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johnny be good: insights, condoms and comedy

22 Dec

I love the Condom08 campaign – the perfect marriage of real insight, a creative idea and seamless cross platform execution driven by data and user stories. And it’s about sex, and everyone loves talking about sex. Particularly Swedish people having sex.

I’ve been having a bit of discussion about this with perennial provocateur Mister Corbett. His view is that it’s a great idea but it’s not founded on an insight.

“The only disappointment for me is that only 4 out of 10 people felt more positive about condoms. The campaign deserved better than that I think. However the truth is though that, while it is great, it actually doesn’t in anyway actually address the real issues with condoms – that being that they interrupt the experience. It is wonderful creative thinking – but not based around any true insight.  I love the campaign – I just don’t think it is based on an insight, I think it is based on a great idea. That’s not a crime – far from it, it’s fucking great”

I disagree – I think it’s genuinely insightful; it comes from the idea that yes, condom use is interruptive, but if you flip it,  make that moment of interruption positive (you stop to put on a condom and load the app, perhaps while boasting about how great your graphs are going to look, baby) you change it from being an awkward moment to a fun and possibly sexy one.

That, coupled with the insight that people are desperately curious to know what other people get up to in bed – for all we have access to more porn and sex blogs than can possibly be consumed in a lifetime, there’s a little part of every adult that still wonders on some level  ”am I normal...?”* And nothing tells you what’s normal like some mathmatically vague graphs and stats.

(*FYI: you’re a freak. Embrace it. Life is short.) 

So is using the disruption of putting a condom on to feed our prurient interest in what other people do in bed – and secret desire to brag about our own prowess – genuinely insightful?

Is that truly an insight, or is it rather just an observation?

I think a handy way of checking if what you’ve got your hands on is an insight, or rather, a glibly stated fact is to imagine you’re a stand up comedian.

Will what you’re saying make people gasp, turn to their friend and say sotto voce with a delighted squeal   “I do that!”, or “my mum always…”, or are you more like that awkward stand-up whose set is a series of banal observations prefaced with “Have you ever noticed the way that…?”

An insight is the “oh em gee, that’s so me!” moment, the prod to the solar plexus, not the intellectually driven head nod. As Simon Law says,

An insight is a revelation that produces great work
(there should be a degree of “Fuck me. I never thought of it like that!”)

Peter Kay is a fine example. If you’re from the UK and have seen him talking about “the big light”, you’ll know what I mean. He presents the everyday in a way that feels like you’ve never seen it before, but with that telling jolt of recognition.

I’m here all week. Try the veal.

the dead social media practitioners society

9 Mar

I’m at Ad:Tech today and I just learned a valuable lesson. Not, in fact, from any of the speakers, though a few have had interesting things to say.carpe diem adland

Last night I went to the AdTech sponsored Social Media Club, and this morning I presented at a session called “next generation social media strategy.”

Thinking about what that might really mean, I settled on what seemed to me a fairly conceptual, challenging (but ultimately rooted in common sense) combination of things I’ve learned over the past year or two. I thought about what the audience might already know, and tried to build upon that.

Admittedly in a 45 minutes session comprising six speakers, there was limited scope, but I thought I might have have shared some ideas that might spark debate and other ideas in turn. I had a solid case study with some excellent results to talk about, and I was feeling alright.

Then I wandered about the expo with the post-presentation adrenalin crash blues and realised I was utterly, utterly sick to the back teeth of the words “social media” and conversations about what might be done with it. And then I confess, dear reader, I fell into a bit of a funk.

Luckily I’m such a Zen-like hepcat these days it didn’t last too long.

I had the revelation -and this comes, Sheen-like – directly from the power of my mind, that I had committed the cardinal sin of believing things about my users (the Adtech audience) based on pure assumption, not data.

