horsepigcow

As many of you who read this blog know, I have been training lately. For what? Nothing in particular except for getting into better shape, looking and feeling better, but this training has gotten me back in touch with my body. In more ways than I could imagine.

I was working out with a friend a couple of months ago who had a fancy watch on that was connected to a strap around his chest. When we were side-by-side on the treadmill, the machine picked up his heart rate and read it to me. He explained that he could keep better track of his progress in and out of the gym if he could record his heart rate.

As I paid more attention to my workout regime and progress, I started thinking about how useful this data would be to me and for my birthday I asked friends and family to give me money instead of gifts so I could put it towards one of these fancy watches. This weekend I finally bought a really nice heart rate monitor watch:

And started to record…well…everything. At first it was a rollerblading journey, but then I got curious. Why was my average heart rate at 154 when I didn’t feel very out of breath or tired? I recall my friends’ being at 128 or so and he was sweating pretty good. So I ran it during preparing dinner. Average 91 bpm. Seems a little high, but not ridiculous for a relaxing activity. So I tested my levels and found out that my heart rate rises super quickly. And I don’t get out of breath, either. It just goes from about 85/90 to 125/130 to 150/155 in a matter of a minute just from moving around a bit (taking stairs, doing pushups/situps, etc) and then drops just as fast when I stop. I also found out that I don’t actually start breathing heavy until about 170 or so.

This has prompted me to go get that long overdue checkup next week. Something that I have been putting off for way too long. I have been working out steadily now for about 4 months. Taking care of myself. Eating better. Feeling great. But the heart rate is not normal. And I have noticed that I require more sleep than average over the past few years and the exercise hasn’t made it better.

The point here isn’t that I’m concerned about my health, but that I wouldn’t know there is anything to be concerned about if I didn’t have the data that the Polar heart rate monitor has given me. Which made me start thinking about how little data we have on our own bodies and how little we have to compare it against (if it wasn’t for my fitness-buff friend, I wouldn’t know that 155 is a really high mid-range heart rate). Is there anyone out there that has their health records back to the time they were born? Hell, I don’t even have health records back to when my son was born. *Gulp* I may not even have health records back to the last doctor’s visit I had. Now where was that?

Of course we’ve seen the sci-fi movies like Minority Report where this data in the wrong hands is a dangerous thing…and, well, there are multiple commercial entities trying to gather our health records together, but what about you and I? And where is our mechanism to start gathering this information without worrying about how it’s being paid for? My heart rate monitor is a good start, but what about other biometrics? The cost of testing is coming down. It really is. I have my latest eye testing results. That was $50. I joined 23 and Me a couple of years back. A little steeper at $399, but I’m sure it will come down as more people join. Now where to store it? Analyze it? Is there an SMS alert I can set up if something seems out of place?

Frankly, the thought of having this additional information about my body is kind of exciting. Something I’m willing to pay for. To monitor. If I knew the effects of that poutine I had at 3 am a couple of weeks ago were in real time, I would probably watch what I put in my body. I would walk more. I wouldn’t have that extra drink. I would definitely never bum a cigarette when drinking. But right now it’s invisible and even though I kind of get the effects of my personal abuse, I keep abusing.

I wonder how much more effective self-monitoring would be in disease prevention? Cancer? Obesity? Heart disease? Would we start to become numb to the information or would it actually make us healthier? I think it’s the latter. The more I can look inside of my body, the less I want to abuse it. The new gaming becomes how to achieve the perfect score on health. Better than any badges, getting an all-time high score on the state of my lungs would be something to tweet about.

We are just at the beginning of how important data is going to become in our lives. From our bodies to what we spend to our location to our relationships and beyond. We are just starting to realize how us being aware of, owning and controlling our data is going to be the most powerful part of our future.

Hosting my own website is a pain in the ass. Kind of like owning my own house but without the obvious benefits.

When I owned my own house and my hot water heater died, I had to get it replaced. Broken things added up over time, but I always thought to myself, “That’s okay. It’s an investment in my own property.” So the time and money spent on it felt like an investment in my future.

Now, I understand that hosting my own blog has similar benefits. I’m hosting my own data and have complete freedom with it and that is very future focused of me. But I understand the importance of data in the future and not everyone does.

