Chris Heuer's Insytes

My girlfriend and I have been talking about how cool this idea really could be. I was worried about the content quite honestly, which is determined by those 3 things I mentioned – an idea, some focus and some structure – but more importantly, it is determined by participants.

As the first participant, I wanted to refresh an old idea I had whose time had come – The Noble Pursuit – evangelizing the fact that the world does not always need to be this way – that each and everyone of us can make change and improve our world with the unique gifts we possess. Just read it and comment on it – and if you do blog about it, tag it with ‘TheNoblePursuit’ so everyone can stay on top of your input and ideas.

I need to run, but wanted to mention that I set up a WIKI for BrainJams the other day, which is the type of event this would be (read my other post on this below). I now have registered web2point1.org and redirected it to the BrainJams site where we can all talk about how this might go down – please add your ideas there…

web+2.0 web2.0 web2.1 web2point1 web+2.1 citizen+media brainjam brainjams blogoposium1

It seems that big money and corporate interests are trying to seize stewardship of the overall concept of Web 2.0 – though the current Wikipedia article credits the folks at Web 2.0 Conference with coining the phrase, I understand it came from an authentic human being who will remain nameless until I get further validation on this. So perhaps I should not be too shocked at this.

But I was really shocked when I went to register for the Web 2.0 Conference and found that it cost $2,800 to attend. This means that most of the real movers and shakers of this movement are not going to be there – which might be fine considering it is geared at a different audience and has a different purpose than a Gnomedex or BarCamp event. As a friend mentioned the other day, the leaders who will be there are either going because they are speaking, they received a comp pass from John or Tim because they are FooCamp worthy or because they are backed by VC’s who are ponying up the cash (of course traditional multinational corps will also be willing to pay up).

As an unfunded Web 2.0 startup, without the juice to merit a comp pass, I wont be there

So I have been thinking about trying to organize a BarCamp styled BrainJam for the rest of us who are in the trenches of this next wave. It is time for us to seize the reins of the evolution ourselves – it is time for us to let those big money interests have the Web 2.0 – it is time we launched Web 2.1

I can’t imagine a better way to seize it back than to organize a BrainJam that focuses on how we can put the consumer back into the center of consumer generated content and restructure this movement. Let’s look at and define some of the goals we all want to see happen – let’s empower each other with the knowledge necessary to make it happen – let’s bring technology people together with business people and have a meeting of the minds to set the true north on our compass. This is not exclusionary in any regards – there is even room for traditional media as a participant, but they are just networks of individual citizen journalists/writer/editors rather than the gate keepers of truth and knowledge and passion. As I have often said, an idea, a focused question, some minimal structure and some bright minds can result in massive and positive change.

I propose we put together a Web2point1 Conference for next Friday October 7, 2005 somewhere here in San Francisco. We can charge $2.80 for people to attend – providing 1000x the take away value for 1/1000th of the cost – a factor of a million times better than Web 2.0. While Barry Diller won’t be attending our BrainJam, the next Barry Diller just might be… The minimal structure will focus on the question “What do we need to do with the technology to get to the future in which we want to live? What does that future really look like?” Separate working sessions could address certain aspects of the problem. This structure is merely a suggested starting point for pre-BrainJam discussion – ultimately the focus will be decided upon by the participants.

I can’t do this alone, so I need your help. We need a space with open WiFi, organizers and bodies – we need to mobilize as soon as possible. We also need some sponsors to pony up some green to cover basic expenses, any profit will be donated to the Internet Archive (though I would not expect profitability from something like this, it would be nice to think in that direction at least). Perhaps the folks at TechCrunch might be interested in helping to organize this?

Is anyone else out there interested in making this real???

When I switched to my Tivo last night I was captivated by a circa 1950’s black and white game show on GSN which turned out to be “Beat The Clock”. I was struck by how much the emerging media of that era (the television) was absolutely driven by marketing. This is seemingly in stark contrast to the current rise of Citizen Media, though not as completely as one might be inclined to think. The leading forms of televised media consumed back then were Game Shows, Soap Operas, News, Acting, Performance (some live) and Variety programs.

It was at the time a natural and necessary fit between media and marketing. Producing media was an expensive proposition over the relatively open communication conduit of the air waves. Excepting FCC licenses and regulation, at least the air through which the transmission traveled was free, though there was a considerable expense in transmitting (transmissions towers are analagous to hosting infrastructure) and receiving (televisions are analagous personal computers). And of course, cameras and related equipment were all relatively new technologies.

