Improv Conference/Visting New York

Over at Applied Improv Network, I've posted the planned programme for our Conference in New York, September 29-October 2.

It should be a really good event, combining some pre-prepared presentations with Open Space for people to create conversations in the moment. A step towards unconferencing.

One of the sessions that particularly interests me is this one: Performing the Brand: Using Applied Improvisation to Build Authentic Internal and External Brands with On Your Feet and other Celebrity Guests. More details on this have yet to be added but I think it will be fascinating. I'm planning to show up there with some insights from our Open Sauce workshops. Branding types can book just for this day if they like.

This means I'll be in NY this fall and James and I are planning to run an Open Sauce Live there in early October, details to be confirmed later.

Lloyd says it better than I did

A propos the Blogging - a real conversation? conference, Lloyd Davis takes up my request to write down what he said during my talk.

He claims to have a "rambling, inarticulate style". And in the next paragraph, he writes this!

I blog because I want to understand who I am and make better choices about who I want to be. I see life as an endless process of self-discovery and self-definition. When I blog, I say "This is who I am today, this is what I've done and this is what I think about it". I then invite you to reflect on that and to add your experience. Both these acts, of me expressing myself and then seeing what comes back help me to remember better who I really am and how I wish to present myself to the world.

An important point here is that I cannot do all of this inside my head. I have tried (for about 35-40 years) and it doesn't work for me. My experience has been that I have to get it out. I have to instantiate the idea, to make it real, visible to the world, sometimes tangible, other times more ephemeral, but real nonetheless. Then other people can kick it around; help me to see the holes; share their experience of similar things; judge me, if they must; hopefully have a laugh along the way. But most importantly encourage me to continue to articulate what's inside.

I can do all of this in 'meatspace'. In fact it's vital that I do - nothing has changed my life more than improving my ability to connect to other human beings. But blogging gives me the opportunity to take it further - to express my thoughts and receive feedback from a global, self-selecting and hugely diverse group of people, whom I would never otherwise have met (and most of whom I never will meet face-to-face.

Fab. I also liked his summary of Adriana:

Two marketing roads: one to ShoutLouderopolis and the other to the lovely village of Engagement Parva - take the pretty way, please.

Chasing Birds

From Bernadette Doyle's Client Magnets newsletter

A metaphor that I often use to describe the Client Magnets approach is the image of two boys in a garden. One of them is frantically chasing after birds; the other just stands still holding out birdseed in his hand and waits. Instinctively, most of us recognise that the latter will be more successful. Yet most sales and marketing techniques involve some form of chasing with the net result that prospective clients are scared away.

Nice post

Jory des Jardins' mum likes her latest post (see the comments). And so do I. Living Without a Net: An Odyssey into Self-Employment (Part XVII): On Defining Success, and Allowing Oneself to Have It Here's a snippet:

I imagine that this different feeling I have is residual energy shored up by being passionate about the work I'm doing - energy I'm not spending dredging up interest in the menial tasks that I'd attracted before soloing; the energy I once spent attending events, following up with people that I wasnt particularly interested in, or who weren't interested in me but that I pursued just in case, more to hedge my bets in case I eventually figured out what I was passionate about.

Any cutting questions ?

After some nice reviews of my podcast interview with Liam Mulhall of Blowfly, James and I will soon be interviewing Thomas Mahon of English Cut. It should be interesting. If you've any suggestions for questions, please email me or comment below.

More on Blogging - a new conversation?

What's great about conferences with lots of bloggers is that out of the ether come some great notes of the speeches - which generally means I can fully indulge my own preference for writing nothing down. It also means I can report most of what was said by pointing you to the excellent reports of Paul Goodison, Lloyd Davis and Suw Charman. (Disclosure: Sue and Paul scratch my back too). On top of that, Lloyd has put up a wiki for more feedback and he's going to add a podcast of the whole show.

But here's a digest of the digests...

Steve Bowbrick did a great job of minimalist chairing, hosting a lively discussion and managing the time carefully and not overbearingly.

Adriana Cronin-Lucas put forward a neat formula for marketers:

bias + transparency = credibility

Essentially, no-one expects a marketer to be neutral but please don't write about yourselves as if you're an objective observer. (Example of what not to do here) It tied in well with Suw Charman's concise and elegant unpicking of the idea of objectivity. (To see what I mean about elegant, check her mindmap.)

Rafael Baer (online editor of the Observer) gave a good low-down on how journalists understand/misunderstand blogs (Paul's post covers this) and was great in the Q and A sessions. I enjoyed his observation that the under 30s in Iran are all surfing the net for porn and that this is a pretty good clue as to their long-term preference for authority.

