horsepigcow

So as any of you who visited HPC yesterday know, it was attacked by a malware hosting site. I’m not sure how they do it, but somehow they get in and implant iframe code to serve up malicious software for unsuspecting visitors. I think it may have been a security hole in WordPress combined with my own laziness around passwords (now fixed). Either way, it wasn’t a good day and I spent many hours cleaning out this bad code and trying to figure out what the heck was going on. Many hours were also spent by Ivan Storck (of Sustainable Websites – my host), William Dodson (from OBX Designworks) and my friend Mathieu (developer in Montreal) in helping me through this. By the time we got all of the malware attack cleaned out, Google had blacklisted my site (which led to a series of blacklisting by all the sites using Google’s indexing API). Yuck.

I wasn’t attacked personally. This happens randomly all of the time. Somehow there is money to be made in ruining the internet. However, I find it very odd to think that one would wreck the very thing that provides them with a steady stream of income. I compared the action to the self-replicating Smith on the Matrix. (spoiler alert) Imagine if Smith would have won – he would have taken the machine down and everyone would have died. There would be no point in him existing anymore.

Which brings me to my point: where did we go wrong in the world to encourage the Smiths? The malware hosts? The scammers, spammers, frauds, grifters, etc? Those that would pollute the very environment they need to exist in? These people are obviously gifted with the ability to problem solve, code, think up elaborate schemes and strategize. If they used this talent for good and not for evil, imagine how AWESOME the world would be!

It’s a tragedy of the commons, where selfish thinkers abuse the common space for their own gain. Of course, this thinking – if truly strategic – assumes that not all will follow the selfish path. The tragedy occurs when everyone thinks selfishly and the commons is ruined and unusable, leaving nothing for anyone to exploit any longer.

If instead human beings thought truly strategically – and this is the basis to my favourite book in the universe The Origins of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation by Matt Ridley – and contributed to the commons, we would all thrive! But this selfish, short-term thinking hacking away of small pieces of the pie happens and we all suffer…including the hackers themselves eventually.

This happens because – as Ridley says in The Origins of Virtue – the system is set up to encourage such selfish, short term thinking. Narrow view competition, multiple times removed culpability and a focus on short-term rewards have encouraged this. For instance, there are corporate structures, with their quarterly reporting (short-term view) and lack of social responsibility (the responsibility is with the shareholders who are far removed from the decision making as well as the consequences of that decision making). Copyright and patents also contribute to the attitude. I would argue that almost everything about surviving in modern society has to do with removing ourselves from responsibility and giving us the individual task to survive one day at a time (but that is a different post).

Thus, we encourage a great deal of tragedy in the commons themselves, costing billions of dollars in security, fraud protection, insurance and damages every year to those who try to live their lives on the up and up.

So, how do we stop this insanity? Like Peter Parker in the picture – whose tragedy was focusing on his own selfish needs resulting in the loss of his uncle – we aren’t recognizing the long term consequences of our actions. I really think this needs to be forefront in our discussions around this stuff. We also need a good dialogue and understanding of the butterfly effect – how one action leads to effecting so many others. It may seem small and insignificant to cheat here and there, but it adds up and changes the system we are part of. And finally, and I know this type of thinking isn’t popular amongst Americans, we have to imagine how we can contribute to the commons to mutually benefit (instead of one or two people benefiting, leading to the suffering of others). It’s not socialism, it’s smarter thinking. Just think of the costs we will save on our taxes alone when we don’t have to pay for the inefficiencies of a system full of people trying to cheat it.

We do have great power here. These tools can be used for great things. Solving hunger, poverty, creating peace, boosting economies (in countries where most of the spammer/scammer stuff comes out of), finding cures for bad diseases and all of the other social pitfalls we’ve created by thinking too short term for our world. So…where do we start?

Big ups to Ross Dawson who organized the Future of Influence Summit last week in San Francisco and Sidney. It was quite an undertaking to have a conversation in two continents and an interesting one at that. I was honoured to be able to do the opening keynote, which I posted up later on Slideshare. But my presentation isn’t what I came away from the summit thinking about that day, although it’s tangentially related. What I came away thinking about is how unfortunately focused the idea of ‘Influencer Marketing’ is in the context of growing businesses.