We like to think of the Interent and Web 2.0 media as being zero cost and therefore available to all citizens. But this is not entirely true. There are costs to producing and consuming Internet based media. Beyond the time investment, individual’s need to be educated on the means of production. Surely, the cost is lower since so many free sources of learning are available online, but this is presuming the individual has a PC. Unlike most of us promoting the next wave of technological change, most people don’t have PowerBooks, but surely, more people do have something since the entry cost has dropped considerably. But then we need to consider the cost of cameras, both still and video. Then of course there is the access/connectivity fees. If the individual is successfull in creating popular media that reaches a broad audience, they then face the ominous need to fund the increasingly complicated organizational effort required for production and distribution.

Ultimately this success can lead to a switch from free hosting to a more robust hosting infrastructure. This brings forth a critical need for money which can only come from a few sources – personal wealth, charitable contributions of others, a patron, a non-profit organization or it can be handled by turning the media production into a business. If the latter avenue is taken, the business operations can be financed by investors for a short time while operating at a loss, but ultimately, it is necessary for any business operation to take in revenue.

For Consumer Generated Media the revenue can come in a combination of different forms. This is where things get really interesting. For the first time in media history, marketing is not required in order to fund the distribution of content. This allows many to operate free of the influence of other’s, particularly free of powerful, potentially coercive force of multi-national corporations, resulting in a stronger sense of trust for the source and their message.

Subscription revenues are possible, but not often sought in the interest of reaching a broader audience with the message. That is of course excepting those who have a unique filter or proprietary technology which has broadly recognized value differentiation. But in the age of open source, particularly with the advent of Web 2.0, the technology is not proprietary. Instead it is open, largely free and standardized. The means for accepting charitable contributions is easily built right into the media itself. I am not too sure of the success of current “shareware” styled media/content efforts, but I do know from attending WebZine2005 that LiveJournal was originally funded in this way, so it is certainly possible. But eventually, as the need for operating cash grew, so did the need for new ways to acquire it.

Ok, I could continue down that deep tangent for a while, but the real point here is that most consumer generated media will not garner that level of poularity so as to require it be operated as a business, but it can become the major source of media for most of society. With cable/satelite channels becoming more granular and niche oriented (like the Game Show Network and The Military Channel) the natural progression is the often talked about “long tail” of media segmentation (ok, its the Pareto principle, but I feel compelled to address it thusly) down to the level of the individual. Of course, this has been the promise of the Internet for some time now – what has really changed is the level of knowledge and skill required to use the tools and the wide spread availability of free or low cost publishing using tools we already own and new services/software.

In this emerging era of Web 2.0 media, marketing dollars do not necessarily buy the ability to influence, inform or persuade any longer. This socio-economic disruption makes the Tivo debate in the marketing community pale by comparison, but it has not yet been elevated to the level of discourse we should expect. This disruption should be the demarkation point for a tectonic sized shift in the global concept of marketing – one that is driven by the “do no evil” mantra and an understanding that increased sales is not always what is best for the orgnaization or society.

For the past few years, I have called this Conversational Marketing – reaching out to those who are talking about areas of interest to the organization. I now realize that the conversation is only one channel of communication and not the focus.

The future for marketing is the future of our society. As we move from the information economy into the experience economy and beyond, we stand at the dawn of the Knowledge Economy. The future is Knowledge Marketing…

(to be continued…)

web+2.0 web2.0 consumer+generated+media knowledge+marketing the+communications+strategy

I had started this post yesterday with an Insyte that joyfully sprang from one of those great “A-HA” moments but did not get to finish it. Last night’s TechCrunch BBQ / Meetup only further cemented the ascendance of this meme like trend. (Photos of event on Flikr)

Lacking a better term for the nature of these events, I like to call them ‘BrainJams’ – kind of the Web 2.0 replacement for all those out of control parties of the dotcom boom. Rather than focusing on business development and manufactured press releases though, BrainJams focus on the meat of the matter – an open source sort of collaboration manifested in the real world. Andy Smith and his amazing group of friends who created BarCamp deserve a lot of credit for kind of launching this significant social shift.

The format is definitely the best part – kind of loose and self organizing, with a few directed elements of structure that make all the difference. To the point I debated to semantic concession last night with Jonathan over at Mosuki there are some very primary forms of structure that make all the difference when applied within a system. In this case the influence of a basic open presentation format coupled with the directed interests of the group makes this a knowledge networking event more than a social networking event (aka shmoozefest).

