::HorsePigCow:: life uncommon: My so-called online life
Tara's got a great post on how our generation is truly living online more and more everyday...
Link: ::HorsePigCow:: life uncommon: My so-called online life.
What I'm saying is that things are going to get interesting as more and more people migrate online. I don't know if it will bring us closer together or further apart.
I do know that we can connect easier with people all over the world - enabling all sorts of opportunities. On the flipside, we are choosing to interact online more often than offline, so what does that do to intimacy?
What I find is that a lot of this online stuff fuels intimacy. Just the other day, a placement agent called me about a deal. He sent me pitch deck and when I replied with a thank you, he clicked on the blog link that I have in my e-mail footer. He called me back ten minutes later to tell me all about how he used to be really into the canoeing and kayaking community back in the 70's in Philly. All of the sudden, he became a multidimensional person to me... not just a phone call and an e-mail Powerpoint deck to be screened and triaged.
Yesterday, I got a pitch from a guy in Latin America who asked about my leg. No better way to get free sympathy than to blog about your various injuries.
When I blog, my friends are able to catch up on my life so that, the next time I actually do see them they know what's going on. We don't waste time "catching up" with monologues, but just actually conversing and sharing real time together. It invites people I'd never know to comment, exchange, and impact my thinking. More people know that I'm dating someone now than anyone I've ever dated, because I blog about her.
That's intimacy, to me. Its different than we've previously known it to be. Call it Intimacy 2.0. :)
apophenia: MySpace blamed for alienated youth's threats
Link: apophenia: MySpace blamed for alienated youth's threats.
"Another beautiful MySpace article: Online Terror Threat Hits Local High School. The "terrorists" are two boys who are threatening to show up in school with machine guns. As a result of their posts to MySpace, most students didn't show up for school. The school district is pissed and blames MySpace for enabling students to "post their thoughts and ideas" without surveillance. They are deciding whether or not to sue MySpace."
I'm just glad most of the parents allowed their kids to stay home. After Columbine, I think if my future kids told me they shouldn't show up at school because of some kids posted terror threats, I'd make sure they didn't go to school. They should be thanking MySpace. What if MySpace took those comments down before anyone saw them, and then those kids actually showed up at school, guns blazing?
Then, I'd sue MySpace. But that's what parents seem to want. "Take it down... hide their eyes... keep them locked up."
If you're a parent out there, create a MySpace account. Don't spy on your kids. Ask them to be your "friend" on it. If they don't want to be your friend, get your own friends on it. Get them to teach you how to put up music from your favorite bands. Help them fix your template.
I really think some kids might accept it, because they'll think its funny, but more than anything else, you'll seem like a parent who either "gets it" or is trying. So, instead of getting freaked out about what's on MySpace, contribute your own content and join the crowd.
Accident Prone
This is what happens when pedestrians run out into the street between cars and you're nice enough to try to avoid them.
"Why won't you talk to me?"
"In eighteenth century London or Paris, sociability did not depend on intimacy. Strangers meeting in parks or on the streets might, without embarrassment, speak to each other. They shared a common fund of public signs which enabled people to conduct a civilized conversation without feeling called upon to expose their innermost secrets The romantic cult of sincerity and authenticity tore away the masks that people had worn in public and eroded the boundary between public and private life. As the public world came to be seen as a mirror of the self, people lost the capacity for detachment and hence for playful encounter, which presupposes a certain distance from the self." - Christopher Lasch, Culture of Narcissism
When I was in high school, I read On the Road by Jack Kerouac.
I don't remember that much of it, but I do remember the importance of conversation... Two of the guys in the book used to get together for these extreme "brain dump" sessions where they'd literally spend hours, even a full day or two, just talking about everything... Everything.
The didn't let time constraints get in their way. They just talked until they were done.
College was a little bit like that. I was so fascinated by new people that I often ignored the clock for the tradeoff of some good topical exploration.
Blogs do that to some extent, but I feel like they're somewhat self-reenforcing. They're great for attracting likeminded people or at least people talking about the same topics as you, but they're kind of bad for discovery.
I don't think anyone's quite figured out that algorythym yet... "people and things not like me at all that I would still find interesting." How do you find something you've never sought after before, yet something you weren't consciously avoiding? And, how do you do it in a limited way? I could subscribe to a blog about metaphysics, but I'm really not that interested in it as a totally new pursuit.