As Paul also says, Sabrina Dent used a great metaphor of "idiot" bees dancing to illustrate how blogging works. When a lone bee finds a food source, it does a wiggle dance. More bees join in and wiggle with enthusiasm scaled to quality of the food. Central point: if you look at a bee dancing or blogger writing in isolation, you miss the point entirely. It's the interaction of bees/bloggers that's interesting. No puns about Buzz marekting, please.

Mike Beeston had a nice historical perspective that reminded me of Ben Hammersley's speech at Reboot. Central point: the instantaneous nature of today's technology makes the creation of communities (and maybe revolutions?) significantly easier than in bygone days. But the basic urge to organise to challenge disrespected authority has been a feature of human life throughout history.

Good stuff.

Authority and unPresenting

I enjoyed the mini-conference, Blogging - a new conversation? yesterday.

Whose authority?

I was supposed to talk about whether blogs were "the new source of authority". This gave me an excuse to show this memorable clip of the last speech of Romanian Dictator Nicolai Ceausescu, just before his downfall. He addresses an apparently well-marshalled crowd of supporters... which quite suddenly turns against him. I used it to illustrate the pitfalls of a certain kind of authority, the sort that can collapse quite dramatically. (This reflects a comment made by David Weinberger at Reboot, that farce is what you get when former authority figures are the last to know they has lost their power).

I talked about an alternative view of authority to that of the external expert or dictator. This is the authority of people who acknowledge that they are the authors of their own experience. This is the transition that the crowd makes in this video - they decide to make their own meaning instead of being given one.

The desire for this kind of authority may account for why, in our allegedly time-starved times, millions of people find the time to write blogs that most of them expect few people to read: they write not because they expect to change the world, but because it's satisfying simply to acknowledge their own experience.

Now being the author of your own experience can also lead to madness. You could say Ceausescu was way too stuck in his own authoring. And that's where the social links of blogs come in, to create the potential for some shared meaning making, which is, I suppose, what communities do.

unPresenting

I treated my speech as an experiment in unPresenting (which may tie in with Doc Searls' advocacy of unConferences) The trouble with standard presentations is they set the speaker up to be a mini-Ceausescu, and the audience to be like oppressed Romanians. The speaker takes the apparently respectful silence of the audience as an encouragement to carry on. There's a bit of feedback missing (unless they read an IRC back channel) and while this format rarely leads to violent overthrow and revolution, it may set everyone up for an unsatisfying experience.

So I decided to make little preparation for my effort, other than to blog something about the idea of authority and pick up a few ideas from the response, and getting hold of the Ceausescu video. (Thanks to James for finding it). My intention was to set myself up to be in the present (aah, possibly a different slant on the meaning of the present in presenting) and spontaneous, and trust that the audience would somehow cope.

After a few minutes, I asked a rhetorical question, something like, "So what does this all mean?". The point of a rhetorical question is that the speaker knows the answer and plans to tell the audience - a way of staying apart from the audience. Only, in that moment, I drew a complete blank. I realised I had no idea what the meaning was just at that point. On the traditional model, this is exactly why it's vital to prepare and show up with a deck of slides. But on the unPresenting model, this is the best bit: when the speaker - ie me -joins the audience in not knowing what will happen next.

What actually happened? Some folks in the audience came up with some good responses to the question (perhaps they didn't notice it was rhetorical), especially Lloyd Davis I hope he blogs what he said [UPDATE: He just did]. And I felt that my presentation mutated towards a conversation. Apparently, some people looking at me thought this was all a masterful trick. But the reality is that at best I found a way to be comfortable with my uncertainty, and didn't feel the need to burble on to cover up! And the silence was not replaced by chaos but by some great thoughts from the audience. [UPDATE: Wow. Now I've listened to Lloyd's MP3 of it, I was shocked at how short the silences actually were, compared to how long they felt to me. And boy do I talk fast... Hmm, more to learn here Johnnie]

Is this the only way to present? No, and all the speakers found ways to connect with the audience, and to introduce informality and engagement.

And I plan to repeat the experiment.

Making music or nicking cars... and what it means for brands

Alan Moore has an excellent post: Good for business - good for schools Here's how it begins.

This is what Jupiter's website says

Since 1930 the JUPITER company has been dedicated to helping schools and culture. This simple definition still represents the primary goal of the JUPITER brand today.

To that end Jupiter have been involved in a project called SoundStart

SoundStart began in September 2001, when 30 young pupils from Elmwood Primary School in Croydon became the first to try this unique musical experiment. Unlike most music tuition that takes place outside the classroom, Soundstart takes a whole class from beginner to concert in one term. Jupiter brass and woodwind and their UK distributor Korg UK, working with Croydon Music Services, gave each child an instrument of their choice a wide range from flutes to saxophones, some of which the children had never seen or heard before.

And the benefits.... well, as one child explained "Do you realize if we weren't doing this music project we could be out nicking cars?".