This conversation is going on right now over on the Project VRM Mailing list. I’m explaining why the fact that blog maintenance being a pain in the ass outweighs most people’s perceived benefits to hosting one’s own data. That Facebook or Google owning our data doesn’t seem pressing compared to the type of work we’d have to put into the maintenance of it ourselves. Plus, there is that convenient way that they connect so many of us by making it so easy.

I self-host my blog. I get to personalize the theme and have the ability to export my data in an instant. Nobody puts ads on here except for me. You sign up for alerts? I maintain that database. It’s my content, my community and my artwork. All mine. But it’s also a huge time suck. I get bugs, hacked, lose things, have the possibility of having my host explode and lose everything not backed up. When my template breaks with an update, I have to figure out why. I recently lost my Whuffie Factor website altogether (content is still on my server), and it’ll take me a while to track down this issue. My blog was compromised again for, like, the 6th or 7th time in 10 months just this week. I needed to research what was going on and how to fix it, then figure out where things were at, what my passwords were (I always seem to be changing them) and wade through folders looking for files that look out of place (I have no clue, really). Luckily I have stellar friends that helped me out.

It’s frustrating and inconvenient. And even for me, a big believer in owning my own data, I wonder on days like these if it’s worth it. I want to “set and forget”. I’ll deal with the data issue later so I don’t have to deal with the maintenance issues now. So I posted this dilemma to the list and got back a bunch of responses with all sorts of links on how I can make my blog more secure. It’s not that security isn’t important. It’s very important. I get that. But I don’t want to deal with it. I don’t want answers. I want convenience.

And I really think that is the basis for “regular people” not fighting against Facebook or any other companies that own a good amount of our data (still growing at an incredible rate even if there are protests in the geek ranks). They make everything really convenient. People don’t want to learn more about security so they can host their own conversations and relationships, but if you provided people with a solution that is 100% user-friendly PLUS you gave people the ability to export/move data/relationships/etc, you would be a clear choice.

People aren’t lazy or stupid, but we ARE busy and will find anything to simplify our lives so we have more times for the things that really matter (i.e. not reading how to make our blogs more secure). It’s not about education, it’s about understanding that. So if you are in the business of changing the world or offering a solution for people that is empowering or a ‘better alternative’, don’t educate people on the benefits of using your service. Instead, offer the very very best user experience in the universe. Help people not think about the stuff that doesn’t matter and do all of the heavy lifting in the background so that they can just reap the benefits of your platform. If you can deliver both freedom AND convenience, you’ll be the clear winner.

Just this morning Christopher Carfi pointed a most excellent post on the Blogher Blog entitled, “Manifesto: I am not a brand.” For those of you who have seen my live rants (aka speaking gigs), you know that one of the zinger one-liners I have delivered from time to time is: “Instead of a personal brand, why not just get a personality?” So I ran off to read Maureen Johnson‘s most excellent post (and wonderful rant – I so identify with her on the half-sized water bottles) right away.

I’ll make you go and read it yourself, but I do want to clip a portion or two of the manifesto that struck me as “OMG yes! WTF?!! Exactly!” moments:

We can, if we group together, fight off the weenuses and hosebags who want to turn the Internet into a giant commercial.

and

Make stuff for the Internet that matters to you, even if it seems stupid. Do it because it’s good and feels important.

Not only does her language pull on my heartstrings (totally using the word ‘weenuses’ from now on), but her general outlook. And the thing about her general outlook is that it is gorgeously utopic like mine. That neverending, undying even if the crap is kicked out of it faith in the core goodness of humankind and the possibility that things CAN be made better and more people just have to believe in it and get behind it and the world will transform into a better place for all of us…cause what we are doing right now just ain’t working. I mean, it looks like it’s working for some and then we are promised we can all have that if we’d just get off our lazy asses and work a little harder and step on a few people to get there. And when I say “that to which we are promised”, I mean some sort of luxurious life complete with high end handbags with big logos and more legroom on flights. But somebody has to sit in cattle class, eh?