I'd read a post a week on it, though.
That's why I loved those college dorm conversation. Dorm life stuffs you in with people you might not have ever encountered otherwise. Your friend group is random and accidental, and it takes you some time to gravitate towards more similar people. I think that's good, to a large extent, to develop this kind of a network, but I also find myself pining for a little more of a mix... People whose worlds are really interesting who introduce me to new stuff.
Dating never quite worked for this... In theory, dating introduces you to a fascinating set of people with diverse interests, but the reality is that most people want to meet people just like them. I never met an artist who found it really interesting to date a business guy.
Where was I? Oh yeah... Conversation. When is the last time you had a really interesting face to face chat with someone semi-random about a topic you usually don't talk about?
Overheard on an Amazon Customer Service Call
While I'm doing an address change for a misdirected order:
Customer Service Person: "I do apoligize as I am from Canada myself... Broadway is spelled B-r-o-a-d-w-a-y, is that correct?"
My question is, was she apoligizing because they don't have any Broadways in Canada or because Canadians are poor spellers, which would be news to me.
My 50 Favorite Movies -- Catching up with Dr. Lecter
I didn't do a movie post last week...totally forgot.
So, this week, I've got not one, not two, not even three, but FOUR movies for you.
And, in the spirit of Halloween, they all revolve around one man:
Dr. Hannibal Lecter
Silence of the Lambs is probably the best in this series of four, based on three books (three movies + one remake). Its also my favorite, but the other movies are solid and stand up on their own, too.
We first got introduced to Dr. Lecter in Manhunter, then played by Brian Cox. That's also the first time I got introduced to Iron Butterfly's In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida, which is scary as hell if you're in a dark room chased by a lunatic, being captured by low quality camerawork. Manhunter has a kind of low-budget Halloween feel to it, but the script is good and the charactors give it some depth. Not a bad adaptation, and in, fact, I like it better than I liked Red Dragon. I think Tom Noonan was better cast than Ralph Fiennes to play Dolarhyde, although the Dolarhyde charactor gets explored much deeper in Red Dragon.
Still, Anthony Hopkins is Lecter, and he redefines movie psychopaths in Silence of the Lambs. A lot of people get really freaked out by this movie, and to be honest, I find movies like Se7en to be more disturbing, but that doesn't mean it still isn't an excellent movie. Silence is the movie that will actually be going on my Top 50 list... these others are just gravy in a great series. Or... chiante rather.
We lose Jodie Foster after Silence, but Julianne Moore does a good job as a replacement in Hannibal. In fact, I almost think its better that we see the tougher, more agressive Moore here since this is supposed to be Agent Starling later in her career. Hannibal is a beautifully styled movie with a great score by Hans Zimmer. This time, we catch up with Dr. Lecter in Europe, coaxed out of hiding by a melted Cabbage Patch Doll, played by Gary Oldman. The dinner scene at the end is over the top, but the rest of the movie is an admirable follow up to the favorite.
Red Dragon finishes up the series with yet a new and fresh take, telling the story of Dr. Lector's capture and the first case that he helps out on. Edward Norton does a fantastic job here, as always and the movie is pretty suspenceful throughout, especially when his family gets roped into this terror. I think I like the original Manhunter a bit better, I still think, as sequels and prequels go, this one is pretty good.... its a solid and scary series all the way around.
Video Advertising
So the other day I'm watching the new Dunkin' Donuts commercial... have you seen this? CEO sits down next to the lacky and suddenly the old guy is sporting some Snoop Dawg style cornrows. He's also got a cup of the new vanilla spice flavor coffee.
"Whatcha got there, sir?"
"Oh, vanilla spice."
"That's kind of a change for you, no, sir?"
"Well, I just woke up today and thought I'd try a little something new."
Its hilarious. I nearly fell off my chair the first time I saw it.
Then, it got me thinking about the following problem:
A lot of people have trying to become Flickr for video. The ones I've used are Castpost and Vimeo.
The Flickr model is that its free up until a certain bandwidth, and then you pay for more access. Flickr is a really great service and I don't know what their revs or expenses were, but it just seemed like that could only get so big. I think the NPV of the values Flickr could actually generate on its own was probably less than its combinatoral value (whatever law that is) as yet another thing one could do on Yahoo! if they could integrate it into the network properly.
