horsepigcow

No, seriously. Stop it. I’m tired.

And maybe I CAN be replaced in a second. Free ideas are everywhere and people are offering them up like they are going out of style. No loss for you if I feel used, because there will be plenty of crowds to ‘source’ when I’m gone. I’ve officially gone back to feeling MORE insignificant than before you asked me my opinion.

Feel familiar? Wondering what it is about this happy, generous 2.0 world that is starting to turn you from enthusiastic to curmudgeon? Look no further than to Community Freeloaders, especially Crowdsourcing Strategies. Now, not all ‘customer led innovation’ (my preferred phrase) taxes the bejeebees out of customers and community members. Properly handled customer innovation requests make darn certain that the customers feel wholly and completely appreciated. There is not only a plan in place to COLLECT the ideas, FIND the best ideas, IMPLEMENT the ideas and so forth, but there is also a plan in place to REWARD those ideas.

And let me tell you, the bigger/better the idea, the bigger the reward should be.

I’m not talking about paying for ideas, though. Just let me get that out of the way. That provides the wrong incentives. But I’ve talked about reciprocity here before and it’s really important. When asked recently what my ‘secret’ to building up my reputation in this area is, I replied:

I don’t like to build my reputation, I like to build others’ reputations.

I would far use my influence or connections to help others succeed than use them for my own benefit. And I’m not just saying that to be cheesy. I really hate tooting my own horn, contacting people for favors, pimping my own stuff and doing anything else that even smacks of getting myself ahead in the world. I used to think that would be my downfall, but I’ve discovered that it is actually my greatest asset.

But ‘crowdsourcing’ is usually about benefiting one source…the company or individual asking for the advice/ideas. Unless the ‘sourcer’ can build something into the process that makes certain it rewards individuals contributing in those ‘crowds’. Open Source communities are actually awesome examples of valuable contributors finding rewards organically – access to better jobs, ability to turn their expertise into consulting gigs, wide influence in the community itself, which will lead to speaking gigs, teaching gigs, writing books, etc. The folks at Dell Idea Storm are working hard to find ways to benefit their thousands of contributors, even creating programs to give free merchandise, fly in people with new ideas to work on products with the team (with full credit and rewards), hiring from within their idea community, etc.

I’ve been a long opponent to the term ‘Crowdsourcing’ as it invokes the image of an unpaid group of volunteers giving ideas for free while a corporation rakes in endless profits from them. It speaks to the further exploitation and general suckage of customer goodwill. I don’t think it is related to it’s positive cousin, Open Source. Open source is the term used to describe the state of the source code: can you see it? Is it hidden? Outsourcing is a closer relation, describing the act of saving money by hiring employees from low cost labor markets…only ‘Crowdsourcing’ goes one step further and doesn’t pay the labor at all. Sounds like a sweet deal, right?

Crowdsourcing is another short-term way of thinking about how one can benefit from the relationships one has in communities. Over the longterm, any Social Capital one had will be whittled away from exhausting this free-labor force. Beware of catchy buzzwords, because they are usually all razzle dazzle and no substance.

As Kathy Sierra says, “This ain’t about you.” It isn’t. It’s ALWAYS about helping other people kick ass (another famous Kathy-ism). Instead of ‘sourcing’ or ‘tapping’ the brilliance of your customers, why not help them implement those ideas in ways that benefit everyone? In ways that make them the stars, not you?

Oh, and if someone has spent a good deal of their time helping YOU kick ass? You need to step up and find ways of reciprocating asap or else you’ll lose that goodwill.

…I think the two of you will really get along!

What I’ve observed over and over is the following disconnected conversations:

H: They aren’t legally obligated.
S: Doesn’t matter, it’s just not right.
H: Of course it matters, they aren’t legally obligated, so why should they?
S: They should because it is the right thing to do.
H: So? They would lose time and money if they did it.
S: They will lose trust if they don’t.

Last year at the Community Roundtable discussion I held at the Web 2.0 Expo/Open, this matter came up over and over. Heather Champ, one of my favourite community managers in the whole wide world said the following:

“Well, there is legally right and then there is right.”