Let me back up a bit here. I had a bit of a tipsy debate with a very smart person I know (who, in any case, one should never argue with sober OR tipsy, but I gave it a go) and afterwards he said the sweetest thing to me, which made me realize I was right all along:

“I enjoy your un-ending optimism..”

Because I argued that, much like Maureen, I believe there is a better way to approach the world. Why have we structured everything around ourselves to be about the almighty dollar? And why is the almighty dollar pretty consistently the reward for weenusism? For hustle? And stepping on other people? In the end, there is only so much of the almighty dollar to go around, so as I said earlier somebody has got to sit in cattle class and it isn’t always the lazy arses. Quite often it’s those people who are “making stuff that matters, even if it seems stupid because it feels good and important.” You know, people like artists, writers, teachers, inventors (before they sell to 3M), academics, activisits, non-profit workers, small business entrepreneurs, volunteers, musicians (before they sell to Disney), open source coders, the people who serve you your triple shot latte extra hot, students, dancers, actors, yoga instructors, mechanics, etc.

Not that those of us that sit in cattle class don’t want to make gobs of the almighty dollar, it’s just not at the top of the priority list. And thank god for that! Because if everyone was focused on the hustle of making the almighty dollar at any cost, this world would be a lonely cesspool none of us would be particularly fond of living in. We need the people who don’t prioritize the almighty dollar. Too bad we don’t value them.

I’ve been luckier than most. I’ve sat in the parts of the plane with lots of legroom, been served by an in-flight sommelier, laid flat to sleep and gotten the high quality free socks on the overseas flight. It’s an awesome feeling. Mostly because I know that it’s rare and tomorrow I’ll be flying in cattle class again and treated like a number. And I’m not saying that cattle class needs to go away or that we’d be living in a better world where we didn’t have to struggle at some level. But I do wonder why the hell having an in-flight sommelier is more important than making sure nobody in the world goes to bed hungry. And I wonder where the hell the venture capital is that will fund the projects “that matter, even if they seem stupid because they are good and important”.

I spent four years in SF Bay area watching all sorts of hustlers and weenuses get funded for their projects that didn’t really matter, were going to be the next Google and were certainly not good or important. Many of those projects are long gone along with the VC money. I also watched as really good people working on really great projects that were good and mattered struggled to find funding. Some are still working (on the side) on those projects. Some have been hired by companies like Google and Microsoft (and believed they can incorporate their good and important ideas into the big machines). Some have seen awesome community traction and found homes to support them (like and VRM). And though there is a fund for social enterprise in existence, it can’t handle all things that are good and important.

Our priorities are seriously off in this world. And I know that a good number of people agree with me. I would venture to say that there are enough people that agree with me that, as Maureen says, can “group together, fight off the weenuses and hosebags who want to turn the Internet into a giant commercial.” The voice is growing, we just need more examples. Look, I don’t have money. I’m still trying to figure out how to pay my rent next month. But there are people who do. And I believe strongly that social enterprise…or the “stuff that is good and important” is and can be profitable, too. It’s just more equitable, that’s all. And if it fails monetarily, well, at least there is a net gain for the world (not just a bunch of auctionable foosball tables and aeron chairs) just for the sheer existence of that project, which contributes to fighting off the lonely cesspool world we don’t want to live in.

Now…only if we could find that benefactor for our startup that is about being “good and important” while I’m at it.

So…in case you missed it, I’m breaking up with Delta Airlines:

For many years, I have been struggling with ‘settling down’ with an airline that would treat me with the same love I give to it. I would marry Virgin America tomorrow if it would only fly out of Montreal (or even Toronto, because I also love Porter). There really is no other airline that has consistently made me feel like I matter…even when I’m flying cattle class (aka Economy). And to note, this experience with Delta wasn’t the first let down. I had a series of snafus from them (lost luggage that didn’t show up for 1.5 days, multiple missed connections with odd and stressful re-routes, longest lineups I’ve ever experienced even when I checked in at home ahead of time, etc.). I understand weather issues, but it’s how a company responds that matters. And not just how they respond to their business class flyers…their economy fliers may be like me and courting an airline to see if that is where they want to camp out permanently.

