex/marital status Sunday School classes?  Or the “teacher-pupil” model for Christian education?  Or, you think of some examples of fission versus fusion in church. 

This is the culture we live in.  This is a lesson we need to learn.  What are we learning?  The missional church meets people where they are, gives them options and choices, and shapes rather than controls the environment. 

I am a huge ChangeThis fan, and I am always happy to promote a manifesto they publish that I admire.  Like Build Your Brand in Bits and Bites: Building Your Personal  Brand Online, by William Arruda and Kirsten Dixson.

Arruda and Dixson warn: “You are being googled.” Internet research is now a no-brainer in the hiring process, whether you are applying for a job or pitching your bid. So, how can you impress recruiters and clients when they perform this kind of reference check? The authors offer steps to making you digitally distinctive.

The Art of the Start

This is an excerpt from the book. Nonetheless, it is a great primer into how one should think about doing a startup. There are seven core areas to think about, that are addressed in this presentation, and each one is attacked with vigor and enthusiasm by the author. Such vigor and enthusiasm that it is contagious. Even if your startup is going great, read this presentation and get buoyed by Guy Kawasaki’s inspirational message.