I sat in a couple of sessions and listened to the questions from the audience and came to the understanding that actually very few people here seem to have any real world professional experience of using social media. Even now, even after several years, and successive presentations and millions of blog posts, there seem to be a small cabal of practitioners, a still smaller cabal of decent practitioners,  a massive gulf and then  – everybody else*.

And I think it’s our fault. At a session this afternoon, an audience member asked what kind of agency social media belonged in. There was dissent.  We’re still talking about one platform versus another and how to measure stuff, and whether engagement is more important than the number of people on your social database (does anyone recognise this exact scenario from, say, email marketing?) and all the kinds of conversations that nobody has about other disciplines or channels…. and all this simply makes it seems like a difficult and arcane business and somehow exempt from the rules that apply to every other aspect of marketing activity.

Let’s stop fucking talking about it and just build it, from the outset, into the way we communicate. Let’s do it well, let’s do it creatively and effectively and in a way that seizes the immense opportunity the social web offers us all, but let’s, please, stop talking about it and just fucking do it.

Think of the children. If for no other reason than that they’ll be massively contemptuous of all this dithering.

*everyone who works in media, advertising, publishing etc. Not normal people. They don’t care; they’d just like you to delight or inspire them, or at least not to waste their time.

Thanks Erdogan for the photo.

it’s the little things…

12 Jan

We talk a lot about the big idea. I think 2011 might just be about the small stuff, and here are some of the small things that will make a big difference this year.
I copped some flak, reasonably enough, for not having articulated the importance of microfinance as a key trend for 2011.
This is a small way of making it up to you…

microvolunteering This may sound a little like the way that you never meet a fisherman who’s only caught small fish, and gaols are full of the innocent, but I had an idea a couple of years ago to create an online portal to connect marketing and advertising professionals with charity projects in need of their expertise.

How could I
resist…?

Luckily I never got around to doing anything to develop it, because The Extraordinaries have taken my big idea and made it…smaller, leaner and much cleverer.
Sparked combines two of the big motivators for marketing, techie and creative types: showing off, and showing off on our iPhones. Whenever you have a spare moment, contribute your brain power, offer advice, strategy, and micro-consultancy, as well as commenting on other people’s work – all this from the palm of your hand. The morning commute might just leave you feeling good for once. At present the database is largely US not-for-profits, but I am sure the net will widen as word spreads across the world.

micropayment for creators I heard about Flattr about six months ago, and I think I’m right in saying that the reason I’d entirely forgotten about it until Beaney reminded me today is because, like various other ventures with the utopian dream of paying people for the things they create and we enjoy, it hasn’t really taken off yet.

Perhaps we need to embrace the idea of the blogger as online busker. While Murdoch’s Times paywall may not have solved the issue of how we pay for online content, there are other avenues in need of exploration.
Shakespeare got to get paid, son. *shakes tin*

small kindnesses
A stranger smiles at you without agenda; you pay for the coffee of the person behind you in the queue; a teenager offers his seat on the bus to a shopper laden with bags; a kid takes an old man’s arm as he stumbles: these acts weave together to form community.
Cynics may argue that these are acts of self-interest, a long game of investments in the bank of society to be drawn against in the future, but I’d rather live pseudo-altruistically than the elbow-in-the-face, everyone for himself alternative.
The “social surprise” campaign by KLM is a neat demonstration of the return on investment from random acts of (marketing) kindness.  The campaign reached a million impressions – it’s clear that small gestures can get big results.

(Thanks to the Digital Buzz chaps).

micromeditation
Regular readers will know that I abhor the hackneyed, so please don’t attribute my conversion to the practice of meditation to my recent backpacking trip to a Buddhist country. That’d be a terrible cliché.
But if you consider that three minutes of inner peace might just be the biggest gift you could give yourself (and those poor sods who must endure your company), you might be able to get past it.  Find a quiet space, close your eyes and focus on the ebb and flow of your breath for a few minutes. Thoughts will clamour for your attention like a greedy toddler with ADHD, but try to simply acknowledge their presence and let them be.  Even three minutes of tranquillity can help.
Health warning: I’ve heard a tale of a Buddhist marketing person being counselled for substance abuse after her boss became suspicious of her disappearing to a toilet cubicle at times of intense stress and reappearing moments later radiating zen-like calm.

