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Connectivity vs Serendipity: Going off the Grid at SXSWi

Posted by jeb on March 16th, 2010

On arriving in Austin for South By South West Interactive the first thing I noticed was everyone walking around looking at their phones. Mostly iPhones as you might expect. Legions of geeks bumping into each other and random objects while trying to walk while checking in on Twitter, Facebook FourSquare, GoWalla, Gmail, etc. It was kinda hilarious and frightening at first.

Seeing all these tech zombies, and being one myself, woke me a up to how fast we are adopting new technology and related gadgets without any consideration for their potential negative impact on our lives.

Are our brains wired for this? Is mobile facilitating meaningful conversations or just more conversations? Was something broken that mobile technology has fixed?

Is connectivity superior to serendipity? Remember serendipity? That’s when you just go and let things happen. No SMS/Tweets/Emails/Calls to guide you. Remember about 10 years ago? That’s what I’m talking about. Somehow we all survived and had a pretty good time back then, at least I did.

After a couple days of trying to keep up with the crowd I realized I was approaching borderline OCD about my phone, even more than normal- what’s happening, who’s sending me a text/email/dm, what’s the hottest thing, gotta check out GoWalla, gotta tweet what this guy just said,  gotta download this app, visit this site, take this picture/video… on and on.

I was spending more time interacting with my phone than I was with the real live people around me. And this was pretty much the same with them as well. We all came to this event hoping to connect with each other but instead of having conversations we were retweeting each other’s comments. We sat in fascinating sessions run by some of the most interesting people in the world paying half attention while we fiddled on our phone, deceiving ourselves into thinking we could effectively multitask and get meaning from the session at the same time. Total BS.

I felt like I was getting a glimpse of augmented reality and it kinda freaked me out. Are we meant to be part robot? Shouldn’t we check back into our blank state and see if it was really so bad that we needed to add all these gadgets and services to it?

So I decided to go without my iPhone or computer for 24 hours. I wanted to see how a day at SXSWi without technology (at least personal technology) would compare with being constantly connected. I decided to give “old school” serendipity at try. The experiment started on Sunday morning and ended Monday morning. I wanted to throw myself on the waves and see where they took me.

So I checked in with my family, posted a notice to some friends via Twitter and SMS and turned off the phone. Then I gave my phone to John Wechsler (@wechsler) from FormSpring (FormStack now I think since they are rebranding the parent company due to the Formspring.me explosion which is awesome) who I was hanging out with at the Exact Target/CoTweet event at WholeFood’s headquarters Sunday morning when our conversation lead to this decision. John’s a great guy and although I haven’t known him long I liked and trusted him with my “precious”. Then I was off the grid. It felt a little like a trust fall and I was really nervous at first.

Without going into the minute to minute details of the day I want to touch on some of the key experiences and take aways. After getting over my initial freak out over losing my phone I started loosening up quickly. It was really liberating. A sense of real freedom overtook me at times. I felt like a dog off the leash. I wandered around, got lost, met people, hooked up with friends and then followed them until I would run into other friends and then followed them. I went to about 5 parties and ate some of the best barbacue in the world. I drank a lot of free beer. I made deeper connections with people I already knew. I had a great day, probably the best day of the conference and every day has been excellent (so far).

But it wasn’t all good. I felt lonely and disconnected at times, even confused and disoriented. I had phantom vibrations in my legs and would reach for my phone. I would have seconds of panic thinking I’d lost it. I kept reaching for it when uncomfortable, lost, curious to look something up or just needed to know the time (see side thought on clocks below).

I felt a little like I’d lost one of my senses. It took a little while for my other senses to strengthen to accommodate for the loss. If we can consider connectivity a sense I wonder if our human minds can accommodate the use of this sense at the increasing rate we tech zombies are employing it. Maybe that’s the real cause of so-called SXSW SARS? Perhaps a question for another blog.

The general take away from the experiment was that we don’t need all these gadgets and services to communicate, congregate and experience life. Seems a little obvious, doesn’t it, but why are we so hooked? Life can happen without them and can actually be a richer experience. Sure, they add value at times but maybe not as much as we think. Sometimes I think they take more than they give. Sometimes we need to impose and embrace constraints. We need to value quality of experiences over quantity.

In discussing my experiences I got a lot of feedback that this might be a movement to pursue for next year- a “Leave The Phone At Home” Sunday next SXSWi. I think many people resonated with the reasons for me undertaking the experiment and guess what, nothing horrible happened! In fact I would argue many people would have a better experience on account of embracing this constraint. I would love to hear people’s thoughts on this idea. I could have our Small Box team put together a website and help coordinate an effort to encourage people to take a day off, give serendipity a shot, see how things go. Why not go off the grid for a day at SXSWi 2011?