All in all, I calculate that I travel between 60,000 and 80,000 miles per year (sorry planet!). Tripit, which I’ve been a part of since mid-2006, says that I’ve traveled 274,469 miles since I’ve been part of the site. That’s about 78,419 or so miles per year. For any airline, I’d think that I’m the kind of customer they’d want to have around. Not to mention that I have a pretty strong following of friends around the globe who look to me for recommendations for travel (restaurants, hotels, flights, etc) because they know that I spend a good amount of time in that area. So besides my own $$ spend (according to my Wells Fargo account breakdown, I spent about $10-15k/month in 2007 on travel expenses – now I usually get it covered), I have a bit of influence over the $$ spend of others who tend to travel.

But here is the thing…I have air miles here and there and everywhere (too many airlines have lost my business) and I really don’t relish the thought of starting all over again. Is there a way to leverage my own portfolio and get an airline (hello Continental? Air Canada?) to start me out with an equivalent amount of miles to my abandoned choices? Or at least ramp me up partway there? I don’t need to be a platinum member to start, but I don’t want to start from nil.

And besides me, I’m sure such a program would be a super enticing switcher for multiple travelers! Imagine this…if you are the airline to come forth with a, “You’ve been mistreated too often at the other airlines. We want to rectify that AND entice you to at least see if we are true to our word by offering you equivalent status/miles from wherever you feel stuck now,” I’d bet you would totally kick ass.

In fact, much like the personal data play that the Project VRM community talks about, why DON’T we have the ability to take our miles with us in general? It seems like another unfortunate silo that locks customers in and disempowers us to switch when we are dissatisfied with the service (which should be how you ‘lock’ us in – great experience!).

So…

1. Any airlines that want to be a taker for my nearly 80,000 miles of travel per year? Caveat: must fly out of Montreal.
2. Anyone want to create a mechanism for customers to leverage this type of data in order to have the freedom to move between airlines when they have been wronged?

I think this could be really powerful.

One of the messages I’ve been lucky enough to be spreading lately is that of questioning the gap between business and human values. I started thinking about this issue almost two years ago, but wasn’t able to quite shape it into the message I needed to get across until earlier this year when I was preparing to give a workshop at Best Buy HQ for the Social Media Club Reality Check Series in January.

It occurred to me as I finished up The Whuffie Factor and was traveling around talking about it, there were parts of my message that were valued by business leaders and other parts that were glossed over. Those that seemed to make people squirm were the touchy-feely ones like Embrace the Chaos and Find Your Higher Purpose, which IMO are the most advanced ones. They require a major shift in thinking from being very traditional business thinking to being very human-centric. For me, this is a no-brainer. It’s key. Businesses sell to humans, why shouldn’t they align with human needs. But what I discovered as I delivered my message is that I seemed to be speaking a foreign language. And not only was it foreign, but it was undervalued. “Where is the 101? Should we have a Facebook page or a Twitter account or both?” “How do we measure ROI?” was thrown back at me like nothing I said had sunk in. I was told by colleagues that my message was too basic. Huh?

That’s when I began to realize that there is a deeper misunderstanding here than the economics of social currency – which is what TWF is all about and I started preaching in 2006. But as I heard more and more social media types describe these social economics (whether they used Whuffie or Social Currency or Social Capital or…), something wasn’t changing: the business approach to online communities. Social capital wasn’t being described as a currency that works differently, but in tandem with market capital, it was being described as a thing to be mined…a justification for a social media strategy. “Look at all of the social capital we can leverage to make more money!” This was so not my intention.

And then the lightbulb went on! I realized that what was wrong with the whole picture was the gap between the underlying values of business:

• Profit
• Process
• Efficiency
• Return on Investment
• Risk Management & Planning
• Maximize Resources, Minimize Waste
• Reliability
• Accountability
• Growth
• Hierarchy
• Competitiveness & Winning
• Dedication & Loyalty
• Control
• Etc.

…and the underlying human values that drive community:

• Compassion
• Generosity
• Connectedness
• Freedom
• Love
• Truth & Authenticity
• Courage & Fidelity
• Charity
• Wisdom
• Stories
• Openness
• Personal Growth
• Beauty
• Etc.