microfinance for not for profits
Depressingly enough, the dream of microfinancing seems to have lost some of its shine. Muhammad Yunus, one of the originators of the microfinance movement suggested that running these schemes to benefit the investers, rather than as a charity, would inevitably “turn do-gooders into loan-sharks”. Kiva and other NFP funds continue to do good work, but there’s an emerging school of thought that using technology in small ways could help more effectively – Gates’ Foundation is working on making access to banking systems affordable for all; other projects are recycling technical equipment for use in developing businesses, in an attempt to solve both the issue of landfill and deprivation.

It’s what happens at the micro level that shapes the macro, and these are the changes that are easiest to make.  Which is lucky if you’re shiny-eyed and idealistic but pretty bloody busy, actually, and somewhat inclined to laziness on your days off…

It’s a small world, after all.

we could be heroes…just for one day

15 Sep Coventry

I’m neither English nor a patriot. I’m the daughter of a Scottish man who has a genetic memory of rage against the Highland Clearances, and an English woman who lost her father after he suffered shellshock in WWII and “went Doollally,” in the parlance of the time. He abandoned my mother just after she was born and she never saw him again. I’m from Coventry, a forever ruined city which serves to remind anyone how truly Pyrrhic victory can be. Coventry

So it’s hard for me to identify with the patriotism of the English, and the fervent martial pride people often display on the anniversaries of wars.

Working on the 1940 Chronicle with RAFBF has been surprisingly transformative; I love the campaign, and it’s part of my job to promote it. But as we’ve been planning and strategising to help the wonderfully written words reach their audience, I’ve found that the stories have started to seep into my soul as much as the audience have begun to connect with these fictional characters and their very real situations.

The campaign was created around the idea of bringing historical events to life using new technologies, using the contemporary to make the past relevant; the characters blog and tweet the events of this day in 1940 as though they’d had access to iPhones and pcs and the like.

I’m almost ashamed to admit it’s the tech stuff that’s made these stories so real to me; I’ve heard eyewitness accounts from so many sources, but suddenly pieces fell into place. How very connected we are now, how very fortunate we are to live in a time when it’s both physically and culturally possible for us reach out to one another.

It’s helped me think differently about my grandfather, how terrifying he must have found it being tormented by dreams of explosions and screaming, feeling as though he was alone in the world with those horrors. My grandmother, keeping a stiff upper lip, knowing nothing, unable to imagine the things he’d seen. And my great aunt, tirelessly nursing the wounded, keeping cheerful and busy and waiting all the while for a letter delivered by boat, months late, to tell her he wasn’t coming back from the front.

I’m struck by the realisation of how very lonely I would find a life where my only possible human interactions were face to face; as much as I treasure solitude, it’s always a choice.

Even I draw the line at the idea of social media bringing about world peace, but maybe it’s not so outrageous. I found myself asking if World War Two could even have happened if there had been the possibility of sharing knowledge so widely and so fast? For example, Wikileaks genuinely seems to be affecting the direction of the war in Afghanistan, and a growing diversity of information sources certainly shifts popular opinion on the subject. Forgive my reducing something so large and complex to a dumb question, but can you remain in ignorance of the humanity of your fellow man when you’re connected to him, when you’ve seen what his house looks like, know you share a love of music or making people laugh? Is it simplistic to think that when we connect with something real and meaningful, constructs like nation and religion will begin to seem irrelevant?*

Language constraints and internet snark aside, could you really go to war with and be instructed to kill someone you follow on Twitter?  Could social technologies make conscientious objectors of us all?

Primo Levi said

Meditate che questo è stato Vi comando queste parole. Scolpitele nel vostro cuore
- Never forget that this has happened. Remember these words. Engrave them in your hearts.