Alan celebrates this as an example of the sort of things more organisations need to do to create real engagement with customers, and I agree. Just take a moment and compare the emotional impact on you of this story compared with that of your average advertisement; indeed compare it with the impact of your favourite advertisement.

A walk in London

I had brunch with a friend from New York, Steve Harrington, yesterday.

We swapped facilitation stories, and had a go at one of my favourite improv activities - two person drawing - see left. Steve talked about fear and fascination: when I'm doing something that truly engages me (like facilitating) I will often experience a mixture of these emotions - and growth happens when fascination leads me to take risks to explore new territory. So much really valuable learning happens outside our comfort zone. I also think a lot of training fails when the trainer settles inside his or her own comfort zone rather than sharing the adventure with participants.

We also wandered into Speakers' Corner. A wild marketplace of ideas. I loved the contrasts, for example between the speakers with huge crowds and those with none. I quite liked the approach of the guy I incompetently photographed (right) who simply wandered round with a sandwich board saying "It's now or never, come listen to me, I'm very clever, I know everything." (Another late-middle-aged gentleman walked around claiming the secret to eternal youth). Perhaps not a million miles from the variety in the blogosphere.

5th to 4th

James takes a day trip to the Fourth Estate.

However, it's the interaction between blogs that makes them so interesting and influential. A single blog can be akin to a ranting madman on the corner. However, when linked together into massive intertwining communities they have the vibrancy and passion of an enormous street market, with information, opinions and whispers exchanging hands at light speed.

Fourth and fifth estates

James spotted this interesting article from the Observer on the LA Times Wikitorial incident: Internet's new wave proves hard to catch. I liked this observation about mainstream media's relationship with bloggers:

The fourth estate likes to think of itself as maverick. It is the gadfly that exists to prick the vanities of power. This mythology of journalism does not have room for a fifth estate that is more maverick and exists to prick the vanities of the media.

Work and university

Rob Paterson writes

I want to go back to the best of work and to the best of university.

Sounds like a plan.

Moonlighting with Chris Corrigan

I've just finished a chat over Skype with Chris Corrigan. I wanted to pick his brains on a facilitation project I'm running. Chris was on his deck on Bowen Island, watching the late night water taxi arrive from Vancouver, and seeing the harvest moon rising. In between giving me some great ideas for my project, Chris interspersed some audio commentary on what he was seeing - which was a sort of one minute vacation for me.

Clearly there was some sort of minute meme running as Chris gave a great example of how rules can support creativity, as in the radio show Just a Minute. A few simple rules for talking for one minute, producing decades of entertainment.

It was good to hear Chris enthusing about Open Space, a facilitation approach that uses a few simple principles to generate remarkable results. It's about passion bounded by responsibility, in which participants are effectively asked what do you really care about? and why don't you take care of it?. Open Space and Improv are approaches that share this favouring of simple rules to bound creative learning.

Chris also had some interesting things to say about spotting the difference between hands-off leadership and neglect. The challenge for a hands-off leader, who doesn't want to micromanage, is to set some clear boundaries for people to work within, to create some banks for the river to flow in. I don't suppose many of us immediately think of Nicholas Parsons as a leadership archetype, but maybe we should think again?

Blowfly Podcast

James Cherkoff and I have had some interesting email conversations with Liam Mulhall, a co-founder of Blowfly Beer. Last night, I was able to interview him in Sydney, via Skype, to find out more about his story.

17m 50s podcast, 16.2MB MP3

RSS feed for iPodder etc.

Blowfly is a beer whose marketing is inspired by Open Source (Liam's background includes a period with the Linux consultancy, Red Hat). He explalns how they created an open source model to create demand for their beer by word of mouth - a David and Goliath tale of using networking to challenge the brewing duopoly in Australia.

Here's how it runs...

0.22 Liam explains how Blowfly started - from his time working at Red Hat. He saw how a lot of the benefits of Open Source worked - it's where a lot the ideas for the brewery came from

1.03 Developing open source beer. A challenge to the duopoly on brewing in Australia and the search for new ways to bring a beer to market. Thinking about consumer interaction with the advent of Big Brother. Combining getting the word out the open source way with the principle of getting the consumer involved in developing the product. It started as a marketing experiment.

3.35 90% of things they tried didn't work. It was stick-at-itness that made it work. Making sure you woke up every morning and kept trying, and involving the consumer at every stage. They didn't actually expect it to work and they didn't do a lot of conventional things to succeed.

5.35 You've got to keep moving (reference to Madonna and continuous reinvention) and really listening to customers. We've gone away from selling a proprietary product to custom-made and customer-made product. People can create their own brand of beer using Blowfly as the source. A kind of mass customisation.

7.25 Offering shares in the company to people who buy the beer. The need for physical ownership, not just emotional ownership. Getting a share in the company for buying or recommending Blowfly.