In referring to treatment of the Flickr community members. It totally stuck with me. Say that a member is angry and wants their money back. Flickr isn’t legally obligated to return it to them, but if they feel the person is justified in their anger, they will do it. (not the example Heather gave)

Too often, we fall back on the head (sounds funny, doesn’t it?) and disregard the heart in matters of community.

Head = legal, economic, logical, linear arguments and solutions – mostly cut and dried
Heart = ethical, social, emotional, complex arguments and solutions – fuzzy in nature

Leaning too far one way or the other can lead to real issues…and has. Usually it is the head with it’s uber logical outcomes that end up making everyone feel forced upon and crappy. IMO, legal rulings in communities very rarely satisfy any of the parties. Sort of a lose-lose outcome. A zero sum game where even the ‘winners’ end up losing because they lose the trust and the closeness of the community. In the same vein, emotional solutions can run amok. They could potentially provide no outcome, constantly battling and escalating. Too much into ‘ethics’ and we get judgement casting as well. Grey areas and mobs can get very scary.

But if you combine the two, it works nicely. An airline isn’t legally obligated to issue an apology and/or a voucher to their customers after being delayed by snowstorms, but they could win alot of future business by doing so. Here, the airline is driven by both the right thing to do (heart), plus an economic incentive (head). A blogger isn’t legally obligated to link to the post they are quoting, but does so because it is the right thing to do (heart) AND it drives traffic from the trackbacks (head) and goodwill in the community (heart), which leads to future link returns (head). The Richter Scales weren’t legally obligated to attribute all of the photographers, but it was the ethical thing to do (heart), which would have probably led to more of the photographers promoting the work themselves (head) and avoided the whole legal mess (head).

None of these are purely ethical decisions and shouldn’t have to be. In the case of blogging, the blogosphere itself has made it abundantly known that linking is essential to the survival and acceptance of one’s blog. There is no ‘law’ anywhere except for, perhaps, a community enforced one. There have been hundreds of blogs over the years that have received the community wrath and been set in place…sometimes politely, sometimes aggressively…so that they would follow the ‘rules’ and attribute and link content. The most cited reason? Well, I haven’t empirically checked this, but my gut (heart) tells me that these bloggers are reasoned with on the level of “without attribution, you won’t get any links back to you.” (head)

A while back, I read Sir Ken Robinson’s wonderful book, Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative, in which he talks about how much has been lost as our world has become more and more logical and scientific. Of course, the world PRE-scientific revolution was a mess of corruption and greed, driven by the religious institutions enforcing ‘ethics’ in their own best interest. If only we could let the pendulum swing to the balanced middle…or somewhere around the middle. Things like Emotional Intelligence and Social Intelligence matter very much and are just as vital as logic and I.Q. As human beings, we are rarely, if ever, black and white. We are all sorts of shades of all colours.

I was totally honoured a while back when one of my heroes, John Coate, wrote me note saying:

“I must say that I have to marvel at your output. Always so interesting with such mind/heart balance.”

I think it was the best compliment I’ve ever received. This balance is important to me and I really work hard to achieve it (although I think I tip to heart more often).

Capitalism needs heart and head, too. The dichotomies that exist in the current incarnation are hard on everyone. I see nothing wrong with doing something good that leads to financial income as well. And I think all companies with a concentration on the ‘bottom line’ should be more careful about their responsibility to the community and the environment if they really want to succeed over the long term. The balance is win-win for everyone.

Personally, I believe that we are headed for a great balancing of the world. I have real faith that it is happening and those who fail to recognize it will be left behind. Opposites DO attract. And they work very well together.

Wow. There seems to be a great deal of ignorance brewing behind the actual goings on of Lane Hartwell’s saga with Richter Scales. This morning, Lane issued a partial statement to clear things up:

In no small part due to this effort to keep things out of the public eye, certain people, rather imaginatively, have filled in their own details and jumped to some pretty wild conclusions. For the time being, I feel it is necessary to tackle one giant misconception. It has been erroneously reported in various media outlets and blogs that I have either filed or am in the process of filing a lawsuit against The Richter Scales. This is simply not true. At no point has there been any talk of filing a lawsuit on my behalf. To make matters worse, I have yet to be contacted by even one of these media outlets or bloggers to verify the authenticity of my supposed lawsuit.