Today is the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Britain. As part of the Day of Action, we’ve asked people to do one small thing to commemorate those heroes. This post is for everyone whose lives were touched by that war, with deepest gratitude and respect to those men and women who fought and suffered and died so that we could be free. And perhaps being a hero for a day will be the catalyst we need to become heroic every day.

*I know it is. But a girl can dream…

A Room of One’s Own: do women need separate spaces to flourish?

15 Mar

Sometimes it’s tough to be both a professional and a person.

Virginia Woolf suggested every woman needed a room of her own to write. To do our best work, perhaps we need our own space.  Yeats said it was a choice between

…perfection of the life, or of the work,
And if it take the second must refuse
A heavenly mansion, raging in the dark

Last week was an interesting one in terms of the resurgence of feminist debate.  March 8th was International Women’s Day, a day of celebration for women’s achievements, yet containing the implicit assertion that the remaining 364 days belong to men.

I support the celebration of great achievements regardless of gender, and can’t help but feel that by setting separate awards, days and so on, we perpetuate the notion that women’s accomplishments can’t be ranked alongside those of their male counterparts.  How constructive is it to maintain the sense of women needing special or at least different treatment?

I have no argument with, for example, women and men entering separate sporting events; it’s obvious our physical capabilities are different (last I heard, there were no male entrants in the ‘giving birth’ sweepstakes).  But when it comes to the cerebral, I fail to see why women are obliged to compete in the intellectual equivalent of the Paralympics.

Unlike many of my peers, I’ve been proud to call myself the apparently now dirty word ‘feminist’ for as long as I’ve been aware of the concept.  I believe absolutely in feminism, as defined by the purity and clarity of thought of early feminists like Wollstonecraft, and uncluttered by the political infighting and schisms of later wave feminism. The most workable definition I can provide is:

the recognition that men and women do not receive fair or equal treatment as a result of their gender, and the desire to change that situation

Anyone wishing to quibble with the first clause need only refer to recent figures proving that salaries still differ hugely between women and their male counterparts.  Anyone wishing to quibble with the second is probably not someone I’m going to waste my time engaging with or trying to convert.

I’m a passionate supporter and member of Girl Geeks for the simple reason that women involved with technology are still in the minority. Anecdotally and from personal experience I know it can be tough to flourish and be recognised in an environment where you’re the odd (wo)man out.  But what’s really important to me is that both women and men are welcome at GGD functions and invited to contribute regardless of gender.

There’s something really wonderful about being in a group of like-minded women, and I’ve certainly found that such an environment can be more supportive than a mixed gender equivalent.  But that’s all the more reason not to cloister ourselves away, but to bring these ostensibly ‘female’ skills to bear on every environment, every interaction, to the point that sharing, listening respectfully and encouraging the more inhibited to contribute will simply be a part of everyone’s “how to be human” toolkit.

That’s why I can’t be fully supportive of Social Media Women, although I remain a huge fan of its creators, fabulous women all.  Hang out and talk shop with whomsoever you please, but I baulk at the association, through both my gender and profession, with an formalised organisation that actively discriminates, positively or not.

Digital Citizens (which I help to organise) held its first event last week - I’m obviously biased, but I think it went pretty well (and we scored a FourSquare Swarm badge – quite the high point for me..)

I wasn’t keeping score, but I think the number of participants and contributors was roughly equal in gender terms, and I certainly felt I could express my point of view and be heard doing so.

Rebekah Horne of MySpace said recently that

for women to succeed in this industry, they need to work fifteen times harder than their male counterparts.

If we want this situation to end within our lifetimes, the answer is to cease to recognise gender as a factor in our work and social lives.

Leave it at home; in your bedroom, your shower, your dungeon or wherever you like, but it doesn’t belong here.

Owing your soul to the company store: does your employer own your Twitter account?