Much as I believe the shift in the naming of Insytes to replace Comments is a powerful deployment of linguistic intention, I believe calling these form of events BrainJams focuses the energies and intentions of the participants towards the right sort of knowledge sharing and networking that will indeed make this world a better place by sharing our best practices and Insytes wtih one another for the benefit of everyone. Perhaps it is time to re-read Tim Sanders’ Love is a Killer App and re-visit some of those principles with this new context.

Are these the first signs of a return to the Salons of old with a new twist, or is it just a typical sign of the resurgence of passion amongst technologists, enterpreneurs and venture capitalists? I think this time is quite a bit different…

Influenced by the general principles of open source, people are more openly sharing their knowledge with each other – and that is the single most important facet of the Web 2.0 – open collaboration across multiple disciplines and across the boundaries of organizations. This is largely driven by the desire to “do it right” and make a difference by more effectively collaborating with people who utilize the technology, with partners and even with potential competitors to a certain degree. In other words, the actualization of the long promised benefits of the Internet and Interactive communications in general.

It certainly seems like a lot more events like this will be happening much more frequently so I went ahead and registered the domain and created a Wiki over at JotSpot where we might be able to talk about this more and work on a centralized calendar of events.

I was watching some Sci-Fi channel last night when I got one of those Tivo interactive thumbs up commercials – where an icon appears on the screen during a traditional 30 second spot and by pressing the green thumbs up button, it pauses live TV and takes you to a longer commercial which has been pre-downloaded to your hard drive. This is something I have seen before, mostly for automotive ads, though I did see a pretty cool extended trailer for Stealth (waiting for Netflix on that one). This time though, it was a move called “Serenity”.

I often click through to the ads not because I am interested in the material in so much as I am interested in supporting Tivo and making sure they stay around – that and I am just waiting for something innovative to be done with the technology. This ad was more interesting for the content than the technology. I have seen the Serentity trailer on TV for the last couple of weeks and honestly thought this movie was just a dog – after seeing the extended commercial I am not yet convinced otherwise, but I am intrigued.

The Stealth trailer, and other ones that use the Tivo extended format are often just typical trailers. For Serenity however, they emphasized the excitement of those who attended the pre-screenings and showed very little of the movie. Apparently the storyline for this movie is an extension of a cult favorite TV show called Firefly that was cancelled after only a dozen or so episodes several years ago. The pre-screenings all sold out around the country in just a few minutes, driven by a net campaign to the core fan base – some of whom apparently drove hundreds of miles to get to a screening.

The Insytes provided by the movie goer during exit interviews after a screening is something we have seen for a long time, but this felt different. It has long been my contention that the exit interview is a form of blogging in which the medium of distribution becomes either a trailer or part of the nightly news via television. It is also one of the strongest ways to get on the radar screens of the core parts of the targeted demographic – the logic is simple, if I am a 30 something sci-fi geek who likes Renaissance Fairs (disclaimer: I am not) and I see someone like me on TV who I can identify with, I am more likely to take their word or reccomendation and therefore be influenced. In the 2 minute extended Tivo commercial, we saw 20+ people who are perfect specimens of the core audience divulging their core Insytes as to why they loved the Firefly series and this movie. Surprisingly though, there were more pre-movie interviews that post. Still, I expect the campaign will be one of the most effective ever on Tivo in terms of its impact on first week ticket sales.

The most interesting thing in the whole commercial for me was what the writer/director Joss Whedon had to say about his writing:

“I do this not to make things that people like – its only to make things that they love. I write for a moment when you just go – ‘oh god, I needed to see that’.”

— Joss Whedon

Wow, what a great driving force – this is a philosophy I plan on adopting in many aspects of my personal and professional life and perhaps one reason I will end up seeing the movie in theatres if any of my friends ever want to see it… but then again, most of my friends are probably not interested so I will look forward to adding it to my Netflix que in a couple of months.

I wish more people in the south had this (or find this) cando attitude:

“We were literally fending for ourselves,” Warr says. “Sitting in a well complaining because no one will throw you a rope is not going to get you anywhere. Instead, you climb out. You hope someone gives you a hand and pulls you. But either way, we’re getting out of the well.

Is there anyway the people of New Orleans can do a recall vote on this guy? Someone please help the city out and get this guy out of office. I saw a short portion of his comments this afternoon and am just amazed at the silly things this guy says and does. A few examples here on MSNBC.

