Your Custom Text Here
My once Indy still buddy Jason Pierce (former manager of Luna Music) has been in Louisville for a while. His design firm MPerfect does great, opinionated design. Now he is opening a very cool coffee/treats/record shop called Please & Thank You in Louisville. Jason Yoder and I helped populate some of his record inventory.
Looks like it's time to for a Louisville visit soon! If anyone is down there in L'ville please stop by and say hey to Jason, have some coffee and pick up a record or three.
There is a big difference between renting and owning. It changes the way you connect to an object. It changes the impact that object has on your life.
Owners care for their objects. Renters have little vested interest in the objects they use. They use and abuse and move on. Think of a rental vs little old lady car. Which one do you want to buy?
I believe that digital technology, including the Web, is enabling a rental mindset. This rental mindset is insidious. It is changing how we value the content we create and consume. We, myself very much included, toss content out almost at random with little thought to where it lands. No-one is saving letters in a box. No-one is saving anything. Why bother when It doesn't seem real? Is it Google's job to gather and sort all the scraps of our lives? Do we really want to trust third parties to manage our memories and experiences?
When you physically possess something you know it's real. But in the digital world ownership is a fuzzy thing. Every digital object exists in unreal, infinite abundance. It's like a tree that grows two apples for every one you pick. There is not a limit to how many times something can exist once it enters the digital realm. This reality makes digital content feel disposable and worthless.
Scarcity enables meaningful ownership. Human beings are wired for supply and demand. I've seen this during my time in the antique/auction world. I see it, all too often, among record collectors. We want the thing we can't have. The saddest day for a collector is the day they finish their collection. They've scaled the mountain, seen the view and seek a new challenge.
When scarcity vanishes, meaning begins to erode. The digital world is akin to the Bonneville Salt Flats. Almost no elevation or friction. No mountains to climb or views to see.
How do we create scarcity in the digital world? Do we tie it back to the physical world? Do we move content into gated communities, like the NY Times has done with its recent paywall? How do we create mountains and views? Do we really want everything at our fingertips all the time? I believe that a world with instant access to endless digital content may bring more noise than meaning into our lives. Regardless, the experiment has begun.
Bold the most important sentence in each paragraph. Why? Because people scan before they read. You need to sell them on the surrounding content. If you aren't going to do this then make sure you really do the next one...
Shorter is better. Write what you want then cut it in half, let it sit for a while, review and then cut again.
Write for humans not Google. Focus on winning hearts and minds not searches. Nothing wrong with a little SEO once you've finished the post but don't litter the Web with empty but well optimized content. Leave the Web better than you found it.
Build your network. Creating content without first creating community isn't going to work very well.
Harvest blogs from emails. This blog actually started as an email I was sending to a friend/colleague who asked for some input on blogging. I decided to turn it into a post and email him a link. Hey!
Broadcast your posts. Hitting submit is not enough. Even while you are creating community you can use share tools to broadcast the posts via Twitter, Facebook and your email accounts.
Leave comments on similar blogs. Find other posts relevant to yours and leave comments and even links back to your related post. Stay engaged when others respond to your comments.
Don't sell. Provide value and expertise but stop short of a sales pitch. No-one trusts a salesman. They trust subject matter experts.
Ask questions. Ever notice how hard it is to not answer a question? It creates, almost forces, engagement with your readers. By the way, who's your favorite blogger?
When possible, be funny. Humor builds bridges and opens doors. It lowers our inhibitions and resistance. I wish I had something funny to add here but...I don't, firing blanks from the funny gun.
Take a position. Relaying facts is for Wikipedia. Take a stand on something then cede ground if needed in the comments. Again, this will increase engagement.
So what do you think? Any other useful tips to add?
The following is an edited internal memo I sent out to the SmallBox team last week.
"Brand is a lagging indicator of Culture" - Tony Hsieh
I talk a lot about the importance of culture, but what is culture and what connection, if any, does it have to our bottom line?