29 Jan

As I’ve discussed in the past, new social spaces and interactions are changing so fast that they force us to adapt and develop new protocols on the fly. One issue that has been hotly contested, and which has yet to be satisfactorily resolved is how we clearly delineate  between our personal and professional online personas, particularly those of us who both live and work on the web.

We still don’t have this anywhere near to being sorted. A recent post by Malkuth Damkar about the way in which Twitter makes celebrities of us all makes the point that people who would otherwise escape notice are often judged and gossiped about on Twitter in a way that’s disproportionate; as though by conversing publically, we’ve abandoned our right to privacy and respect. Not to mention the recent furore concering hapless British Twitterer Paul Chambers who jokingly threatened to blow up an airport ,then found himself jobless and facing criminal charges, which is an entirely separate can of worms.

Media and marketing website Mumbrella recently covered an exchange on Twitter between a journalist (of sorts) and the personal account of someone working in PR, as evidence of a sometimes tricky relationship between the two disciplines.

While naturally journalists often choose to ignore context and nuance for the sake of a good headline, this seemed a particularly unfair conflation of public domain and public interest.  The journalist has a relatively large public profile and is employed by a media organisation, arguably making her tweets our business; the other person is not – and public or no, her personal Twitter account exists independently of her employer.

It served as an excellent example of this rather messy grey area. I’ve personally hired people because of their significant digital presence – people who came to my attention because of the way in which they communicated online and their degree of influence. And I’ve been more than happy for these people to use their talents for the good of the company, for example by sharing content to their personal networks, using data gathered from their accounts etc.

By creating a social media usage policy that, reasonably enough, prohibited any mention of confidential or sensitive information, I could, as a boss, be reasonably sure my team were clear about what would be appropriate to share via both the corporate and personal accounts and allowed common sense to guide their behaviour in the grey areas on an ad-hoc basis.

But I think with hindsight I sometimes got it wrong. On one occasion I effectively muzzled a team member who had a long standing online stoush with another public figure, arguing that as he linked to the company website from his Twitter bio, this feud would reflect poorly on the company.  I now think that I should have suggested he remove the link, and made clear he was operating under his own auspices and his views were not shared by his employer.

Non-celebrities with large Twitter followings and extensive personal networks have generally developed them through communicating interesting content in an expressive manner, with a distinct voice and point of view.  Crucially, this influence is built up over time, not on the company dime.

By allowing employees to use their personal influence to share content, engage communities and achieve corporate objectives while simultaneously restricting the individual’s right to express a contentious view or enter into critical discourse, the company is attempting to have its cake and eat it.   Not only is this problematic from an ethical standpoint, but it’s also ultimately illogical: a toothless tiger can only maintain its edge for so long before the social network begins to sense inauthenticity and drift away.  I for one choose not to follow people I feel to be little more than an RSS yes-machine.

Drawing the line is essential. My suggestions – and this is a work in progress, subject to review and evolution – is that professional and personal accounts need to be separate. If you refer to your employer in your bio, your account is going to be inextricably linked to their profile, at least in public perception.  So don’t risk it.  Unless there’s a scenario in which your boss will compensate you for allowing the company to bask in your reflected glory – which could mean attributing a dollar value to influence, or specifically stating in your contract that your network is an asset the company will be able to use during the life of your contract with them – then be very wary of using your own account as another channel for sharing corporate content – whether on Twitter, Facebook or anywhere else. A profile that’s specifically you @your company might be one way of resolving this, or by using shared corporate accounts.

Because nobody wants to end up like Tennessee Ernie…

You load sixteen tons, and what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt.
Saint Peter, don’t you call me, ’cause I can’t go;
I owe my soul to the company store…

Everyday’s a schoolday: what I learned from Hopenhagen.

11 Dec

Last week I submitted a bid to be the HuffPost citizen journalist at Copenhagen.  All in all, it was rather a wild ride, beset by obstacles, weird moments, highs and lows…

I didn’t win, but I learnt a lot, very fast, which I think counts as a win overall.