A couple of facts here (although I have smart readers, maybe you could help them spread) that I should point out because angry mobs with mis-information cause way more harm than good. I’ve watched it happen on numerous occasions.

• Fact 1: Lane Hartwell makes a living being a photographer.
• Fact 2: Richter Scales is a group who defines themselves as: Men who sing (some people seem to not know who they are and what they do) The video was made to promote a funny song they wrote about ‘the bubble’.
• Fact 3: There is no lawsuit. Never has been one. Just a request to remove that photo. (I just learnt how to use iMovie and could help swap that one out in about 2 minutes).
• Fact 4: Lane hired a lawyer to request the video taken down as per the DMCA
• Fact 5: There are many photos in that video that are unattributed.
• Fact 6: Lane Hartwell has been a frequent and rampant contributor to our community for quite sometime. She gives her work/talent away, makes sure our crazy times are well documented, has given me and others permission to use MANY photos for free where we have asked. She is actually really cool about it.

I’m really put off that there are so many people spreading, but also believing, bad rumors in this case. I’m sure the many men behind the Richter Scales don’t want a mob sent out to harass a woman whose photograph they used. None of this was done in malice: the photograph used, the request for credit.

Why the maliciousness now? From uninformed bystanders?

In Ridley’s book, The Origins of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation, he explains that Garrett Hardin’s famous Tragedy of the Commons example which reads:

“Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons. Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all.” p. 232

is a mis-reading of history. In actuality:

“…an English medieval common was a complex spider’s web of jealously guarded property rights…these were rights to graze, cut wood, dig turf, turn out pigs to eat acorns, catch fish, or take gravel, sand or stone. And these rights were privately owned by individuals…commons came in effect to be owned jointly by those who possessed these rights in common, rights that were extinguished, converted or trampled in the process known as enclosure. But commons were never free-for-alls.” p. 232

As you see, the tragedy was availed in a democratic manner. People obeyed their limits on the common property because, well, they didn’t want it to be taken away. If a farmer abused his/her privileges, by grazing more sheep or taking more gravel than alloted, s/he would lose them altogether. In this way, the commons persisted and all ‘won’. If left to a free-for-all, the commons would befall the tragedy Garrett Hardin surmises and become unusable. Nobody, not even the abuser, would ‘win’.

The photography, artwork, literature and other works under the Creative Commons license today requires a similar balance. Artists put their work into the commons and other artists use and credit that work to the benefit of all parties. The original artist benefits by getting his/her work spread further (only realized through accreditation), the Creative Commons benefits because this positive flow encourages more artists to submit their work, and the mashup artist benefits because s/he has a good breadth of works to pull for inspiration and materials.

Now, if the accreditation is broken, it ceases to benefit the original artists, who have a bad experience with Creative Commons and won’t put future works into the commons for usage, so, ultimately the mashup artists suffer as well because they have less material to pull from for their own creative works.

Lane Hartwell has been suffering a tragedy of the commons for quite sometime now. Although her photographs aren’t under the Creative Commons license (they are marked All Rights Reserved, which means someone actually needs to contact her if they want to use one of her shots, which is simple to do on Flickr or on her blog) she has offered a great deal of amazing photography, documenting a very exciting time in history. In my opinion, her photographs are essential, just as Scott Beale‘s are (he has also been repeatedly frustrated by non-credited use of his work), and the great tragedy that has come of the unfortunate tipping point incident of the unauthorized/uncredited use of Lane’s work in a video by the group Richter Scales.

Now, of course, the Richter Scale’s use of the photo wasn’t extraneous, but since the video was viewed hundreds of thousands of times (prior to takedown), there was a missed opportunity there for the many photographers whose photos were used to make this group famous. In their post entitled, Credit and “Here Comes Another Bubble, the author explains:

We did make an effort to credit those people we actively worked with on the video, as well as Billy Joel, which we listed in the comments on YouTube and on our blog. But, given the large number of sources we used, the task of assigning credit for each source seemed impractical.

He goes on to mention Lane Hartwell…without linking to her photos or her website. As one commenter said, “Basically if I am reading your post correct, what I hear you saying is “Mea Culpa, but we’re lazy.”" In actuality, the time one can take to list the photo credits is a fraction of the time it would take to go out and duplicate the work of those artists to make the same presentation.