I’ve written about this before when I talked about Whuffie Math in April. It all came about through a scuffle I had with my publisher on to whom should I send advanced readers copies of The Whuffie Factor. I thought I should send the copies to people who were clearly enthusiastic about the book’s impending arrival, despite their ‘reader numbers’. My publisher thought I should send the advanced copies to those who had a large readership, despite their enthusiasm for the book.

In the end, my publisher caved and sent out the books to the addresses I requested AND they handpicked their own influential group of bloggers/journalists. The result? I had 15 of the 25 people who requested books (my enthusiasts) write blog posts and, I believe, everyone tweeted about the book at some point. As for the influencers? I have yet to read a review.

Heck, I’m not against influencers. I think they are awesome and have worked hard to build an audience that trusts their word. But the point I was making to my publisher was that the same influencers they wanted to send books to have a steady stream of books being sent to them. I know. I’m on that list. I have probably 20+ books sitting waiting for me to read them. I feel awful that I got a free book and can’t reciprocate with at least an Amazon review…or even a tweet or two! So, I end up shelving many of these books at Citizen Space (my coworking space in San Francisco) for others to enjoy. There may be some posts and recommendations coming from people who pick these books up there, I’m not sure. But either way, I was sent a $20 book (average) plus shipping and I haven’t even had the decency to read it!

Now, the burning question at the Future of Influence Summit was, well, what is the future of influence? After listening to multiple panelists talk about how to find and reach out to influencers, I came to the conclusion that the future of influence isn’t about influencers themselves. It’s more about providing a great product (that helps people become more influential themselves quite often) and rewarding your customers that help you spread the word about it (helping them become even MORE influential). It’s about helping your customers become the influencers, not sucking up to the influencers.

I don’t really have a name for it and I don’t think coining anything new is particularly useful, but I would change the idea to Enthusiast Marketing instead of Influencer Marketing. It recognizes that, as Ross said, “Everyone is an influencer” and gives you the opportunity to thank your currently loyal and awesome customers and help them go further, thus increasing their own influence.

When I think of blogs like TechCrunch, I very much see their growth as being that of a symbiotic system where startups helped TechCrunch grow influential and TechCrunch helped startups grow influential. Michael Arrington was crazy about the growth of the startup world, so he created a blog that reflected that enthusiasm. At first, he sought out startups for interviews and reviews, but after a while these startups recognized that he was an ally and went to him. When I first approached him in regards to Riya (now Like.com), TechCrunch had about 10,000 readers. But I loved Michael’s enthusiasm and was happy to walk him through what we were doing. Essentially, as startups grew, so did TechCrunch. I imagine there are loads of stories like this where influencers grew out of being just bloggers or the like with small audiences who became influential through their enthusiasm for a topic and the support of the products they were excited about. Enthusiast marketing.

So…instead of just focusing on who is influential in your given industry, think about who is enthusiastic about what you are doing (or seems really into your industry). Create influencers out of your enthusiasts and I’ll bet you will see much better results than chasing after the same people as everyone else.

Last night while on a panel at the Social Media Club gathering, I went on a bit of a rant about soup. Soup? Yes. Soup.

Soup Metrics, as coined by John Hagel (Net Gain/Net Worth) after our panel here:

…is in reference to the number of people in your network that will bring you soup when you are sick. The question I asked the audience was, “How many of you have been single and so sick you couldn’t get out of bed?” A bunch of hands went up. Then I asked, “And how many of you have been in that situation without anyone offering to bring you soup?” Heads nodded. Yep. Many of us have been there. It sucks. I’ve had that moment and realized that, even though I have tons of friends, I had no really close friends that would voluntarily bring over a bowl of soup when they knew I was sick. And even worse, this soup metaphor seemed to extend into all parts of my life. Who really has my back?

There is a misconception that there is some sort of delineation between your close-knit friends and those who are in your business network. I believe this is the result of extending the concept of bonded and bridged social ties that was first distinguished by Robert Putnum and more recently extended and discussed in business concepts by people like Ronald Burt. Though I see value in both building close (bonded) ties with people while extending the reach of your network and expanding your loose (bridged) ties, I am perplexed by the notion of dismissing the power of those connections closest to you.