This isn’t sour grapes – the guy that got the gig was so much more deserving of it than I (good luck David Kroodsma!) but knowledge is power, so I wanted to share my ‘key learnings’, (to use a hideous phrase aptly described as “what an ‘opinion’ becomes when spoken by an idiot“).

It’s scary out there.

I’ve often had a tendency to be impatient with consumer-facing companies who are reluctant to dip their toes into the ocean of the social web, taking the view that if as a brand, you’re already being talked about, like it or not, and a decision not to participate means you relinquish not only control but the ability to respond or learn.

However, my experience of effectively putting myself in exactly that position gave me a new appreciation for the fact that giving up control is a scary thing to do. The internet can be a hostile and terrifying place.  I got some negative comments on my Facebook profile, I got hate mail – ok, only one email, but that was one more than I’ve ever got before.  If you put yourself in the public domain and are aligned to a set of values, there is truly a perception that you’re fair game, that you lose your right to complain about and much less control what people think and say about you. And perhaps that’s fair – which is a thought to be explored elsewhere – but it had never really been brought home to me with such clarity before.  I’m a behind-the-camera person – to find myself stage centre, albeit in a very small way, was new territory, and I think it’s given me some insight that will help me do this on behalf of clients with greater sensitivity in the future.

Of course it was far from all bad -I was truly humbled by the volume of support and positivity I received. Thanks people; you’re amazing!

Usability Uber Alles

I heard from a number of people that they found the HuffPo voting process incredibly difficult to use.  You had to sign up an account to be able to register, but that was unclear; the ‘log in with Twitter’ function allowed you to log in but didn’t then count your vote unless you had a pre-existing HuffPo account linked to that Twitter profile; there were seven stages to get to register…in terms of usability it was nightmarish.

I’m inferring that this means hundreds of people who were perhaps less engaged would have fallen out early in the process.  If you like me and still found it a hassle, how much less likely is a stranger to bother completing the journey?

(Although my mum managed to vote, so perhaps we are spoilt and impatient internet people with unreasonable expections..?)

Cheats never prosper

There was a high level of vote spamming, a few contenders sabotaging other entrants’ videos by ranking them poorly and generally a fair bit of the sort of behaviour you’d expect from YouTube trolls rather than people on a mission to save the planet.  I was miffed, but while it certainly damaged my chances of making it to Copenhagen, the people responsible for the nefariousness didn’t win either, so while I’m a loser, I’m a loser with my principles intact.

Content really and truly is king

Australia was late to the Hopenhagen party, so I got my entry in on the day submissions closed and with only two days on the campaign trail before voting closed.

I made a rather hurried video and frankly, it wasn’t much cop. As you can doubtless tell, I’m rather awkward in front of the camera and my editing skills were rusty.  I had some last minute help from some kind and brilliant people but essentially, the film was pretty bad.  The concept was good – it’s an homage to an incredible Argentinian film (link pending) but it fell down at execution. What did that mean?  It meant that there was little or no way it could travel outside my network.  The votes I got were as a result of the goodwill and friendship of people I interact with on a personal level, but the moment the content left my own network, it failed.  Second tier networks relied on that next group’s personal influence, but this influence became weaker and weaker because it wasn’t backed up by something anyone wanted to share.

My asking my friend to vote for me is fine – people probably voted for me without needing to quality check the content – that’s how friendship works. But my friend then asking someone who doesn’t know me to vote is less compelling, and without something amazing to share (on top of the barriers to voting already outlined), there is no possibilty that my friend’s friend is going to pass on the message to their friends.  I forgot to press the ‘go viral’ button, if you will.

Let go

I learnt something I perhaps once knew but had forgotten: the heady, intoxicating joy and power of seizing the day, taking risks and daring to try. I’m a perfectionist by nature, and creating something sub-par and sending it out into the world with my name attached was genuinely painful. But on balance, without trying, I would never have learnt so much, been overwhelmed by the generosity and kindness of so many people, and on a more prosaic level, the message about climate change would not have travelled as far and wide as it did.  It was a clever word of mouth / social media campaign by Ogilvy: winning the competition was so much less important than getting people talking, hopefully inspiring them to think about climate change, take action, take back the power.  And in that respect, it was a resounding success.