But that is where we will head if we continue having a cavalier attitude (I like how Lane put it) towards the use of the work of others. The more we abuse, the more we will lose.

I learnt this the hard way a couple of years back. Flickr was my wonderland, filled with gorgeous photos. I would search groups and tags until I found the cornucopia of fabulous shots to make my presentations pop and people go ooooh and aaaaah. Now, to be clear, I understood the importance of attribution even back then and gave full credit, but I did not respect the wishes of the photographers. I used photos not marked with CC licensing (many were marked as Lane’s are, with All Rights Reserved) and didn’t clear my usage with the photographers.

I, of course, was busted and learnt a very valuable lesson in respect for artist’s work. One photographer emailed me and told me about a site that I have grown to absolutely love and adore, iStockPhoto, which has made a world of difference in my presentations as I know I have explicit rights (paid for affordably – so I am supporting the artist directly) to use the photographs in my presentations. My presentations look hot, the photographers get paid and iStockPhoto grows so more people can benefit. I still use some Flickr photos (CC Non-Commercial/Commercial Attribution Share-Alike licenses only), but I always ALWAYS ALWAYS credit the photographers, providing a link to the original photo (also a requirement from Flickr, btw). If someone was to ask me to remove a photo, I would without question. It is not my work to argue.

Whether or not Lane invoking the DMCA is legal or not isn’t really what matters here and making it about ‘hurt feelings’ belittles what is really at stake here. What is at stake here is that the continuance of individual abuse of the privileges of the works put into the commons will lead to fewer of those works being put into the commons.

If we want the ‘free the content’ world to work – and that would be ideal for all – we have to learn to respect the work and the producers of that work. Putting our productions online shouldn’t mean that we give up all claims and possibility of profiting from it and we should discourage those who abuse this. Just like in the English medieval commons, we need to understand that:

Common property and open-access free-for-alls are very different things. (p.233)

I had the chance to interview the fabulously down-to-earth community team at Dell this week. Here is a clip from that meeting. I do have more and will probably be posting other clips at a later date. If you want the whole interview, I can send it to you (ftp or YouSendIt). I will also be getting it transcribed and posting it somewhere (creating a research archive when I get a chance).

Enjoy their story!

[sorry to those who are irritated on having to click through to my actual blog page...I inquired and there is NO video site embed that shows up in all feed readers. Please forgive me...I'm not going all video, just occassional.]

…or maybe it should be why I need heroes…

I’m not talking about the television series, although I do heart it very much. But I was watching the finale and waxing to myself why I do love it so much and came up with a really good reason: Hope.

I mean, we aren’t living in times of real despair or anything. Not me. I have a charmed, wonderful life. But there is despair. Lots of it. And I don’t mean to get too melodramatic, but there seems to be more hurting than healing going on in the world today. Being a hero, to me, means that you want to change that pattern.

It has nothing to do with the abilities, although it would be super cool to have them. It has everything to do with the desire. Heroes, the show, is a metaphor. If you woke up one day and realized that you had a power, what would you do with it? Something good? Something evil? Would you hide it? Celebrate it? Would you feel that this power obligates you to change something for the better? I think the reason why the show resonates with so many people (and especially people in my circle of over achievers) is that it nags at the real honest truth of the matter:

We have power already.

We don’t need to fly or move objects with our minds. Yeah, yeah. I know. I sound all sappy self-help, but truly…many of us just can’t get over ourselves long enough to recognize that we don’t have to take shit sitting down. I recently went and saw Robert Redford’s Lions for Lambs and, man, there was hardly anyone in that movie theatre to take the message of that film and reflect it back at themselves.

We need to take responsibility.

Crap. Now I’ve moved into preachy. Chris and I have talked a great deal about privilege and what it means to have the freedom to do anything we want. And we’ve realized that we squander it…alot. We take our powers and use them for more comfort until we are so far away from really understanding the reality of our moves that we forget to think that even the laptops we complain about lugging around got there somehow and it wasn’t because we were entitled to them. We forget to think that what we take for granted is not a right but a privilege.

But we all know this, really. And we live with the guilt of it daily. I think our cushy lives are full of guilt and angst. And we are terribly defensive of it. The idea of a group of Heroes coming along relieves that guilt. We believe in them to make things better.