You see…as I’ve experienced online communities, the same people who would bring me soup voluntarily when I’ve been sick have also been instrumental in moving my career forward. These are the people who will go to bat for me no matter what. I need these people ESPECIALLY during times like these: an economic downturn. As the number of people who would bring me soup when I am sick grows, so does my career, business and ability to accomplish really great things. Of course, all my close bonds have to start somewhere. They come to me through the looser ties and slowly grow more bonded. However, if I only concentrated on branching out and failed to build and grow deep, strong connections, I wouldn’t get very far at all.

Therefore, the soup metric is the number of people in your social network that you know would bring you soup if they knew you were sick and/or get your back in any other real friend way – to help you feel better OR help your career. Of course I should add that the soup metric has to be reciprocal to work: the soup offer has to work both ways.

This number is the only metric I, personally, give a damn about. It’s the core of whuffie IMO.

—————-
p.s. I should also note and give a big hat tip to Alistair Croll here, someone who quickly moved from my extended network (introduced by Sean Power whom I met through Austin Hill whom I met through a chance blog encounter because of Jeff Howe) to the soup circle in a very short amount of time. We had a conversation while planting a vineyard together where he expressed his viewpoint on the importance of business relationships being close ties. Without his astute observations on this, there would be no soup metric.

So many businesses and industries are struggling with basic math. So let me ask you, because I know you will know:

Which is greater, 0 or 500?

I know, d’uh, right? Of course. 500 is definitely the larger number of the two. It’s really simple and most pre-schoolers could even answer this question. So why is it that many companies can’t?

The other day, my publisher asked me to send them a list of bloggers/twitterers to send an advanced copy of my book to. Great, I thought. Let’s see who wants one! So, I proceeded to tweet out a message that said I’d send a book to 20 bloggers who want a copy. Instantly, I received a slough of excited messages with addresses. The only ones I didn’t reply to were the ones who lived in countries outside of the current publishing zone. I forwarded them onto my publisher, happy.

Then I get a phonecall the other day telling me that the publisher was going to send books to a few of the bloggers I forwarded, but that many had too few readers to bother. This was followed by the kind of question that really gets stuck in my craw:

Don’t you have a list of bigger bloggers – you know, influencers – that you want me to send these to?

I had to count to ten before I responded calmly, “I want to send the book to people who WANT to receive it. People who are excited and are more likely to write about it, tweet about it, tell their friends, their bosses and everyone who will listen. I want to send my book to people who give a damn.”

I got off the phone, thinking that, surely, the message came across. But no. I receive another message later that day asking for a list of ‘influencers’ I know. I reply, “Everyone is an influencer today.” And then I decided to write this post about math.

Yes, people with a big audience make for big news. It would be amazing for Shel Israel or Kathy Sierra or even Cory Doctorow, himself, to read my book and blog about it. It would rock to be covered on TechCrunch. But the chances are that these influential types are so busy getting inundated with free books, software, goodies and other various sundries in hopes of a review that they won’t even have time to read my book, let alone review it! So, I could send the book to 20 influential types and probably even get one or two of them to read it. Then blog about it? That’s a precious commodity for people these days – especially since every blogger with a large audience I know is writing a book these days! They are pretty busy concentrating on writing their own material. So, if I add it up, the sum total of possible blog posts here is 0, which leads to the reach of…0.

However, of those that answered my tweet and asked for a book are actually looking forward to the book. This group is busy, too. Career and lives get in the way, so I probably will see about half of them able to actually get to reading the book in the near future. And, as blog posts fall off from reading, Maybe 5 of them will actually get around to posting something. Say, their collective readers are somewhere around 500 – and that number is really conservative, since most blog posts will see long term hits, even those with a low readership (I will also do my best to drive people to those posts). Adding this column up, I see a sum total of possible ‘eyeballs’ reading about the book being 500.

And from the test earlier, 500 is greater than 0. Therefore, I’m sending books to people who want them and are more likely to read them. Not to mention that the people who are just starting out on their blogging/tweeting/online community adventure today very possibly could be the ‘influencers’ of tomorrow. I started as a nobody. Kathy started from zero. Cory and Shel both came from being unknown to being well-known. I totally remember when Michael (TechCrunch) was just starting to write about startups – it was about 5 years ago. He went from 0 to over 1 million in less than 2 years. Like I said, today EVERYONE is an influencer.