Now all we need to do is save the planet…

Whatever you do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius and power and magic in it – Goethe

Especial thanks to Natalie, Dermot, Ky, Gavin, Barry and Felix

Hopenhagen – my hope

2 Dec

Hope. It’s such a small word for something so important.

Hope sustains us through the dark times; it’s what remains when all else is lost. It’s powerful yet fragile – when things go wrong we talk about our hopes being dashed, crushed, trampled upon…In a secular age when we laugh at superstition, we still cross our fingers, make a wish as we blow out our birthday candles and knock on wood.

Hopenhagen recognises that it’s the one emotion we all share; it’s at the heart of what it means to be human.

This campaign is so vital – the summit at Copenhagen is genuinely the most important meeting of our lives. And while few of us may be directly involved in the summit itself, or the decision making that will occur there, it’s up to all of us to make our voices heard, to stand up and be counted and ensure our leaders know we demand action – decisive, strong, affirmative action on the future of our planet.

I’m submitting my application to be Hopenhagen’s citizen journalist representative because I believe it’s my responsibility to get the message out, to make sure the important information reaches the wider world and to empower people to tell their stories and to demand change. I’ve been trying to take better care of my environment for a number of years now, but I’ve begun to realise just how dependent we all are on one another. There’s a bigger story to tell, many voices to be heard and thanks to the unprecedented reach and accessibility of new technologies and the power of the social web, we have the best chance yet of enabling the voices of the many to be heard by our leaders.

Through my involvement in the Tcktcktck campaign I’ve seen the potential for change when people across the globe make the decision to speak out on why it’s so crucial for us to act, and to act now, and we’re only at the start of our journey.

There are so many worthwhile organisations all striving to reach the same goal; TckTckTck, Vote Earth, Hopenhagen and many more, locally and globally. What really matters is not which group you lend your support to, or which petition you sign. What matters is that you add your voice, take action, reach out and tell someone else about it today.

We don’t have all the time in the world, and we can’t allow ourselves to be swayed by commerce, apathy or to be daunted by the sheer size of the task ahead. We know that the cost of action may be high, but the cost of inaction is unknowable; it’s a risk we can’t afford to take, for our own sake and the sake of future generations.

Hope is all that was left after Pandora unleashed the box of ills upon the world, to succour us and keep us going when it seems the way ahead is too tough. We none of us know exactly how climate change will impact us, but it is our duty to take responsibility for the planet, our effect upon it, and more than this, to make a choice about the kind of world we want to live in. I want to live in a world that cares; that makes decisions that will benefit the many, not the few; a world where we are united in our desire to make positive change in our lives.

This is my hope.

It would be absolutely amazing if you’d vote for me.  Thank you.

Why FourSquare is anything but…

24 Nov

FourSquare. In the immortal words of Thierry Henry, “let me break it down”.

FourSquare defines itself as “part friend finder, part social city guide, part nightlife game’.

The team claim that they “wanted to build something that not only helps you keep up with your friends, but exposes you to new things in and challenges you to explore cities in different ways.”

It’s a geosocial site (and application) which enables you to ‘check in’ at places and share details about your activity. More importantly – and this is what sets it apart from BrightKite et al -  it syncs info about local businesses to enable you to share your favourite places, give people tips about the things and places you love and create a to a to-do list based on the recommendations of friends and neighbours.

The opportunity for business is enormous, allowing brands to reward consumers who are advocates, to monitor, engage with and respond to users and to further cement consumer loyalty, e.g. offering you a free coffee if you check in at your local cafe four days in a row.

The B2C commercial imperative is obvious – can businesses afford not to have a presence on FourSquare?