8.40 How Blowfly has created stories to appeal to different media - a business story, a retailing story, a marketing story. Building a million dollar business for a product that didn't exist from a company they'd never heard of. Playing David and Goliath, mocking the big players in the beer industry. Lifting the bonnet off the car, showing how much it costs to make beer. Being willing to be controversial.

10.58 It's not about the beer, it never has been.. we don't talk about the brewery, it's more about branded entertainment.

11.20 How the other breweries have responded to Blowfly's success - in fact it can be a collaborative relationship.

12.12 Doing beer for Yahoo, Columbia Tri Star, Paramount Pictures, MTV - often as a result of introductions from the two big breweries. How that relationship may change if Blowfly grows.

13.20 Wanting to continue with the Open Source business model, it's where the future is. We ended up in the beer business by accident, we really shouldn't have done it!

14.00 On not having a business plan... the busness plan is a fluid moving thing dictated by the customer. How the customers are central to their success.

15.11 The attitude of "hey, it's beer, people won't die without having it." It sort of liberates you, puts things in perspective.

15.35 What other markets could benefit from an Open Source approach? Digital radio and financial services.

17.15 Liam asks for anyone who'd like to bankroll his next venture to contact him at blowfly.com.au

Listen here.

UPDATE: Virtual viral brewery to list ZDNet Australia: "A 'virtual brewery' started by former employees of Red Hat and Computer Associates could be listed on the Newcastle Stock Exchange by the end of the year."

Blogging and Authority

Just a reminder, in case you're interested, that I'm on a panel for Blogging: A Real Conversation? next week. Despite my own admittedly flippant description of what I'll talk about, I think it should be an interesting event. Suw Charman is going to be talking about declining reverence for objectivity, and Adriana Cronin-Lucas is going to talk about breaking the marketers' toolbox so I may settle for nodding in vigorous agreeement.

I think I might ask what we mean by the notion of authority. Often we see authority as being outside ourselves and one of the ways blogging helps to change that is to support the blogger in being the author (note those syllables) of his or her own experience. By writing a blog, we take the opportunity to express our own experience and arguably acknowledge it more. Perhaps we can value blogs not simply because some popular ones become a rival external authority to mainstream media, but also because the act of writing them is a way for anyone to take some authority of their own. If that's not too fancy a philosophical point.

Anyway, if you have £60 to spare and want to come along on 28th June, I'll see you there!

UPDATE: I like the way Paul Goodison riffs on this theme.

Market research pratfalls

Tom Hamilton had me laughing this morning with this comment.

I spent much of yesterday travelling from London to Leeds and back by train, and on the return journey I was handed a market research questionnaire for me to fill in to tell GNER what I thought of various aspects of their service. It included the following question:

Please tell us how far you agree with the following statements about GNER catering:
1) GO EAT from GNER provides fresh local food.

Local food? I'm on an intercity train. I'm travelling hundreds of miles at high speed. I have no idea what it would mean to say that the food I've bought in the buffet car is local (from Yorkshire? from London? from somewhere in between?); I'm inclined to assume that it isn't local, or that even if it was five minutes ago it isn't any more; and I don't care.

He also points to Chris Dillow's related post containing this coverage from The Times of another case of the perils of market research:

Unveiling the final episode of the current run yesterday, Russell T. Davies, the writer, revealed that pre-transmission market research suggested that the BBC was heading for a £10 million disaster. He said: The research found that no one wanted to watch Doctor Who. Kids said it was a programme for their parents. The parents said it was a dead show. I expected it to die a death after one year. The research paper, based on interviews with viewers, is now gathering dust in a BBC marketing executive's drawer. It found that viewers thought Doctor Who was a niche series for science fiction geeks, far from the family audience BBC One was seeking. The flop Thunderbirds feature-film revival was raised as a discouraging comparison. But the series has attracted seven million viewers, obliterating ITV1's Saturday night competition, while remaining a critical success.

IP madness

Two provocative/distubing posts at Boing Boing: Copyright cops crack down on cooks over cakes and What UK's copyright industries are up to .

I just stumbled across Johnnie

I just stumbled across Johnnie Moore Ministries. The mission statement:

"Destroying the Kingdoms of Darkness through the ministry of revelation"

Maybe I could adopt that as a strapline too.

Jacob the Teacher

Infinisiri blogs this story:Jacob the teacher

Jacob, almost seventy, was in the midstages of Alzheimer's disease. A clinical psychologist by profession and a meditator for more than twenty years, he was well aware that his faculties were deteriorating. On occasion his mind would go totally blank; he would have no access to words for several minutes and become completely disoriented. He often forgot what he was doing and usually needed assistance with basic tasks-cutting his food, putting on clothes, bathing, getting from place to place.