Technology is moving so fast. Yes, it is fun and exciting but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Let’s take the time now and then to hit the reset button. Our human nature is not, and cannot, change as fast as the technology we are plugging into our “system”. Before we get too far down the path and adopt technology that could be harmful let’s remember to take time out and reflect on what all this means.

Shout Out- SXSWi is a completely unique and amazing experience. I highly recommend anyone with an interest in web/interactive/social media etc check it out next year. I consider it a life changing experience.
The Indiana crew here has been a complete blast and loads of fun to hang out with. Big shout outs to Kristian Andersen Associates (the reason I went in the first place, lunch with Kristian), Blue Lock, Sprout Box, Exact Target/CoTweet, PocketTales, CauseLab/Scott Henderson (awesome roomie), MediaSauce/Mitch Maxson (also awesome roomie), FAWM.org/Burr Settles, James Paden/Vibrant Solutions, Blast Media, FormSpring and I’m sure I’m missing some others. Would love to see an even bigger Indiana presence next year (holla ChaCha!). Indiana is definitely on the map here and people know it. I love that.

Side Thought- Not knowing the time was the most unexpected byproduct of not having my phone. Since everyone has a phone now there are fewer public clocks, like fewer pay phones- it would be interesting to do a study to see if they have declined at a similar rate- on top of that I started this right after DST had taken place and many clocks (the hotel clock for instance) hadn’t been changed. I missed a panel on company culture, showing up right on time, at least according to the hotel clock, to see it was wrapping up.

Posted in mobile, technology, twitter | 6 Comments »

Report from SXSWi- Days 1&2

Posted by jeb on March 13th, 2010

PJ and I are down in Austin for the annual SXSW Interactive conference. I’m taking a break from the insanity to charge up my phone, post this blog and get cleaned up before heading out again.

This place is nuts. I’ve never seen some many people walking around looking at their phones. Mostly iPhones. That seems to be the overwhelming flavor of choice. Apple in general is the default for this group. I’m just as guilty as the rest. So I’ve had to run back for quick re-charges a few times in the 30 odd hours I’ve been here so far.

Only 30 hours, hard to believe, and I’ve been asleep for about 6 of those. I was warned to rest up before coming. I could have done better.

Some random highlights:

Seeing Jason Fried of 37 Signals speak and sorta read from his new book “Rework” which I read on the flight done.

Hang out with my buddy Burr Settles who is presenting here on his FAWM.org project. He is also working at Carnegie Mellon on a fascinating project involving scrapping the web for contextual/localized content. They have a Google Grant to help with funding. Smart dude.

Meeting a woman who was sent by the Chickasaw Nation to learn about how they can use Social Media to connect their people.

Going to an awesome throwdown/party at The Boiling Pot put on by our friends at Kristian Andersen Associates (thanks Kristian!)

Attending numerous panels/speakers/workshops that built/expanded/challenged/educated me in many ways I could never cover now but did via my Twitter posts.  (I was disappointed that all the CMS talk at events is around Drupal with no attention to proprietary or even Microsoft solutions.)

To follow my travels and thoughts please follow me on Twitter at twitter.com/jebbanner

more soon!

Posted in social media, technology, twitter | 1 Comment »

Fanvertising or To Fanvertise

Posted by jeb on March 4th, 2010

I was hanging out on Musicalfamilytree.com, a Small Box project focused on archiving Indiana music and conversations about it, and one of the members, Kevin D. McCollough, used a term I hadn’t heard before- “Fanvertise”. He asked if it was ok to “fanvertise” on the site and then linked to something he liked. Sure, I said, and hey, that’s a really cool word! I did some searching and it appears that it has been used a few times but not much. Right now if you Google fanvertise the post from Musical Family Tree shows up near the top of page one and the comment was just left yesterday. That means it’s not in widespread use in my experience.

So I wrote up a quick definition of Fanvertise and posted it to my Twitter account. Here it is as well:

Fanvertise- when a person or “fan” promotes third party goods or services without direct compensation.

I would consider it a sub-category of Viral Marketing but mostly I just like the word better. Viral has a nasty, sickish sound to it, right? Fanvertise sounds fun and captures what people are really doing.