The reason it’s so addictive – and will, I predict, become massive in Australia – is that it’s framed as a competition, with  just enough hipster credibility not to feel contrived.

You become the Mayor of a certain location by checking in there more frequently than anyone else, are given badges for particular activity (adding new places, spiked activity at night etc.) and user statistics are updated weekly on each city’s leaderboard (currently Likeomg, Warlach and I are amongst Sydney’s biggest hitters) – thus appealing directly to the ego and plugging in to our desire to be seen as influential, in the know, hyperconnected digital douchebags….

Rewarding users by offering them ultimately meaningless and arbitrary trophies demonstrates an extremely sophisticated understanding of the psyche of the early adopter/ digital native on the part of the creators.

It’s been hit by so much activity in Australia since its launch (in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne) on Friday that the servers needed to be upgraded, and I am still finding much of the functionality within the website is limited and buggy. It works like  a charm on iPhone though, which is after all where the heaviest use will occur.

Scoble says FourSquare is the next big thing, suggesting it’s as significant as the Twitter API release:

“It enhances your experience in each location. Check in at the Half Moon Bay Ritz and you’ll see tons of “tips” that people have left for you. Francine Hardaway, for instance, tells you where the best dog beachis. I tell you how to save $40 on smores. Other people tell you that Tres Amigos is the best Mexican place nearby”

This certainly looks like the first site developed for internet on the move that’s actually going to make it to the mainstream – the execution isn’t quite there yet but it seems to be well thought through at a strategic level, cleverly rationalised and with the key component -monetisation – built in from the beginnning.

FourSquare: pressing the “go viral” button any day now….


The Charter for Compassion: using our social media powers for good

16 Nov

I was honoured to be asked to participate in the Charter for Compassion short film in which a number of Australians gave their views on what compassion means to them. It was very rewarding to watch as social web tools were pressed into the service of doing good in the world, with no commercial objective.

More importantly, it was a genuinely humbling experience, not only because of the stories I heard during the filming, but also because thinking about the word and the concept made me realise how deeply held my belief in the importance of compassion is, how I often overlook this amidst the noise and distraction of my busy modern existence and how fervently I believe I need to act with compassion in order to feel a sense of ease and self-worth.

The brief connections and tiny interactions we carry out every day are charged with potential; each one is the chance to change someone’s life for the better. What I do at work is all about these moments of contact, and since I have no problem with the notion of “adding value” to interactions on behalf of a brand, or in a commercial context, why don’t I invest every single moment in my personal life with the same weight?

Because I’m tired, or preoccupied, or running late, because trying to understand why you’re being obnoxious is more effort than dismissing you, because if I give two dollars to this guy I’ll feel guilty for not doing the same to the next person who asks, because frankly I don’t like the look of you, because I’m having a irksome day…these are all reasons to not act with compassion.

But I want to live in a world where strangers smile at each other, where children don’t die of neglect in the middle of large cities, where we help isolated, damaged people rather than ignoring them, where we welcome outsiders into our communities, where we reach out with kindness to someone every single day of our lives. If I want to live in this world, I have to create it myself, and this is my commitment to doing that.  It’s not an avowal of sainthood, just a recognition that all good practice comes from mindfulness.

Because one day I might be down, and I hope you’ll be there to lift me up.

I was privileged enough to be interviewed along with some inspiring people:

In order of appearance, they are: Adriano Zumbo, (me), Dr Stephen Saunders, Neil Perry, Melissa Leong, Barry Saunders, Mitzi Macintosh, Mark Pollard, Julie Posetti, Venerable Sujato Bhikkhu, Gavin Heaton, Reverend Raymond Minniecon, Bronwen Clune, Reverend Bill Crews, Rabbi Mendel Castell, Graham Long and Tim Burrowes.

Learn more and affirm the Charter now at charterforcompassion.org.

 

Thanks to Natalie for inviting me to get involved.

Australians on Compassion from TED Prize on Vimeo.
The Charter is here:

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