Jacob had occasionally given talks about Buddhism to local groups and had accepted an invitation to address a gathering of over a hundred meditation students. He arrived at the event feeling alert and eager to share the teachings he love. Taking his seat in front of the hall, Jacob looked out at the expectant faces before him . and suddenly he didn't know what he was supposed to say or do. He didn't know where he was or why he was there. All he knew was that his heart was pounding furiously and his mind was spinning in confusion.

Putting his palms together at his heart, Jacob started naming out loud what was happening: 'Afraid, embarrassed, confused, feeling like I'm falling, powerless, shaking, sense of dying, sinking, lost.' For several more minutes he sat, head slightly bowed, continuing to name his experience. As his body began to relax and his mind grew calmer, he also noted that aloud.

At last Jacob lifted his head, looked slowly around at those gathered,and apologized.Many of the students were in tears. As one put it, 'No one has ever taught us like this. Your presence has been the deepest teaching.' Rather than pushing away his experience and deepening his agitation, Jacob had the courage and training simply to name what he was aware of, and, most significantly, to bow to his experience. In some fundamental way he didn't create an adversary out of feelings of fear and confusion. *He didn't make anything wrong.*
~ from *Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha,* by Tara Brach, Ph.D."

Power of community

Earl Mardle writes a fascinating post - Technology Plus Conversation Equals Community Raised by the Power Law comparing the pros and cons of allowing active user participation in websites. Drawing on an article by Chris Bowers, he notes how in the US, right-wing websites have been more effective at gaining the attention of mainstream media and have followed a more hierarchical model. In contrast, left-wing sites have been more willing to embrace users, live with some chaos, and have outpaced their rivals in popularity.

I'm not especially clued up about US politics but this is a very interesting read. Here's a small snippet:

The key to it, and this will scare the hell out of most businesses, is that you have to cede control. You have to be open to all kinds of unexpected developments, such a DailyKos had 10 days ago with the uproar about the appropriateness of a frankly sexist advert that he ran. The Kos Pie Fight will go down as a huge event in that community. The owner of the blog was taken to task, torn to shreds, vilified, slapped around and generally dissed, defended and recycled many times over about 4 days in ways that no proprietor of any publication would ever tolerate.

And the end result was to the good for the community.

It's a great piece by Earl, and it's worth reading the whole thing.

UPDATE And after you've done that, I urge you to read Earl's next post: If You Do Nothing Else Today, in which he examines this question

Significant profits are generated by a market inefficiency; it costs me more in time, money and convenience to do the research that will provide me with the best deal; and the saving probably wont be enough difference to justify the effort, so I buy from you and you obtain a rent from the inefficiency. With a perfectly informed customer,how would you make a living, let alone a profit?

Part of the answer to this is this, says Earl:

Reeds law states that the group forming value of the network doubles with each new connection, it greatly exceeds Metcalfe's Law; the implication being that groups will form more easily than transactions will grow. Businesses that rely on the transaction growth will find themselves out-competed in the knowledge economy.

(Which will interest those who enjoyed Hugh's comment at Reboot about the fabulous profits of gatekeeping.)

Sophistry

Evelyn Rodriguez posts a terrific story, lifted from Tom Asacker's new book, A Clear Eye for Branding:.

In the [psychological] study two people, A and B, were seated on opposite sides of the dividing wall, looking at a screen. Each person was instructed to learn by trial and error how to recognize the difference between slides of healthy cells and sick cells. For each slidee, they had to push one of two buttons in front of them, "Healthy" or "Sick," at which point one of two lamps, labeled "Right" or "Wrong," would light up.

Person A received true feedback, meaning that his "Right" lamp would light up when he was correct and his "Wrong" lamp would light up when he was incorrect. These people - the A's - learned to tell the difference between healthy and sick cells with a high level of accuracy. Person B's situation was quite different. His right or wrong lamps lit up based not on his own guesses but on Person A's guesses. He didn't know it, but he was searching for an order where none could possibly exist.

A and B were then asked to work together to establish the rules for determining healthy vs. sick cells. The A's told the B's what they had learned and what simple characteristics they had looked for to tell the difference. B's explanations, by necessity, were subtle and quite complex - and completely bogus.

Here's the amazing part. After the collaboration, all B's and nearly all A's came to believe that the delusional B had a much better understanding of healthy vs. sick cells. In fact, A's were impressed with B's sophisticated brilliance, and felt inferior because of the pedestrian simplicity of their assumptions. In a follow-up test, the B's showed almost no improvement, but the A's scores dropped because the A's had incorporated some B's completely baseless ideas.

This had me laughing out loud - as well as appreciating how it ties into the theme of valuing the ordinary.

A bit more on ordinariness

One more thought about ordinariness and its connection to the extraordinary, arising from Reboot.

Ben Hammersley is a lovely presenter, the blogosphere's answer to Eddie Izzard (what was the question?), including the fetching dresswear.