Certainly, there is reason to some of these value-gaps. As business has grown and the ability to reach wider, global audiences has increased, efficiency and process help drive the planning for expansion. And with profitability at the core of all these values, that is necessary. But as businesses started to move into a very sacred space (and I like to compare our online communities to that of the forests of Pandora on Avatar in my presentation), these values begin to poison the very human interactions we have there. All of a sudden, things shift and the things we hold so dear are being ignored (or de-valued “tweeting about what you are having for lunch is so inane!”), co-opted (community members, themselves, becoming ‘personal brands’ or what I call roboticized) or exploited (community sourcing is the process of exploiting generosity). And this is not the direction we need to go in IMO. I believe strongly that, rather than business injecting business values onto our communities to business ends, we really need to turn the tides and teach business how to espouse human values again…or as Gary Hamel writes in his excellent column, put soul back into business. It is human beings, after all, that are necessary to the success of any business (whether employees or customers).

Which is why I DO mind the gap between business values and human values and why this has become the focus of my most recent work and presentations:

As the presentation states, we humans are growing less and less trusting of where we are spending our money and our time (working), but we still desire that connection. No, we don’t want to be chummy with companies, but we are seeking out those brands that espouse human values to spend our time and money with. And that is the key here. It’s not just a nice thing to do, although I believe that without this shift, the world is going to get a whole lot scarier – think the current economic crisis but worse. It’s also a smart business move. There is much more business can learn from the values driving the growth of online communities than where to target the next generation of buyers. Call it a revolution or a paradigm shift or what you will, but it is happening and it needs to be said over and over until the shift is made universally. This doesn’t just make for a better future for humans, but for business as well. Like it or not, we are living in a consumer society and we may as well make it a harmonious relationship.

So, yes, I DO mind the gap and so should everyone else. We spend a great amount of time on connecting, sharing, being generous and creating beauty. This is incredibly valuable and IS making the world a better place. Let’s keep it move in that direction.

[photos by: shutterstock]

Most all of us, whether we notice it or not, spend a good part of our lives in some form of consumer-company interaction. Whether we are shopping for groceries, banking, paying rent, shopping for clothes, picking a movie, buying a book, selling our services, working for a company whose services we are performing for customers or eating at a restaurant. I’m not sure what percentage of our lives are spent on one side of the equation or the other, but I’d guess that a good majority of our time is spent consuming or selling.

And though I dislike the term ‘consumer’, the truth is that in today’s world, that’s what it resembles. It’s transactional, impersonal and more often than not marginalizing. It’s as if it is in the DNA of business to push the limits on how badly it can treat the customer to maximize revenue. And over the years, it seems, that limit has been creeping further down the rabbit hole of customer hell. Pain limits are pushed to a level where the customer *almost* decides the transaction isn’t worth making with the business, but when the customer gets used to that pain level, the business pushes the pain further. And so on until we are so used to poor treatment, the simplest gesture that makes us feel empowered again feels like a win.

With online soapboxes like Twitter, blogs and Facebook, though, the individual has the ability to connect with other individuals to get a better deal, and the bigger the soapbox, the more we are empowered. The only problem is that business has got wind of this soapbox and works strategically on shutting it down.

I was working away at my computer today when my phone rang. I picked it up to hear the friendly voice of a representative from CIBC, the bank I deal with in Canada. “How are you today, Miss Hunt? I’m calling to see if I can help you with the issue you were having with CIBC the other day.” I paused to wait for it, “You know, the one you posted about online?”

Bingo. CIBC is using some tracking software to pick up mentions on Twitter and the blogs (most likely will reply to this post, too) and then saw that I have over 30k followers and that particular rant started a rather large conversation. Because of this, my ‘issue’ was escalated to a personal service department where I now have a personal service agent who I may call at any point with issues. Awwww. Isn’t that nice?

No. It’s strategic. And it’s a lovely and nice way to try to silence me. Like attracting more bees with honey. Or being the sun in the parable about the wind and sun in competition to remove the coat from the man. And the gentleman I chatted with at CIBC was awesome and said he’d relay all of my suggestions to the proper decision makers and gave me his personal number and released some money from the hold, but I’m still not satisfied.

