Longevity of New Media

Someone on Twitter was talking about how to celebrate a big Tweet number- 25,000 tweets. Some people have chosen to try to raise money for their momentous tweet, but what struck me was what might have been said in those 25,000 tweets. Does that equal a novel? A Book? Since Tweets, for most purposes, disappear after about two weeks (1) much of the content created is history.

This made me think about the longevity of digital media. Some things, like blogs and podcasts, are more durable. This information is stored not only on your website and servers, but by others, including the Internet Wayback Machine. Twitter, and to a certain extent, Facebook, relies more on real-time day to day content, rather than provide any sort of long term search-ability or archiving. Yet with more and more people sharing news items on Twitter, communicating with customers and the like, how much of this information will continue to exist in the future? What becomes “evidence” could be saved for later on, whether its for journalists researching a story, hisotrians, or even laywers?  Would this stuff be admissible in a Court of Law? I’m not sure whether or not we know the answer to any of these questions yet.

For me, I often share information and links on Facebook, sometimes for me, sometimes for friends. I’ve opted to share many things through Delicious, and to Facebook through Friendfeed. This means I have a tagged list of blog posts and articles, creating my own clip file, my own library and encyclopedia that grows over time. But if I only tagged this stuff and shared it out through Twitter, it would likely be gone.

How much of what you are creating online is meant to have a lifespan?  How long to you want to be held responsible for opinions, tweets, snarky comments, etc.?  How much is intended to be in the moment alone?

A case in point is the LD Podcast.  I have had the show on hiatus, and I’m working hard to put it back into production in the near future, spurned on by recent emails from a number of sources who are discovering the content for the first time.  I’m realizing that the content I create has a lifespan far longer than my attention span, and it continues to provide value to others, long after I have taken it for granted.

I hope this provides a little food for thought- Where are you putting your digital media energies?  What’s providing the most real time versus long tail value?  And, what can you do to create both?

Most of all, don’t forget that sometimes, creating content with longevity might actually create the most long term value.

(1) unless they have been stored, archived or otherwise placed in different formats…

Tags: creation, creativity, facebook, ld podcast, longevity, media, podcast, twitter

First Impressions of Linchpin by Seth Godin

I was one of the lucky early few that signed up by making a donation to the Acumen Fund, to get an advanced copy of Linchpin by  Seth Godin.

Seth has asked people to read it, think about it and give a thoughtful review.  I couldn’t wait to tell you about it until I finished the book- I’ve found myself quoting concepts in the first few chapters to friends  already, so I thought it was time to share.

Seth starts out the book by talking about how the old American dream and template we’ve all been fed is history.  There are tons of people who still believe all you have to do is follow the rules and you’ll get a job where you then follow the rules and get rewarded.  But the bottom line that many folks are finding out is that following the rules has ended up being a sucker’s deal, a bait and switch bargain.  The safety and security of jobs and pensions and retirement at a reasonable age, in reasonable health, where you enjoy a permanent vacation until you die is history, and we just have to accept that.  It sounds harsh, but I think we all know that’s true.

As someone with young kids, I know I have to prepare them for a very different world than the one I grew up in, and  that is both scary and challenging.  They’re going to need flexibility, maintain those qualities of being curious, being creative and innovative problem solvers for the rest of their lives.  With schools still programmed, in many sectors, to produce widgets for giant “work”  machines, how can I counteract this effectively?  Certainly, my kids are growing up exposed to innovative thinkers making their own game every day, but I know I still have to find more opportunities for them to flex these muscles on their own now, so they are willing to do so as they get older as well.

Seth encourages all of us to be creative, to be artists, to become remarkable and indispensable.  I wanted to find an exception to this rule, but I found I can’t.  At first, I thought- well, you know the professions- Doctors, Lawyers- we need those folks to make everything else work- how much real creativity do you have as a physician?  Well, and then I took a closer look at what my husband does every day.  Sure, he’s an OB-GYN, but he’s involved with research, working on projects including looking at fetal growth curves, how they can eventually eliminate prematurity, and other projects that at the heart of them require this creative problem solver mentality.  He has to take everything he knows, figure out the problems that are still there, that cause problems big and small every day, and design research protocols to try to make them better, so each patient coming through his clinic gets the best care possible.  It means getting the doctors and nurses and patients in the practice to consider different schedules, to try new clinics like “birth control before breakfast” and step out of their own comfort zones and potential myopia.  He has to ask people to try to do things differently and make a difference- not just by bringing new people into the world (which is pretty amazing in and of itself) but to be able to do so in a constantly changing environment, with financial pressures, with each patient having their own unique set of problems, and being able to improvise on the fly.  The best doctors do this well, and do become linchpins, not only to their patients, but to their colleagues and institutions where they practice.

I wanted to find some exception to Seth’s rule, being a believer that education and formal college educations are not worthless, but have value beyond memorizing facts. I want to believe we do teach people things in school that matter and its not all about grinding creativity out of people.   But I think becoming a linchpin is not about whether you’ve had any formal training or education in anything- it’s ultimately about taking your cumulative knowledge and experience from every thing you have ever done, and be willing to use all of it, at any time, as tools to solve the next problem.