He gave a great talk called Etiquette and the Singularity, including the notion that the first blogger was Sir Richard Steele back in 1709. Steele wanted to circulate his opinions so started writing a thrice-weekly letter which was widely distributed by street urchins. His stated intent:

...wherein I shall from time to time report and consider all matters of what kind soever that shall occur to me, and publish such my advices and reflections every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday in the week for the convenience of the post. I have also resolved to have something which may be of entertainment to the fair sex...

He called it The Tatler and it mutated into what we'd now call a dinosaur blog (ie magazine). Ben went on to talk about how at the same time, people started dressing in ways that made status less easy to determine and spent a lot of time talking in coffee houses. A parallel for the freebooting conversations for which we now have the internet. Check out the pdf of the whole thing.

I like this way of thinking about blogging. Not as something extraordinary and techie, but as something simple and innately human. Back then, conversation led to The Enlightenment. Maybe we can have another one of those today?

Great Danes

Spent quite a bit of time with Jon Froda and Jesper Bindslev before/during/after the Reboot conference. They were great company and really well up on trends in blogging and marketing. Check out their blog or RSS. Thanks for your great hospitality guys!

Innovation from the ordinary

Squeezing the last drop out of our visit to Copenhagen, James and I spent 90 minutes with Jacob Boetter at the airport. Jacob and his colleagues - here's their blog - are working to see design reinvented in much the same way James and I want to see marketing change to be much more collaborative. This would move the emphasis away from the notion of designer as genius, towards the designer as faciliator of the ideas of the community he is working for.

This got me back to the subject of ordinariness in innovation. It's tempting to see innovation as coming from geniuses. Maybe sometimes it does; but I think there's something paradoxically ordinary about many breakthroughs. Like the kid in the Emperor's New Clothes, whose intervention is to state the bleedin' obvious when others are stuck in hi-falluting mode. Robert Scoble has created an extraordinary impact at Microsoft by writing in a very ordinary, down-to-earth way; not fancy copywriting, just good conversational writing. An ordinary approach is one that's likely to let more people into the conversation, enriching the network and thus increasing the possibilities for new connections and new ideas.

Ordinary steps

A theme that seemed to run through Reboot7 was the advocacy of taking small steps over theorising. David Heinemeier Hansson, who built web application Ruby on Rails, stressed the advantage of getting something basic up and running fast. In a presentation on The Skype Brand, Malthe Sigurdsson talked about getting out frequent, small revisions.

Pretty closely related was the idea of ordinariness and "good enough" solutions. David Weinberger championed "good enough" knowledge classifications; Skype favoured simple language ("Talk" not "VOIP").

Both these are central concepts in Improv - it's good to advance the action; and it usually works much better to say the obvious, ordinary thing, instead of trying too hard to come up with a brilliant one-liner. It was good to hear this backed up by the experience of some of these impressive innovators.

[UPDATE: Scoble has more to say on this]

Reboot: Tagging

I'm back home for the excellent Reboot7 conference in Copenhagen. I'll probably dump down some of my responses over a few posts here.

First, after great talks by Lee Bryant and David Weinberger, I've decided to take this tagging business more seriously. Weinberger made an exciting case for tagging as a means for everyone to take part in organising knowledge - instead of leaving classification to a central authority. Lee had some inspiring practical examples of using simple tools to help classify feedback from customers in a way that is friendly to their worldview - and translatable into the more formal taxonomies of eg health authorities. (Here's Weinberger on Bryant) It all points to more flexible ways for knowledge/ideas to be ordered in ways that suit end users. Sorry if that sounds a bit jargon-laden!

Anyhow, courtesy of a neat plugin from George Hotelling, future posts here will carry technorati tags. Try clicking one to see what happens...

Rebooting

I'm liveblogging from reboot7 in Copenhagen. But I've just realised I'd rather be listening than blogging!

Boxing

There's an interesting discussion going on at Chris Carfi's blog, provoked by his post, Lie la Lie. The reference to The Boxer by Simon and Garfunkel is made more relevant by the sprited fight that follows in the comments.

Chris challenges the underlying principles he sees in Seth Godin's All Marketers are Liars (briefly citing my earlier post about the book). Seth comments back pithily, as do a few others.

I see wisdom on both sides here. I also felt uncomfortable that Seth's book may seem like a licence for manipulation and support mindless consumption. Equally, I think he raises good questions on what we think the truth is; he may not answer those questions but then I'm not sure anyone can. Seth is good at provoking debate, which I like. Christopher is good at demanding depth and conscience in marketing, which I also like.

Some of it is really good - including some nice reincorporation of Simon and Garfunkel lyrics by Ed Brenegar. Reading some of the other comments feels a bit like watching lawyers nitpicking, with forensic examination of quotations leading to a game of NIGYYSOB (from Transactional Analysis: Now I've Got You, You Son of a Bitch). Overall it's much the best debate about the book I've seen.