So how do you get Fanvertising? It is obviously much more desirable than traditional advertising since it’s free and the other is, uh, not. It’s also cheaper than traditional PR since PR agencies can be pricey too. Both advertising and PR are often needed and are usually effective if executed correctly but they don’t have nearly the ROI of real and mostly free (not counting your time) Fanvertising.

I see Fanvertising as a 3 step process:

Fanvertising Step #1. Be awesome at what you do, you cannot suck. You have to have the happiest customers on earth or at least in your industry. In being the best you will give your customers the emotional foundation for singing your praises via every channel at their disposal.

Customer service should be treated as a marketing expense not an afterthought. Happy customers will bring you more customers. This is true in the B2B and B2C worlds.

Instead of focusing on selling your product or service, focus on making your current customers happy. They will then do the selling for you. This is the core of Fanvertising. Don’t think about new customers until you have taken care of your current ones.

Fanvertising Step #2. Be an enabler. Give them the tools to tell their stories, not your story. Your story doesn’t matter that much on its own. It only has really impact when combined with a customer’s story- “I’ve spent years looking for a good carpet cleaning service and now I’ve found it in XYZ Company, check out their website, Facebook page, etc- here. Highly recommended!”. If you don’t have easy ways for your fans to Fanvertise your company then they will most likely move on and not get around to it. Make it super easy.

Fanvertising Step #3. Say “thank you”. Don’t ignore feedback, good or bad, acknowledge it, engage in a conversation if it’s bad, spread it around if it’s good. Remember what the Bible says- “Let others praise you”, just don’t forget to say “thanks!”.

In the brave new world of Social Media there are so many opportunities for Fanvertising. Make sure you are following these three steps and Fanvertising will start growing your business.

Posted in internet marketing, marketing, social media, twitter | 2 Comments »

How to use Twitter to prove you’re an absolute moron.

Posted by ben on July 28th, 2009

There’s been an overwhelming amount of love for Twitter this year, but Larry King might be single handedly responsible for starting my disenchantment with the most recent installment of the seemingly annual progression of the latest and greatest social media wunderkinds.  To be fair, my disenchantment began a few months ago, but a tweet a few days ago (2:58PM on July 26 to be exact) from Larry King’s official Twitter account (@kingsthings) sealed the deal:

Larry, I’ve got some news for you. For at least three reasons Twitter is the absolutely, positively WRONG medium to use for finding out why a Marathon is 26.2 miles.

First off, Larry, it demonstrates what we’ve kinda been suspecting all along – namely that you’re a no-talent, hack who’s risen to your station through merely the arbitrary caprice of fortune.  The standard answer to this question is pretty much conventional wisdom. I’ve taught middle school kids that could answer it.

Second, Larry, you can actually get your answer faster by using this crazy, new technology called a search engine. I’m sure this whole Internet thing is probably brand new to you and has to be pretty confusing (in fact, it’s probably pretty safe to assume that you’ve got some ghost writer Tweeting on your behalf to solicit the questions for your interview with Colin Powell that you’re unable to prepare on your own). But just in case you actually do get on the Internet someday, I created a demonstration of how this new-fangled thing called a “search engine” can help you find answers to life’s persistent questions.  Just CLICK HERE to see how it works!  Then, to get your answer click on the blue, underlined text at the top of the page that says “Marathon – Wikipedia the free encyclopedia”.

Third, Larry, the answer is actually more nuanced than you might think at first blush. Turns out that the distance from Marathon to Athens is shorter than 26.2 miles.  Turns out that primary historical sources disagree about whehter or not the first “Marathon runner” ran before or after the battle of Marathon.  Turns out that the 26.2 mile distance was the result of a series of last-minute changes made to the first modern marathon route established for the 1908 Olympics in London.  Maybe you knew that the standard answer wasn’t 100% accurate (I doubt it). But even if I stretch my imagination beyond the comprehensible and give you this benefit of the doubt, the fact still remains that crowd sourcing via your celebrity Twitter account is the least effective and most time consuming way to actually get your answer.  Just take a look at the overwhelming volume of responses your question generated by CLICKING HERE. You’ll notice something pretty quickly: a lot of people know some version of the standard answer, but nobody agrees on the more nuanced details.  If you’re really into crowd sourcing your answer, you should just cut to the chase and go to Wikipedia where the crowd sourcing has already been done for you.  Plus, Wikipedia has at least a modicum of editing that’s gone into their content.