I’m not saying to ignore or snub the people with a big reach. I’ve reached out at various times and would be honored to have any number of them read my book – review or not. But if they haven’t responded or reach back, it’s most likely the case that they’ve been incredibly busy. I know I have a stack of AT LEAST 30 books waiting for me to read and potentially review. I’ll probably be able to get to them around 2020. Not because I don’t want to read them, but because any time I have left in my day (which is rare) needs to be spent with my family and even sometimes sleeping.

So, keep the math in mind and remember that even someone whose blog is read by 5 people is someone who will reach 5 people. And that is better than zero.

From page 16 of this awesome presentation by Paul Jones.

The idea of Throwing Sheep has been tickling my brain for the last few weeks now. Everywhere I turn around, I notice that the lack of accounting for throwing sheep is exactly the point at which something goes from being an interaction to being a transaction. Interactions are warm, they are human, they connect us and are often repeated and deepened over time. Transactions are cold and distant and keep us at arms length and are often one-offs. And there is no doubt in my mind that in order for something to be an interaction, there needs to be Sheep Throwing.

Take these scenarios for instance:

• An e-commerce site that is maximized to push customers through to a shopping cart and transaction, versus an e-commerce site that includes the ability to post photos, comments, ratings, share items, bookmark for later, post to facebook or twitter, and other fun and potentially frivolous things before someone gets to that shopping cart. The latter is, well, basically Amazon.com, the most successful online shopping mall in North America. The former? Most everyone else that wishes they had Amazon’s momentum.
• A salesperson who takes you to dinner and wants to talk about their offerings and how they can do business with you from beginning to end, versus a salesperson that engages in light, personal conversation, finding the things you have in common, sharing a laugh, connecting and saving the business talk for when you suggest it. I’ve dealt with both and, well, I have longer term relationships with the latter. The Sheep Throwers.
• A networking event where you bring your business cards and are told to circulate and find as many people as possible to talk with and exchange business cards, versus an event like SXSW Interactive, where I’ve gone for years and forged the strongest connections to people with whom I’ve shared a karaoke mic on an RV or a plate of Texas BBQ. SXSW is more about Throwing Sheep than any other conference I’ve been to…except maybe for TED, where, believe me, the Sheep that are thrown are a little heavier, but make a pretty significant impact on the recipients (i.e. you get really deep with people really fast).

Throwing Sheep isn’t just for websites…it’s the core of building relationships. Unless we are obliterated drunk in Vegas, we don’t generally marry a person until we get to know them for a while. We don’t just go into business with the first person that hands us a business card in the first 5 minutes of meeting them. We need to feel comfortable and listened to and connected to a person before we start doing the serious stuff.

In everything we do, no matter how serious the outcome, there needs to be onramps. Those baby steps and lightweight interactions that help a person familiarize and connect with their situation. Twitter, as joked about in the above illustration, is probably 90% about Throwing Sheep. “What are you doing?” is a pretty light question. It usually starts with, “Well, I’m trying this thing out” then moves along to food, heading to the gym/store, meeting up with friends…then gets deeper as people respond and as you follow other people’s deepening tweets. But day to day to fill the spots between us being utterly profound, we are still Throwing Sheep to keep connected.

Paul Jones, who created the presentation that includes this amazing slide, said this to me on Twitter:

@missrogue Just spoke at UNC Law School explaining how casual communications keep loose ties alive & allow deeper convos to begin Go mundane!

Go mundane, indeed. There is nothing in this world that I can imagine will survive for long without at least some thought put into how Throwing Sheep fits into the picture. It’s a key component to raising Whuffie.

The advantage I’ve had while working for and with startups for most of my career is that the ‘underdog’ or ‘the new kid on the block’ gets a great deal of support and love from people all around. Somewhere deeply ingrained in the folklore of capitalism is the rags to riches story that almost everyone can celebrate. But when the riches come about…the story ends. And the loving nature of those around the company can suddenly turn to suspicion. We love to hate the successful. We help lift them to their success, then resent them for it.

I might have found that odd at some point, but have grown to understand it mostly through reading social anthropologists such as Matt Ridley, Tor Norretranders and Lewis Hyde, all of whom talk about the gift economy and its historical role in keeping those in power…in power. All the way back to Aristotle, the parable has been that those who grow all too powerful in any given economy need to be taken down a notch so that the rest of the community can thrive. In the analogy of the Tall Poppy, those that overgrow and overshadow cut off the sun from the rest. In order for the community to thrive, they must be cut down.