For example, I started reading Seth Godin and a bunch of books in the “business/management” section of the bookstore, not long after my husband introduced me to Marcus Buckingham and the Strength-based approach to, well, everything.  I rapidly found that all the books in the education and parenting section of the book store, where I frequently spent time, were missing the boat.  The really interesting stuff about managing people, developing them to reach their full potential, and the like were all sitting in the business section.  I realized that running a family is exactly like running a small business, and everything I knew had infinite applications outside of the box one might put them in.  “Pediatric logisitics”- managing kids/people, schedules, activities, performance (grades), camp, and keeping an eye on the larger issues at the same time are all the same skill sets I use in my business, in running Podcamps, in every other aspect of my life as well.

The main point here is this- you have to be a person who strives to make a difference in everything you do.  You have to care.  You need to look out for yourself, but you also can’t afford not to look out for others as well.  You need to be able to use all of your experience, no matter where it’s from, and weave it into a new solution to try and make a change for the better.  There are no more silos.  There are no more boxes.    It’s all about bringing all your resources to bear to try to solve problems big and small, and not being afraid of having a “crazy” idea.  Those crazy ideas in the hands fo the right people, shared with other people who care, mean all sorts of resources can be marshaled and then moving the needle becomes easier than ever.

Thanks, Seth, for the jolt of espresso to my creativity, and for reminding me how important it is to care .  Thanks for the reminder that we have  to be willing to try the “impossible” (which turns out only to be a bit difficult) and can be accomplished if we just try to see the possibilities rather than shut down because it seems risky or scary.

I look forward to the chapters to come.

Tags: creativity, education, linchpin, seth godin, taking risk

Multiple Ways of Learning

I get my best ideas when I am out doing things unrelated to work or home- I end up stumbling across something that strikes me as similar, and sometimes gives me a whole new perspective on how I deal with a challenge I’m facing.  I find a whole new vein of ideas and material that I never would have considered before, and it opens up tons of new possibilities.

For example, my interests in marketing and branding were not things I set out to learn a lot about intentionally.  I started hanging around more marketers, and started to absorb stuff almost second hand.  I started reading more business books, and found the lessons they were trying to teach in a business context crossed over quite nicely into the world pf parenting and education.  Now, several years later, there are more and more books that deal both with business, psychology, motivation and learning theory, something I had to sort of create on my own previously.

Digging a little deeper, let me explain a bit more.  Marketing and branding are geared towards getting messages across in the simplest, most meaningful form possible, if they are going to be successful.  What if you took these same concepts, and taught them to children?  What if you taught them presentation skills and study skills as a separate class?  What would happen if you taught kids that by expressing themselves clearly was more important than filling up a page with the most numbers of relevant examples, but just made a few convincing points ?  What if you looked at every project as “making a case” for your ideas?

When I talk with my kids about the house rules, I can’t cover everything, and we don’t have a written manual.  But by adhering to our weird mission statement about the rules- 93% are about health and safety, and the rest are about kindness and consideration- the reason behind the rules and the compliance goes up considerably.  My kids want to know the Why’s about the rules, and we explain them, because they deserve to know that there’s a logic behind the rules and regulations, not just to assume it’s some whimsical fiat I am imposing because I’m bored.   Because we give them the whys, and let them discuss the rules if they seem unfair, or find other solutions to the problems at hand, everyone in the house is a stakeholder and has ownership of the success or failure of the plan.

The business books I’ve read have helped me understand how to “market” my messages to my kids.  It’s teaching them on how to market their messages to their teachers as well. While it’s hard for a kid to understand the grading system all the time- so often grades on projects, tests and papers seemed pretty arbitrary to me- starting to explain to them “If you looked at this paper, what grade would you give it and why?” lets them shift focus to the outside and evaluate their work with a fresh perspective.  Not always a perfect strategy, but one that can be useful, at least with kids from middle school age and beyond.  I may be a tough focus group of one, but if they can start to better self-evaluate, I won’t need to be the teacher’s proxy all the time, either.

Likewise, Chris Penn has done a series of blog posts about learning economic lessons by playing World of Warcraft.  This is again, taking a proxy for a problem- learning about how basic economic systems work, and when they get frenzied and out of control, and applying these ideas to bigger projects.  Other games, like Civilization, can teach you alot about the allocation of resources and the general competitive nature of cultures.  How far can you push someone before war seems inevitable?  When will someone try to bully you into a bad deal?  What approach works best with aggressive neighbors?

The point here being that new ideas come in all shapes and sizes.  They might strike while goofing off, reading a book outside of your typical genre, or even by overhearing people in coffee shops.  Part of my 2009 plan will be to do more of the stepping out of my protectuve shell and explore more- because you never know where that new insight will come from.

Tags: chris penn, creativity, ideas, learning, perspective, problem solving