Which brings me back to how Larry King finally brought about my disenchantment with Twitter.  In short, Twitter has become filled with crap and wading through all that crap takes more time and effort than regular people should have to put into it.  It takes a considerable investment of one’s time to follow Jeb’s advice about having a meaningful online converstaion and craft your Twitter network to a manageable level so that it’s actually useful and doesn’t become a ridiculous time sink.  What we need first and foremost in an answer is “correctness”. I have yet to find a better way to get “correctness” than by identifying an authority that can be trusted.  It’s way too easy to present the appearance of authoritativeness on the web without actually being an authority.  Just look at all the self-proclaimed authorities who wound up giving Larry a technically incorrect answer to his question.  Finding an authority is hard work (even off line).  Crowd sourcing via Twitter doesn’t get you any closer to an authoritative answer.  It just compounds the problem (especially when you use a celebrity account).  I know it’s tempting to think that crowd sourcing via Twitter is the way to go when it’s been so successful for Wikipedia, but Twitter just doesn’t work like Wikipedia.

I used to think that Twitter was pretty cool and pretty useful before the proliferation of celebrity accounts from the likes of Larry, Oprah and Martha.  So it looks like I am now beating Jeb to the punch in writing his next latest-social-media-fad-jumps-the-shark-blog-post.   Why is it that all these social media sites go through the same cycle of explosive growth that eventually brings about their demise? I suspect it’s because no one’s figured out a really good way to make the hard work of identifying authorities become easy. Finding an answer “that works” by playing a numbers game through social media sites can work OK for a while so long as the numbers stay fairly small.  However, once they reach their critical mass these social media fads just implode. Plus, playing the social media numbers games just skirts the fact that the answer is by no means guaranteed to be authoritative.  In attempting to make finding an authority easy, Twitter seems to have thrown their lot in with the celebrities. Or have the celebrities high-jacked Twitter?  Either way, that celebrities have made a good thing bad should be pretty self-evident.  I hate to say it but it seems that counting backlinks and other artificial “signs of trust” like the search engine algorithms do is the best thing we’ve got going so far.

So, Google don’t be worried by Jeb’s post that opined whether Twitter is a Google-slayer.  It isn’t and it won’t be.  In fact, it’ll probably be something our kids and grandkids reference when making fun of our generation.  I can already hear my daughter incredulously asking her friends, “Can you believe our parents spent their time at work reading ghost writers typing ‘In da house ATL!!!’ on some rapper’s Twitter account?”.

And if you’re wondering, yes, I probably woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning.  So feel free to flame me in the comments below for being so hard on the beloved institutions like Larry King and Twitter. But be forewarned: I’ll probably be just as snarky in my responses as I am now.

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Posted in google, search engine optimization, search engines, seo, social media, social networks, twitter | 14 Comments »

Web Kitchens

Posted by jeb on May 4th, 2009

Ever notice how everyone ends up in the kitchen at a party? It may not be the most comfortable place or the biggest space but it has one big advantage- food and drinks!

What usually happens is that the kitchen gets too full and people start breaking out to other rooms- the basement, porch, living room etc. Usually these migrations are headed up by individuals who assess the crowded scene and decide to head out with the handful of people in the current conversation.

So what does this have to do with the Web?

The Web is full of “kitchens”. Places people congregate, hang out, exchange content, etc. A “kitchen” is somewhere you go pretty much every day. The conversation is meaningful (the “food” that brings you there). Even if some of the people there may be strangers you know them through associations so it is easy to start up conversations.

What are some examples of current Web “kitchens”?

Twitter, Facebook, MySpace (still for musicians), Ning communities, Blogs, etc. All these sites attract people on a daily basis.

What happens with these Web “kitchens” is analogous to what happens in real kitchens at real parties. Too many people crowd into the kitchen and soon the conversations becoming shouting matches and begin to lose their value. This forces people to splinter off and find new places to congregate.

We saw this with My Space, for normal users, about 2 years ago when there was a mass migration to Facebook. We now see Facebook being threatened by new platforms (not really “sites” per se) like Twitter and FriendFeed.

The challenge is to walk the line between reaching critical mass (enough people involved to get things rolling) and being over-crowded (a virtual shouting match).

The sites and Web platforms that recognize and respect this delicate balance will win the day.

In my opinion Twitter is best positioned to walk this line since you can really create a fine tuned environment enabling a sustained meaningful conversation. Time will tell.

Where is your “kitchen” on the Web?

Here’s where I hang out-

twitter.com/jebbanner (business)
facebook.com/people/Jeb-Banner/525557352 (personal)
musicalfamilytree.net (music)

Posted in social media, social networks, twitter | No Comments »

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