Thus, in the way that the tall poppies are to be cut down to size, we have a tendency to do the same for corporations or individuals that have gotten too large in our culture. Which brings me to why it is difficult to grok whuffie if you are a large company.

So why? With good cause, big companies are a little more paranoid than their scrappy, startup counterparts. Their poppies have grown above the others and there seem to be natural and politcal mechanisms put into place to cut them down to size. I was disgusted, but not surprised to hear of the number of people lurking around the corner, waiting for a successful firm to make the smallest mistake so that they can raise class action suits for ridiculous things like sending out an email without unsubscribe information or raising forward-looking information that doesn’t happen. These opportunists aren’t called out because what they do is shrouded in the purview of watching out for the public good.

Okay, so I get it. As I tweeted earlier tonight, I’m saddened that we create our own rat traps in success. Once we’re ‘there’ we can no longer do the stuff that made us successful in the 1st place. All of this was brought up by Josh Kopelman’s great post on the success of Paypal. And that success came from the fact that they had nothing to lose as compared to their rival eBay. As he wrote, “I believe that eBay understood everything that was needed to build a great payments product. They were just unable to do so given the risks involved.” Paypal could break the rules all they wanted because, well, they could get away with it as a small, scrappy startup. eBay, having established itself as a big success, could not. You just can’t behave that way when you get to be a certain size.

Or can you?

As I watched Tony Hsieh of Zappos.com on the SXSW stage last week, it gave me a great deal of hope. Zappos.com isn’t small potatoes. They just broke over $1billion in revenue, have thousands of employees (I can’t find the exact number, but I think there are 1400 in corporate and another 1400 in their Kentucky warehouse). Yet with these big numbers, Tony is committed to not being the type of company that is risk-averse. He encourages employees to tweet, listing their tweets out front and center. He’s committed to service and bringing happiness and he isn’t afraid to let any of his employees speak to any reporter, customer or blogger at any time. He trusts that he’s instilled a positive enough culture at Zappos that he needn’t censor or concern himself with the unique spin each employee has on the company. He encourages it.

Tony’s former company became the kind of company he didn’t want to work for. The one that couldn’t grok whuffie. The one that wasn’t fun or a little weird and wasn’t focused on delivering WOW through customer service. So, from the beginning, he made sure he built Zappos to be the company that was. And guess what? There don’t seem to be as many people lurking in the shadows wanting to take Zappos down a notch…even though it’s poppy is soaring above the rest. I think it’s because the tall poppy that is Zappos is deeply committed in giving back to the community that got it there. It’s part of the gift economy. Zappos has the freedom to embrace the chaos because it didn’t take out any other poppies on the way up.

So, although as companies get bigger, they tend to lose the zeal and scrappiness that got them there in the first place, it doesn’t have to be the case. Can big companies who haven’t taken the care that Zappos has build that culture retrospectively? I’d love to see – or be part of – that case study. Big companies CAN grok whuffie. It’ll just take a little TLC.

Equally exciting to me is this second announcement. Yep. We are expanding Citizen Space thanks to an awesome series of fortunate events:

1. Elisabeth Norris – I hired Elisabeth back in November, I think it was, to be my personal assistant. She has demonstrated that she is so amazing and capable that I decided to hire her full-time to become the General Manager of Citizen Space. Say hi. She rocks.
2. EqualityCamp – On January 3, we had EqualityCamp, which got bigger than we expected, so we had to move to a bigger space. I placed a phonecall to my landlord and he donated a space on the 1st floor to us that I totally fell in love with.
3. David Hall – Awesomest landlord ever. Hands down.
4. The overall success of Citizen Space – We’ve been full since month 3, I believe, and have been turning people away for years. We are adding 12 desks (for a total of 20), so we should be able to accommodate everyone now!

The details of the space:

- we are moving downstairs in the same building. We’ll still be at 425 – 2nd Street, but in suite 100 instead of 300 (in the loading dock – used to be a gym).
- the new space is 3500 ft2 (plus a sizeable loft) – 2000+ additional square feet to what we currently have.
- we’re building in a fully loaded kitchen to the space.
- there are two bathrooms in the space.
- there is one large boardroom that we will eventually turn into 2 (convertible to one large one)
- there is more common space
- instead of having a 40 person limit to events, we will have a 100 person limit
- rents stay the same as advertised

We’ll be doing the grande unveiling March 1st, but people that want to see the new space who are interested in a desk when we open can ping either Elisabeth or myself and arrange a tour for closer to the end of February. We’ll be posting photos along the way, tweeting and blogging the transformation, too!