Since last night I have been wondering about where that $200 Billion is going to end up (in the pockets of crooked Southern politicians and big MNC’s is the best bet so far). Then this morning I read an article on MSN

Many New Orleans evacuees won’t return

Fewer than half of all New Orleans evacuees living in emergency shelters here said they will move back home, while two-thirds of those who want to relocate planned to settle permanently in the Houston area

Unforutnately many people down there have nothing left (not that they had much before) so this is a chance to start over. Perhaps some new government prorgrams will help them get above the poverty line (I pray it does) and find new job opportunities. But what this tells me more than anything else is that there really needs to be some more planning on a lot of this before we should proceed with spending Billions of dollars in the wrong direction.

What we have is a real dilemma because people need help now and we should move fast, but if we move too fast we can really screw it up worse than it is. If we take too much time planning, this will just screw up people’s lives so we need to be careful about that as well.

I wish we had some sort of open eGovernment collaboration system where the people and the government could share ideas and vote and see clearly where all the money for these efforts are being spent. This is the one thing that might make it all tenable for those of us who will be paying the bill…

George Will wrote in NewsWeek

In 1651, in “Leviathan,” Hobbes said that in “the state of nature,” meaning in the absence of a civil society sustained by government, mankind’s natural sociability, if any, is so tenuous that life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” Thoughtful conservatives—meaning those whose conservatism arises from reflections deeper than an aversion to high marginal tax rates—are conservative because they understand how thin and perishable is the crust of civilization, and hence how always near society’s surface are the molten passions that must be checked by force when they cannot be tamed by socialization.

At the moment, it feels like the physical devastation of Katrina may pale in comparison to the detrimental impact it has on our country for years to come in terms of internal conflicts and our interactions with the rest of the world. But I am optimistic – this is still an opportunity for us to do more than just rebuild New Orleans and other parts of the south – perhaps it really is time for the dawning of the age of aquarius and love will win out over hate, but only time and the direct actions you and I take each day will tell.

Still, I am hopeful that those in charge may hear not just the loudest voices, but also may hear some of the smallest and respond appropriately all across this great land of ours.

Looks like more people are finding out the details of how the local and state government screwed over the citizens. Not racism by federal government, but incompetence and bad decision making on the state and local level.

Please read this CNN piece and watch the accompanying video

Even Jon Stewart took issue with Mayor Nagin. On The Daily Show last night they aired a clip called “The Little Fuckers” during which Tim Russert on Meet the Press asked Nagin why all of those school buses went unused. Nagin’s telling answer to the question – “that is an issue that will be debated” – Stewart’s reparte’ “most likely by whoever defeats me in the next mayoral race”.

In the same clip Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA) said that “most mayors in this country have a hard enough time getting their people to work on a sunny day, let alone trying to evacuate their city in the face of an oncoming storm”.

On Newsweek, there is a firsthand comprehensive account of how the disaster unraveled that is a must read for anyone worried about this issue. Included in this piece is a quote from someone in the Governor Blanco’s office that “She wouldn’t know the 82nd Airborne from the Harlem Boys’ Choir”

At BarCamp2005 I felt pretty alone in my defense of business practices that offer the same product at different prices to different consumers – citing the traditional process of coupons in a Kasparov inspired defensive move – but I am shocked at what just happened with regards to a conversation I just had with Network Solutions concerning the transfer of a .org domain name. In defense of my earlier position, I was primarily referencing the practice at Amazon where I personally experienced a price drop after reviewing a product several times over the course of a month.

During the call with Network Solutions however, the CS rep asked why I was transferring and to whom. Since the request is seemingly transparent I told the rep that I would be switching to BulkRegister because of the huge disparity in pricing (approx $10 per year vs. $35 for NetSol). He then proceeded to tell me that BulkRegister’s lowest price was $8.99 per year and offered me a deal to stay wtih NetSol for only $9.99 for any renewals.

WHOA! $25 less per year just because I am moving the domain? They did not mention that in any of the renewal emails they have sent over the last few months? Had they done so, I might have renewed with them rather then going through the hassle of transferring. But then again, I have never expected much from Network Solutions. Why the massive discount offer this time? Was it merely because it was the last line of defense for future revenue? Was it because I am a very early user (first NetSol domain I registered was in 1994 and my handle for those of you who know about such things is CH184)? Was it because I am a VIP member?

Whatever their motivation, I am interested in hearing similar experiences from other disgruntled Network Solutions customers and those who have also experience such shocking pricing inequities.