Because, well, I don’t take bribes (#12) even when they don’t look like one. I want change. I don’t want to see change for me, I want to see change for everyone. I want banks to stop experimenting with how far they can push us before we cry ‘uncle’ on their policies and start thinking about how they can help us achieve our dreams with customer-empowering policies. I want business to invest in technology that streamlines and helps the customer experience, not technology that spies on us. I would even go as far as sitting down with executives at CIBC for FREE to understand what the hold up is and to consult with them on improving their system for customers. I’d even connect them to the right talent to implement the system. Hell, I want this so badly I’d even pay for this to happen.

Every business starts facing a decision to make: are we here to serve customers or are we here to get rich? Conventional wisdom, set by standards that are unproven and short-sighted, leads most businesses to pick the latter. But picking customer happiness as the core driver to your business is actually the better way. It leads to satisfaction, loyalty, positive word-of-mouth, efficiency and, ultimately, riches for the business. Happy customers means you spend less on customer acquisition and retention, employee retention and recruitment, innovation (you are more innovative, but use less resources), and operations (happy customers lead to more efficient operations as you, by definition, become more efficient). You’ll beat the competition every time because they can’t figure out why customers flock to you while they have rock bottom prices.

As I‘ve been quoted saying, ‘Designing your product for monetization first, and people second will probably leave you with neither.’ As the market tips more and more towards the whims of the customer, this will ring more and more true. Now is the time for us to use all of the power we have to move business in the direction of customer-centric thinking. It’s good for everyone.

[photo credit: JLMaral on Flickr]

I love disruption, especially when one is disrupting towards a positive end. When there is the ability to disrupt a dominant system that discriminates against people or favors those already in power – such as well, North America – I love it even more. So firstly, to outline what I propose to disrupt:

1. Stereotyping – somehow, even though we examined stereotypes eons ago, the attitudes seem to persist. The problem is that now they persist in more subtle ways. Not so easy to put our finger on it and call it out, which is an issue.
2. Individuality over community – this one is easy to spot and many will tell me it’s a good thing. I don’t think it is. There should be a balance, but if anything, I believe the balance should tip in the favour of community. Many studies have shown that putting community interests first actually benefits the individual more in the long-run. See: Non-Zero and The Origins of Virtue.
3. No-Choice Consumerism – I’m not referring to monopolies as much as I am referring to the lack of choice we actually have in choosing to opt-in or opt-out. I love to shop. Anyone who knows me knows I have a bit of a passion for it. But when I do, I struggle to keep in charge of my own experience and outcome. There are too many situations where pressure, scare tactics, smoke and mirrors and general exploitation come into play while I’m trying to make a decision.
4. Life Inc. – Also the name of an awesome book by Douglas Rushkoff, it’s also the reality of a world of people emulating corporations. I see this all of the time: people concerned about their personal brand, creating an elevator pitch for their lives, choosing friends based on ability to connect to powerful people, creating an image they can never live up to and when it falls apart, they try to sweep under the carpet. It’s emotionless, inauthentic and getting really boring if you ask me. I wrote about it a little here.

There are a few other themes, but I want to move along to the disruptions. Disruptions are unlike movements or protests or even flashmobs. They don’t require a great deal of organizing and you can’t really plan when you are going to perform them. The one thing they DO require is courage because they are about being hyper aware of the moment in which you see one of the above themes playing out and then questioning the theme openly – at the expense of being called a party pooper. But the awesome part of disruptions is that they are extremely powerful. When someone tells a racist joke and, instead of laughing, you say, “That’s not funny,” they will think twice about telling that joke again. So…here are 15 easy everyday ways to disrupt a system:

1. Flip around your pronouns when storytelling, especially where they have been heavily gendered. Refer to a man caring for the kids/doing housework, refer to a woman as the CEO, etc. Not only are you breaking the cycle of bias in the brains of your listeners, you will get their attention. Like Chip and Dan Heath say in Made to Stick, the #2 way to make your idea stick is through unexpectedness.
2. When talking to someone who uses gendered pronouns (or having someone tweet or blog gendered pronouns), gently suggest they read the previous suggestion. OR you can answer back flipping the pronoun if you want to be more subtle. It will make them think about it from that point forward.
3. Look people in the eye and smile at them as you walk by them. Add a nod or ‘good day’ once you get the hang of it. This one is super simple and incredibly catchy. Research has shown that smiles spread.
4. Diversify your examples. Find out what is happening beyond the whositwhatsits in your professional world and educate yourself on the people doing great work at the edges. In technology, it’s me looking at what’s happening in India, Europe, China, etc. as well as what’s happening in Silicon Valley. Bring up these examples in conversations that highlight the whositwhatsits over and over again until people spread it onwards.
5. Call out sexist, racist, homophobic, xenophobic or any other ‘minority group as stereotype’ jokes, references, slurs or language. This sounds like a d’uh thing, but it’s really hard. Doing so makes you look like a party pooper. But really, the person making those comments should know that they look like an arse. You are doing everyone a favour.
6. Don’t buy products from companies that offend you or treat you badly. Most of us do this already, but sometimes it’s really really convenient. Hell, I have a plan with AT&T. I need to not do that anymore. And I buy from American Apparel, even though their ads make me really angry. I need to stop that, too. It’s inconvenient, but important to send the message through not spending our money to support bad companies.
7. Take the time to talk with people with vastly different opinions. This is really hard. I usually get about 5 minutes into these conversations and want to scream and run away, but persistence (and patience) pays off. The first step is to stop trying to get them to listen to you and listen to them. Find a point of connection. There is usually more than one of those. Hear them out. Understand where they come from. Believe it or not, we usually want the same things, we just disagree on how we get there. Once the defenses are down, you’ll find great solutions together and inform your own opinion.
8. Take the time to get to know people with vastly different experiences of the world. This always blows my mind. I learn WAY more from having conversations with people who don’t fit the ‘mainstream’ experience of the world than I do from bestsellers.
9. Start taking people to task who talk about new media marketing in the same way Mad Men used old media marketing. If I see another new media guru use Don Draper’s creative style as the ideal to uphold in marketing, I’ll scream. No, that ‘carousel’ episode is still the epitome of how things ‘were’ (creating some sort of illusion to sell a product) and does not represent really connecting to one’s customer. The real power in online communities comes from the ability to connect with new friends and old on a human level. Emotional. Real. It’s less about how a company can co-opt and exploit that and more about what companies can learn from this. (more about this at a later date)
10. Admit to your mistakes. Openly. Brutally honestly. And take responsibility for them. Then learn from them.
11. Get to know your neighbours. Even the crab apples upstairs who tell you to turn down your bass. Spend time getting involved with your neighbourhood associations, events, etc. Reach out and create a supportive community. This is something else I need to do. I find this really scary. I don’t know why. The benefits outweigh the potential rejection.
12. Don’t take bribes. What I mean by this is don’t take a free voucher or delivery or whatever a company offers to you alleviate the pain they caused you with your transaction with them. Instead, ask for them to fix the problem. Take them to task and offer to give suggestions that may help them improve their service. For instance, I ordered a microwave from Future Shop and then got totally dicked around by their awful call in center. When they figured out I had >25,000 twitter followers, they contacted me offering all sorts of things, but I refused. I said, “I don’t want you to fix this issue for me, I want you to fix this issue for everyone.” Who knows if it’ll be effective. I haven’t shopped there since. I told them to call me when the call center is fixed and I’ll try them again.
13. Leave product reviews. There is a reason why sites like Yelp, Chowhound and Amazon are so popular. It’s because of people like you and I leaving product reviews. I rarely buy anything – even offline – without checking the Amazon reviews. Yelp and Chowhounds are my personal foodie guides wherever I go. And in Montreal, I found this amazing list of restaurant reviews. Generous people sharing their knowledge everyday makes the world an easier place to navigate.
14. Demand your data. Why? Because if this awesome group has their way, the future will be driven by the customer and then you’ll want all of the content and reputation and identity and history you’ve been depositing around the internet for years. It will be valuable for your experience and for YOU to leverage your own power. So, click on that little ‘suggestion’ tab or ‘feedback’ button and say to the networks you are making more interesting with your contributions: “Hey, have you thought about giving me the opportunity to export my reviews/tweets/photos/connections/shopping history/preferences/etc to use elsewhere?” The more requests they get, the more they’ll be pressured to do this.
15. Use all the tools available to you to call out injustices and bad experiences. The beauty of the web is that there are literally hundreds and even thousands of others who have experienced similar situations. If you get pissed enough and have enough momentum, you can even start to do something about it. The United Breaks Guitars videos did an amazing job of getting dozens of people to share their experiences (and also refused to take a bribe by asking United to make a donation). And as I wrote here, even spreading the word through blogs and tweets makes a difference.