This is super exciting to me and I hope to have my new team working out of the space from time to time!

The other day, I was in a meeting with a group of very smart people and we were talking about how to discern a ‘great’ social media consultant from a ‘mediocre’ social media consultant. I’ve never really considered myself a social media consultant, though. I’ve always thought of myself in a more integrated way, since I’ve spent my marketing career working online AND offline and being part of product development as much as promotional campaigns. Even the term ‘community marketing’ that I usually use to describe my practice falls short.

Even so, I believe the job of Social Media Consultant entails using the online social media tools available to spread the word – much like PR does for traditional media – to pick up steam for the brands they represent. This, of course, is a very smart business to get into, especially during these turbulent economic times. Social media tools are inexpensive and are quite easy to measure impact for. I particularly like tools like HubSpot and Google Analytics for measuring impact of social media campaigns, as well as tracking word of mouth through Twitter’s search and Google Blogsearch. There are many other tools available, as outlined here by my colleague, Jeremiah. This makes a Social Media Consultant a sound investment as an adjunct to any other form of marketing you are embarking on. It’s also a safe bet when budgets get cut back as it is more cost effective than many other types of marketing.

Still, how does one know who is a ‘good’ consultant and a ‘mediocre’ one? I think it all comes down to Whuffie.

Much like a PR person worth her weight in gold has many contacts and a good reputation in the traditional media circles, a social media consultant (SMC) worth her weight in gold has many contacts and a good reputation in online communities. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the SMC has the MOST contacts, either. It’s how people talk about her, how she interacts and how the things she posts are spread around. A good SMC will have high Whuffie on the web. People will trust her opinion. Other influential people will value her expertise. The reason that quality is as important as quantity is that her Whuffie will rub off on her clients. If she is trusted for what she talks about, her connections will be more likely to check out who she is representing.

Anyone can be a SMC, really. There are millions of people of all ages using the online tools and hundreds of thousands of them use them effectively. But to be a kickass SMC, you need to be an influencer yourself. This isn’t much different from PR. And, in both cases, it matters who you represent.

Social media, just like any other type of marketing, is only as good as the response you get from customers. A good SMC knows her stuff and understands what the market will respond to. She will be honest with you in early meetings if she knows your product needs work to delight potential customers. You deserve that. You don’t want to spend a bunch of money and energy on a campaign that goes nowhere. You should be spending that time and money on building a really awesome product. And, a good marketing professional, social media or not can help you in that realm as well. I’ve actually spent more of my career working on product development and innovation than I have on the promotion of it. The truth is, great products need less promotion and ‘stick’ when you do promote.

Lastly, an SMC you want to hire practices ethical marketing. Much related to the point about having influence in a community, ethical marketing practices maintain and build integrity within communities. Anything that smacks of lying or tricking people will be found out and both your company and your SMC will pay the price Whuffie-wise. Future campaigns will be looked upon as suspect and time and money spent will be for naught.

I take great care in working with clients – who I’m working with and how I’m promoting them. I make sure that what I’m delivering is of value and that my connections won’t feel spammed or get tired of the type of media that I’m sharing with them. If my own quality slips, the interest from my connections slips and I become less useful to current and future clients who deserve the positive word of mouth. There are clients I have taken on who have potential, but were not ready for promotion – so we focused on product and getting to the point where we could both be proud of what we were sharing with our connections. Other potential clients who wanted the promotion, but wouldn’t do the work to make sure people I introduced to their products would be delighted, had to be passed over. In today’s competitive landscape, I was sorry to see them pass up the opportunity.

Thus, if you want to have your SM campaigns go further, assess your SMC on these three measurements:

• How much influence does he/she have in online communities?
• Does he/she understand market trends? What kind of feedback does he/she give on your product? Are there good ideas in there?
• Does he/she practice ethical marketing? If he/she suggests that you can pay people to digg up an item, probably not.