Chris is arguing for authenticity and I like that. I've written a lot about it myself, though not so much lately - because it's so hard to define and because it's easy to end up sounding pious. Thank God for Doc Searls' endorsement of blogging as open-ended as I'm not feeling able to reach any rousing conclusion to this post.

Captive Audience

The Washington Post reports

On a recent Alaska Airlines flight, passengers were told to remain buckled and seated for the last 30 minutes before landing at Reagan National Airport. It was a standard security measure for flights heading into restricted airspace over Washington.

It also turned a planeful of passengers into captive customers who were then pitched a Bank of America Visa card -- with little chance of tuning it out. Over the intercom, a flight attendant encouraged passengers to sign up for the Bank of America credit card. Then other flight attendants went down the aisle handing out applications.

Oh dear, more interruption marketing. This bit made me sigh:

Alaska Airlines spokeswoman Amanda Tobin said passengers had expressed an interest in learning more about applying for Visa credit cards and that the airline's flight attendants share "basic" information.

I'd like to know on what piece of skewed research those weasel words are based.

It's obviously tough for the airlines at the moment and the article goes on to relate the removal of free pretzels. I can live without the pretzels, but spare me the clumsy sales pitch. Compare and contrast Jeff Risley's recent experience with Southwest (blogged here yesterday).

Thanks to Seth Godin for the link.

Geek dinner

I went to tonight's geek dinner here in London. I showed sufficient self-restraint on the beer that I'm able to post before going to bed. It was a good evening, in a restaurant heaving with geeks. Robert Scoble was working the crowd with good humour and spoke with characteristic frankness and bonhomie. I loved that he said he wasn't too worried about being fired by Microsoft as he'd get hired for more money somewhere else; what mattered more to him was maintaining the integrity of what he wrote. It's that kind of honesty, and absence of false modesty, that makes him so credible as a voice.

I also got to spend some time chatting to Alastair Shrimpton, Nigel Crawley and Neil Turner. (Neil proved it was a geek dinner by unloading an alarming collection of gadgets and showing us the latest beta of Firefox on his laptop.)

Thanks to Hugh Macleod for organising it.

Southwest Service

Jeff Risley gives a rosette for service to Southwest Airlines.

Reboot Update

James and I will be running a 90 minute version of our Open Sauce Live workshop at the Reboot Conference in Copenhagen. This will be on Friday morning at 11.45.

There will be two strands to the session which is designed to be experiential and interactive. We'll be using some exercises taken from improvisational theatre to have some fun exploring the sort of spirit and attitudes that help people to succeed in a world where traditonal command-and-control approaches just don't work any more. This will get folks on their feet and working together, instead watching a pile of powerpoint slides. And we'll intersperse this with some thought provoking examples of what we'd call Open Source marketing at its best and worst. This is marketing which is not controlled by marketing departments but involves the interaction - welcome or not - of the stakeholders.

We think this session should interest marketers, but also anyone interested in creating more innovation and creativity among groups of people. And we're hoping to learn things too.

If you're going, I'll look forward to seeing you. I'll be in the city from the Thursday evening onwards.

Fritjof Capra on structure and emergence

I've been having a nice email exchange with Steve Moore of ICE3, who quoted Fritjof Capra to me:

Human organisations always contain both designed and emergent structures. The two types of structures are very different but every organisation needs both kinds. Designed structures provide the rules and routines that are necessary for the effective functioning of the organisation... Designed structures provide stability. Emergent structures, on the other hand provide novelty, creativity and flexibility. They are adaptive, capable of changing and evolving. In todays complex environment purely designed structures do not have the necessary responsiveness and learning capability. They are deficient in learning and changing and therefore likely to be left behind. There is always tension between the organisations designed structure which embody the relationships of power and the emergent, structures which represent the organisations aliveness. The central function of future leadership is to create harmony between the two

It's a great quote.

One of the things that Improv work points to is the paradox of structure and freedom. People often see these as being polarised opposites: a slight challenging of rules is seen as threatening anarchy; or the creation of some standard procedures gets stygmatised as bureaucratic.

It actually turns out these are enfolded in each other. Set up a game (here's one I described a while back) and people start testing the rules. They often unconsciouly invent some new rules of their own. They see how far they can go within the rules. Generally, they kind of stick to the rules but find ways to do unexpected things within them (A bit like how we used to have industrial disputes where workers disrupted business by the deliberate and clever rigidity of "working-to-rule")

Take the rules away completely, however, and there is no game. It's like there's no space within which to experience freedom. I suppose innovative companies are the ones that somehow balance order and chaos dynamically.

If, however, you try too hard to codify what innovative companies do, you create some new rules which themselves will be tested, broken, improved, transcended by the next innovative organisation.

I think this is why Buddhists say if you meet Buddah on the road, kill him. And why for me, the best bit about "best practice" is the word practice - as in keep trying stuff, and keep learning.