Of course, these small steps are only icebreakers to apathy, but we all get so busy that starting somewhere that fits in our schedules yet is bigger than a tweet is a good start. And each of these small disruptions packs a big punch. Good disrupting!

It must suck to be the middle-man today. Everywhere they turn, it’s bad news. Democratization this. Circumventing that. There was a point not that long ago that the middle-man provided great value. The record companies brought music to the masses. The media created channels for the news to get through. The Blockbusters of the world housed thousands of movies for people to rent. Telephone companies laid the lines for us to connect with one another around the world.

But now these middle-men are our modern villains – using every desperate trick in the book to hold onto customers while we find creative ways to go around them, go straight to the source and sometimes just do it ourselves. There is a mass disintermediation going on and every company that occupies the mediator position is at risk. Now it’s the media, the labels and the distributors of what has become digital content, but I doubt this will be the last frontier of democratization. I’m sorry to say it, but they are bringing it on themselves.

Why?

1. They forgot that the point of being the middle-man is, well, to be the middle-man. They made it about themselves. The musicians and the audience were forgotten in the shuffle. The news and the readers stopped mattering. The fact that people just wanted to connect via phone ceased to be part of any business plan. Profits became bigger than the people they needed to connect.
2. Convenience, which was once the advantage of using a middle-man, turned to inconvenience. Frustration set in when the middle-men became gatekeepers and ‘deciders’. They became greedy. Power hungry. And they reminded everyone that they were going to play by the rules that they set. Period.
3. They misread the early signs of democratization as a threat rather than an opportunity. All could have been forgotten if they had just realized that their impetuous children were neither impetuous nor children, but instead were giving really great cues on how they wanted things to work.
4. A false sense of scarcity is not a scarcity at all. Creating a business model on charging premiums for something in abundance (or potentially readily available) is bound to crater.
5. They seriously underestimated the intelligence of the public. Maybe they believed their own lies or maybe they just thought we couldn’t think for ourselves. We may be lazy from time to time, but we aren’t stupid. And we don’t like being belittled.

And so the scare tactics have been amplified, the sob stories are rampant and the battle has turned to an all out war. People getting sued at $16,000 per song for illegal downloads and the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) are some of the obvious examples, but everytime I look at my phonebill and see the newly minted extra charges, I can’t help but feel like my phone company is punishing me. I don’t want to see journalists out of work. I don’t think it’s their doing that the media companies are in trouble. But the layoffs are breaking my heart.

And it’s only really beginning. We are at a turn. A shifting of an era. Entirely new business models were created during the Industrial era. These business models were created to help manage, distribute and promote to the masses. When everything was local, we did this through relationships. It was easy to manage on our own. But the internet allowed for inexpensive and simplified management, distribution and promotion for all. Farming these things out only makes sense if it truly brings value such as: convenience, money saving and peace of mind.

I can only imagine where it goes from here. What else is going to be disintermediated as we gain more tools of control and simplification? Banking? Law? Public services? We’ve pretty much lost the travel agencies. Authors are self-publishing and more tools are available for distribution. Amateur movies are cheaper and simpler to make and are getting more attention. People are finding ways to go direct to farmers for their food.

It’s nothing to be mourned, but it is something to be heeded. Eras come and go and change happens. I read somewhere that only 1 of the original Dow Jones companies still exists and I’ll bet it exists because it looks nothing like it did back when the Dow Jones was born. (That would be General Electric – thanks David Damore!)

There is new intermediation needed. It has to do with helping us cut through the noise and get to the signals and it needs to be individual-driven. Things like Project VRM should be at the top of everyone’s radar. Finding new business models to further democratize badly managed industries is also a good bet. Either way, I’m looking forward to the changes and I’m open and ready for them.