Other than that list, an SMC has to understand how to use the tools, know how to measure impact and how to get creative to get through the noise that is the thousands of campaigns already inundating people in online communities. But it isn’t necessarily getting through that counts. It is how that message is received on the other side. That outcome is going to mean results or rejection.

Collaboration 2.0 from BLANKSPACES on Vimeo.

If you need to work in LA, you need to stop by BLANKSPACES to do so. In fact, I need to get to LA, just to meet these people!

p.s. You can see more of their awesome work HERE.

I know I need to approach this topic with kid gloves because there are many of you out there that either perform good deeds entirely selflessly or many of those that truly believe that you do. I used to be part of the latter group. Then I read The Origins of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation by Matt Ridley and realized something really significant:

Just because a good deed is performed to someone’s benefit, it doesn’t make the deed any less good.

In fact, as Ridley points out, in the absence of personal incentives to positively contribute to a community, the majority of people would not contribute at all. And there are incentives, even if indirect, to performing good deeds. Even if all of you are in the 0.01% of people who perform good deeds entirely selflessly, think about all of the people you’ve met in the world you could only convince to give more, do more and care more. Those are the people need incentives – for better or for worse.

I think about how current incentives work. I was chatting the other day with another Matt, Matt Langdon of the Hero Workshop. He was saying to me that he was setting up the Hero Workshop as a non-profit because he would feel bad about making a profit off of this work. Really? Why, I thought? There are plenty of people getting rich off of doing nasty stuff like making cigarettes and selling drugs and lobbying governments to keep us oil dependent. And there are even more people making millions from just producing a load of crap we don’t need. Why should the people contributing positively from the world have to take the martyr road? My second thought was, “No friggin wonder it is an uphill battle to get people to do stuff like Matt is doing!” Matt’s are rare. Dedicating your life for the betterment of others is a beautiful, amazing thing, but if you can’t pay the bills or provide financial security for your family and your future, you will probably end up getting burnt out really fast.

There is no reason for us to be holier-than-thou about our contributions (not to mention the very essence of holier-than-thou points to the fact that we want recognition, which means the act itself is not, after all, selfless). Good for those of us who have sacrificed ourselves for the benefit of the wider community, but we should never become martyrs because of it. We should, instead, be thinking of ways to create more of us to do the work…’cause at the end of the day we have to make a living…or at least I do.

I’m personally overjoyed that people are making gazillions off of the green movement (as long as it’s not a hoax). The fact that you can do good AND do well is an amazing incentive and, I think, the tipping point for people to actually start giving a damn…through consumption, yes, but if that’s what it takes, I’m all for it. This is America after all. We vote through our consumption…that we have a choice to vote for positive change is awesome.

I’ve been thinking a great deal about incentives and I think that people like Jane McGonigal and Austin Hill are doing amazing work in this area, incentivizing acts of kindness through gaming techniques. Ethically, people may have a problem with gaming human nature, but I don’t. To game towards the good is helluvalot better than to incentivize people towards acts of exploitation, waste, corruption and greed. And, believe me, the long-standing dominant atmosphere favors the greedy.

For the upcoming HeroCamp, I’m going to be concentrating on incentives. Having a 15 year-old who is not in that 0.01% has been eye-opening for me. He’s a good kid and very talented and I love him, but whenever I speak of heroism or positively contributing to the greater good, he rolls his eyes at me and calls me lame. What incentivizes him? Well, money is the biggest thing unfortunately, but he also plays games like World of Warcraft, where I watch him sacrifice himself and his points constantly to move his tribe forward. And when I asked him to come to HeroCamp and be our Lame-Meter, he agreed. I incentivized him with a voice…a chance to influence an outcome…a chance for him to shine. Okay, and a few days off of school, too, but that was less of an incentive than the rest. I asked him to be himself and told him that would be a key role in what we’re working on. The incentive is ego.

I believe that raising Whuffie is also good incentive that encourages positive contributions. However, I am not so blind as to ignore the way that people exploit this as well. There is an upside and downside of everything. We need to figure out better ways to reward those that are doing good in the world (and sometimes this means that they need to make money from it) and remove the incentives for people to exploit influence in the networks (by making it harder for them to make a living – refusing to buy their goods or read their blogs).

So, in conclusion, I believe that making a better world comes down to building in positive incentives (beyond ‘it’s the right thing to do’) for good deeds and removing the incentives for bad deeds.