This is the sort of thing I'm writing about in my chapter for More Space.

Redefine normal

Another stunning post from Patti Digh. I'd precis the story but it would diminish its impact.

Comments

A few days back, I reported Christopher Carfi's focus on the comments as being a better guide to what to read here. I have to admit, this has had a bit of an effect on me. And lately I've found taking part in the comments here has been more engaging than adding new posts. (Blogging changes the blogger).

There've been a lot of comments on the posts about Schapelle Corby. Some have been pretty offensive and I even deleted some, which I've not done before. But I haven't enjoyed censoring and instead I'm trying responding to them online. It's been an interesting experiment trying to work out what my policy is on insults and racism. At the moment, I'm arguing against name-calling in the comments but not censoring it. I'm not sure about this; it's probably a bit easy to get pious about name-calling and sometimes a good venting of fury can energise a debate. Racism is tricky too; at what point do stereotypes about a nation move from humour or acceptable generalisation to racism?

I find responding to these comments is good practice in faciltation. And I realise I'm not willing to be the sort of facilitator who tries to be studiously accepting or neutral. I don't believe in the notion of completely objective observer.

Surprise

Nice comment to my post on All Marketers are Liars, from Patti Digh:

I'd venture to say that the unwillingness and/or inability to be surprised (if I am surprised, I'm weak; if I'm surprised, I'm not ready, I'm inadequately prepared; if I'm surprised, I'm vulnerable and not strong, ad infinitum) in the context of politics, school, business, life itself, is exactly the problem - that we equate being surprised with being unprepared...therefore, I can't be surprised, I won't let myself be surprised, I will do whatever it takes to not be surprised...Max DuPree talks about a "beneficial search for surprise" which is a phrase I quite like.

Nagging doubt about the story thing

Seth Godin has done his usual excellent job of provoking thought with All Marketers are Liars. He seems to have a knack for taking an idea, dramatising it, and packaging it in a way that gets people thinking and talking. He writes really sharply. And, as ever, people are busy making their own meanings out of what he says.

I wish I could put my finger on what it is about this that troubles me. I have this sense that something is missing here. And I'm not sure if it's about what Seth says or what others are saying he says.

It might be this: an awful lot of storytelling is done after the event. Stories rationalise action. If they are great stories, they sometimes provoke action, setting in train some more actions which will later be post-hoc rationalised as another story. Somewhere in this, there has to change and surprise (otherwise, it's not much of story).

But if the aim of the storytelling is to conform to an established world view, where's the surprise? Somehow it feels like storytelling is being reduced to a calculated exercise in getting people to do things. Somehow that feels undynamic to me and lacking in the disruptive, unreasonable persistence of many entrepreneurs. The way some people are parsing Seth, the element of disruption and risk taking is getting lost in favour of what feels a bit paradigm-sustaining, rather than paradigm-changing. Find out what people think and recycle it to them with a bit of flourish. Where's the author's own passionate world view - the risk taking?

I was thinking about this reading Evelyn's post about the writer who took Einstein's brain on a journey. Did he set out to identify a valuable market niche... or did he act on impulse? My hunch is that he followed an impulse.

Does this make some sort of sense? Comments, brickbacks, sarcastic remarks welcome.

On the court

Evelyn is channeling Lisa Haneberg. Actually, she isn't, she's just passing on an email. But it's an amusing thought.

Anway, here's Lisa's little nugget.

There are 2 types of conversations - One the Court and In the Stands.Think of a basketball court. There are players and spectators.

On the court conversations are aimed at making a difference. They are active. When we speak on the court we are players. [The example listed a conversation that encouraged a plan for brainstorming. Operative word: let's plan together, let's do something, here's a suggestion I'm willing to help with. Not just whining.]

In the stands conversations are water cooler conversations. They are directed out there. Example: Until this company changes their ways and stops treating people like disposable resources, they will continue to lose great folks.

Of course, this observation is itself an In The Stands conversation, but hey, no-one promised life would be simple. And the basic idea makes lots of sense to me... and I'm one of those refective, procastinating types. At another level, reflection and action can't be clinically separated. I said something moderately interesting on this a while back.

So instead of dividing into two camps.. the mesomorphs who celebrate action, and ectomorphs deifying thought/conversation, we may not be as divided as we think. And then the focus shifts from talk as opposed to action to looking at the quality of our actions and conversations.

Trust in a bottle

Great spot by Tom Asacker: Scientists have identified a hormone to create trust.

What I love about stories like this is their potentially disruptive influence on established best practice!

Fab fact

According to Stuart Henshall, 5% of all international voice traffic is now going over Skype, and rising exponentially. This prompts me to bring out my Disintermediate Dalek for a second outing. And thanks to Mark Lloyd for reporting Stuart's speech.