I was chatting with Heather Cronk of PledgeBank today (she rocks, btw) about how passive engagement with causes is such a damaging thing. One of my most hated applications on Facebook is Causes. Other than being set up to automatically spam my friends even when I don’t want it to, it does something incredibly awful: it gives us a false sense of giving a damn. So, I’m a better person because I list these ’causes’ I believe in. What have I actually done for Climate Crisis, Fight Poverty and Breast Cancer Research? Recruited more people who passively place this application on their Facebook profiles to give the air that they care.

Yes, now I’ve moved into cynical. I know. Lame.

I like to think of myself as someone who does less talking than I do DOING. If I sign my name to a cause, I better damn well be doing something. I don’t have to run the darn thing, but I do have to contribute in a meaningful way (and money isn’t always the most meaningful way either). And I know that I’m a gnat on the pimple of a festering planet, but, hell, enough gnats get together, those little things we do could probably add up.

Which leads me to what we need to help people discover their inner Hero.

Heather (did I mention she is brilliant? I didn’t bring my camera today unfortunately, but I WILL catch her for an interview) has some really great ideas. Like real engagement kind of ideas.

I really like what PledgeBank is doing. Basically, if you want something done, you both do and don’t have to do it yourself. The idea is that you pledge that you will do your part if others will come forward and do theirs. And many of these are real, tangible, do-able pledges. Like running a Net2 in the Twin Cities (they need one more…), which could really help a couple of local non-profits learn how to use tools to more successfully fundraise and network. And finding 200 people to donate $50 to get solar panels put onto the Ypsilanti City Hall. Certainly, not all of the pledges are meaningful to me, but many are and what they really are…are ACTIONABLE. I heart that so much.

Heather has other actionable ideas, too. Like, when you interact with something like Change.org on a passive level, bring it up a notch and say, “Dude, so cool you are interested in this. Here is a simple thing to DO to take it to the next level.” Interested in reducing global warming? Give instructions to go turn off your screensaver (I’ve been told that is a massive sucker of power). When you feel good about that, you get another level. Inch by inch, we can retrain ourselves to engage.

Of course, you can’t walk up to someone at the supermarket and say, “Drop all of your luxuries and come with me and volunteer at the Food Bank.” That just won’t work. But I do like those bins that are at the supermarket that allow you to throw food into, but they should really warn you before you get there. I usually only buy what I need and going back is too big of a step. Put a label on the shelves of needed items that says, “Why not buy and extra and throw it in the food donations bin? The local center is in need of these.” And then…once you feel great about throwing those items into the bin, there is instructions to take the next step. I don’t know. Maybe it allows you to SMS yourself a reminder to bring in used clothes next time. Slowly, we can work ourselves up to taking a volunteer shift or two at the Food Bank. And even if we don’t ever set foot in the Food Bank, we have still done something real and tangible.

Heather is a total Hero.

I know that many of you reading this ARE Heroes. You do real, tangible things and believe strongly in so much. It gets exhausting to keep it up AND try to live in the mere-mortalsphere. That’s why it would be good to teach people to find their inner-Heroes. When everyone is a Hero, the work is distributed more evenly. For those of us with causes, we really need to start creating tangible things for people to do and real motivations to uncover those hidden powers.

One of the reasons I heart BarCamp so much is that it has unleashed some massively powerful Heroes on this world. It has the perfect blend of tangible and motivation (a person can grow their Social Capital by throwing one) built right into the formula. BarCamp participants as well as organizers, go onto to all sorts of mind-blowing things. And they are good at infecting others with Heroism, too. What can we learn from BarCamp that we can spread to our other passions? There are lots of answers to that, but the most poignant is to give as many people the key to unlocking their own inner-Hero. Don’t do it for them. Show them that it’s within themselves. The greatest gift you can give is to unleash that. (I have a few ideas for unleashing in my presentation here)

So that’s that. Why we need Heroes and where they are. Right here. At the risk of ending this with total fromage, let me quote David Bowie:

We can be heroes, just for one day. [which is totally addictive, so it becomes two...then three...then next thing you know it, you've made a full-time career of being a Hero]