Video presents a similar issue... one that's worse. Video requires that much more bandwith and is a smaller market with less valuable metadata. The market will always be smaller in terms of videos created versus pictures taken because
Good quote
"...intimacy is a space that exists between people, and once you enter it... from once place (from physical to emotional or vice versa) it makes it easier and more natural to get to the other parts of the space."
Microchunking Groups that Run Groups
Brad calls it the "narrow point of the wedge."
Umair calls it "microchunking."
Whatever you call it, lately, I've been fascinated with the idea that the key to leveraging committees that oversee larger consituentsies is in trying to create more "small things" that everyone in the community can do. We might understand this in technology, but a lot of professional organizations, school clubs, academic departments, student service offices like the career office, haven't gotten this yet. They struggle to delegate and create leaders because they don't actually have the small tasks that fuel community participation and self-organization.
Currently, I sit on two committees. I'm the co-Chair of the Fordham Young Alumni Comittee and I'm also the Chair of the NYSSA SEMI Committee which is a college mentoring program.
Both groups mirror each other. They have small groups of people loosely tasked with organizing and programming for a much larger set of people.
In each situation, we have the same issue. The work of the group tends to fall into two categories. Either we meet on it, or one person goes and does most of the work on their own. Neither model scales at all in the context of the larger organization.
There are two problems. The leader definitely doesn't scale. That's an obvious one.
Boards don't scale either. The leader can only push so much to the board, and even if the board members do great work, they're still only a small group of people getting a limited amount of things done, especially if they're volunteers doing this in their off hours. If you put 5 people in charge of 500, then all they'll ever be able to do is speaker and seminar them to death. The nature of your programming will reflect the nature of your organizational approach.
Both of my committees have the same problem. We want to get more people involved, but we can't reasonably expand the size of the committee. There's not enough to do in a committee meeting as it is. It only takes on person to invite a speaker.
Its obvious you want to push down more resposibility and delegate, but the problem is that you don't actually have any tasks to delegate to anyone. If "show up to an event" or "show up to a meeting" are the smallest tasks you can assign to someone, you'll never be able to create interesting community dynamics. Have you ever wanted to delegate but didn't actually have anything small enough to hand to someone?
That's where microchunking comes in. Make the tasks smaller and more distributed. Instead of running your group with 6 members who each contribute 2 hours a week, what can you give 24 people to do that takes them a 1/2 hour?
We've done this to some extent with the alumni group and the career planning office. Whereas it used to fall on the 7 or so staff members of career planning to despense all of the career education, we created a program that allows 50-100 alumni to partipate as mentors. That actually gives an answer to the alumni that come back to us and say, "I want to get involved... what can I do?" We didn't really have that before.
Similarly, we're doing baby steps like this with the SEMI program is well. Previously, all you could do was either mentor (which was limited to 25 people), which was usually reserved for more experienced professionals, or sit on the board. Yet, I have all these alumni coming back to me saying, "I want to help." Now, we're letting companies sponsor some breakfasts for the students, and we're going to have alumni run some small group discussions as well. Its not a lot, but its more to do and the important part is, these events are going to be self-organizing. The volunteers will put the events together. Little/no incremental effort on the part of the board.
Knowledge sharing is a big area that allows for microchunking in big groups that also requires little maintaince by the small group that runs things. There are people that don't want to/can't mentor or run small groups, but might be able to put 15 minutes into answering questions, or contributing these answers in a blog post. Technology has to be a factor here. Wikis are a little less mainstream at the moment, but they'll get there and are a great way to get the community to share knowledge. Sometimes, an active website that allows community contribution can bring a lot of people together in small chunks of interaction, making the group as a whole thrive.
I'd love to hear from people that are involved in professional organization management, alumni programs, etc to see how you get participation out of the long tail of your community.
BTW... just for kicks, here's the promotional video I did for SEMI on our blog, which we started this year and has been a big success.
Congrats Bobby V!
Link: ESPN.com - MLB - Marines No. 1: Valentine's team wins Japan Series.
Bobby Valentine became the first foreign manager to win the Japan Series when his Chiba Lotte Marines completed a four-game sweep of the Hanshin Tigers with a 3-2 victory Wednesday.
45th and Lex
I used to meet a friend on this corner after work... Never went to the Sbarros though.