-- For me culture is our collective sense of humor, how we talk, how we collaborate, how we make each other feel, what we find fascinating, how we talk about SmallBox with others, where we work, what gear and gadgets we use, how we dress, what we do with our free time, what music we listen to, books we read, food we eat, bars we go to. It's almost like a smell or taste. Something you know when you see it. It's what makes us different from other companies. --
On a high level I see the connection between Culture and Profit as follows:
Culture informs Brand which informs Marketing which creates Sales which generates Profit.
Surrounding all of this is Experience. We are looking to create an experience for our clients and their customers. Experience is a very human thing. It can be augmented by technology but underneath it there is a very human element. There is no way to really fake it. This is why culture matters to our bottom line. If we don't have a team that works well together, has fun, is excited about projects and exudes confidence and creativity then we will not have the opportunities we need to be a successful and profitable company.
We cannot create the right client experiences without the right culture. Amazing experiences lead to clients that can't wait to tell everyone they know about us. It leads to long relationships where we can bring real value to a client. If we bring real value then they will have no problem writing checks.
Everyone here is in the people business first and technology second. Technology is just a platform, like paper. It's our native platform and we have excellent tools and a good deal of experience on that platform but our focus needs to be on the humans not the computers. Computers, at least any I've met, don't write checks.
Additional Thought: to be a crass capitalist, a company with a good culture can attract and retain talent at a lower cost since improved quality of life offsets pay.
Today marks the end of Interactive and beginning of Music. I feel like I've aged a year in the last 5 days. But it's been well worth it.
The sessions (panels, duels, solos, keynotes) have been solid- overall. In general the trend that I noticed last year remains- the more people involved with a session the less likely it is to be very good. So I find the solos and keynotes to hold the most goodies. Jared Spool made me laugh and then cry a little as he challenged my ideas and preconceptions around Design during his incredible "Anatomy of a Design Decision" solo. Here's a video of him from a couple years ago. One of my favorite presenters, ever.
I could go on and on about the other sessions I attended, I will try to post a more thoughtful, cohesive blog later about some of the other sessions I attended. Probably on the SmallBox blog.
Got to attend the premiere of Super with Rainn Wilson and Ellen Page in attendance along with the director James Gunn. Great film- funny, violent and touching. Ellen and Rainn are exceptional. Catch it when it comes out. It may shock you a little but it has a good heart.
The Indy tech/start-up/marketing crew has been a real highlight, as it was last year. From Kristian Andersen's Craw Fish Boil on Friday night to the Verge meetup last night. Indy should be proud of the showing here at SXSW. I love hanging out with the Indy crew, maybe a little too much. I probably could have broke off from the pack more and networked but we have had a lot of fun. Matt Hunckler and Kristian really served as informal group leaders throughout the week. I was happy to follow.
Speaking of groups.
The big thing this year is group texting.
GroupMe has come out of nowhere and taken over SXSW. It's drop dead simple and you can start using it without creating an account or downloading the app. In fact many of us didn't even know what it was when James Paden set it up and we were using it to communicate back on Thursday. That seems so long ago now. GroupMe has become my go to app for coordinating between my friends. I predict it will blow up in short order. It has everything a social app needs to succeed. It solves a problem (group texting), almost no barrer to entry (a cell phone- not even a smart phone is required) and a killer app with lots of additional features like conference calling within groups. I have barely looked at Facebook since I've been here. Maybe that's because GroupMe thrives in an event environment but I think it will prove to be invaluable for many other applications- personal and business.
The events in Japan have cast something of a shadow over SXSW but not as much as you might expect, or even hope. People aren't really talking about it but they are riveted to the CNN screens set up around town showing the devastation. It has certainly weighed heavily on my mind and my heart goes out to Japan.
Ok, that's it for now.
I'm switching to Music mode and will be sitting on a panel tomorrow "The Virtual Music Scene". Hopefully I can catch some great bands as well.