connecting*the*dots

(originally uploaded by Jacob Krejci)

Ah, the joys of a secular nation. This craziness was found in Franklin, North Carolina.

Oh, by the way, on the right side of the billboard is the Ten Commandments.

(originally uploaded by annette 62)

In Newcastle, UK.

UPDATE: Sorry for the crappy image, but annette 62 seems to have left flickr, so the clean copy went with it. In its place is a scaled up version of a cashed thumbnail.

The text on the billboard reads:

EVER THOUGHT OF JOINING?
TALK TO SOMEONE WHO HAS
(added graf) LOST A SON IN IRAQ

Thanks, Chris & Tara.

The Super Bowl — another year, another reminder that I’ll never see my Jets on this stage in my lifetime. Oh, well. At least we can eat and drink like it’s Thanksgiving and watch Peyton Manning get hit a bunch of times!

Prediction #1

We will not see a Super Bowl ad as iconic as this Mean Joe Greene Coke classic:

(Man, watching that brought me back to feeling like the little kid I was in 1979)

Nor will we experience anything close to as revolutionary as this gem from Apple:

(Damn goosebumps!)

Prediction #2

In less than 18 hours, we’ll be stuck watching the equivalent of this K-Fed advertising crap:

Prediction #3

Final Score: Colts 26, Bears 23

• Manning manages the game with his usual efficiency
• The Bear’s defense bends, but doesn’t break, causing timely punts and red-zone FG attempts
• Adam Vinatieri kicks four field goals, Robbie Gould hits two
• Manning connects on one long touchdown pass to either Harrison or Wayne
• Mark Anderson busts through the Colt’s O-line for a safety, after the Bears pin the Colts deep
• Joseph Addai runs in one score, after a long, sustained drive
• Rex Grossman hits Bernard Berrian for a late TD and converts a two-point attempt to pull within a FG
• Peyton Manning and Joseph Addai manage to grind out enough first downs to send the Bears home losers

MVP: Peyton Manning

I’m really torn about rooting for Peyton Manning.

On one hand, I want Manning to win so the media will finally stop generating noise about his inability to win the big game. That meme is driving me insane. Another reason is Tony Dungy, who’s a class act and after the nightmare he and his family went through last year, no one deserves a championship ring more.

On the other hand, I’ll never forgive Manning for staying in school his senior year and making the Jets draft Keyshawn “Just Give Me The Damn Ball!” Johnson.

The invite!

I almost forgot.

If you’re in Greensboro and know me in the slightest, feel free to stop on by for the game. I’ll provide the 50″ LCD wide-screen, you bring food and beer for yourself… and me. ;)

And if I don’t see you later today, have a super Sunday!

(originally uploaded by -Kerryn-)

Fun Fact: “Hell” is a pizza chain in New Zealand.

UPDATE: In the comments, Deanna explains that this is a margarine commercial, running in Canada for the past year or so. Lethargic due to butter consumption = lethargic due to government employment in my book. ;)

(self-portrait by dsearls)

Sorry, Doc — I couldn’t quote your Jupiter Research post without a Rageboy-like visual.

Turning funnels into megaphones
Doc Searls

[…]

Think for a minute about how much more useful (or obsolete) marketing would be if customers had actual relationships, or the means to initiate relationships — on the customers’ terms — when and where they wanted to initiate them?

Wouldn’t it be handy if customers could, at their discretion, by themselves or in whatever groups they feel like assembling (in the wild open and free marketplace, rather than in any vendor’s or intermediary’s silo), tell vendors what they are looking for, and under what conditions? Including what they are willing to pay?

We’re talking about a real marketplace here. Not eBay or any other walled garden.

We’re talking about relieving vendors of the need to do complex guesswork about what customers want.

We’re talking about efficient and easy ways to satisfy money-in-hand demand, rather than more ways of ‘creating’ or manipulating demand.

We’re talking about obsoleting advertising as we know it. Marketing too.

We’re talking about re-framing markets as real places where transactions, conversations and relationships happen between independent participants on terms and conditions that are work well for everybody.

We’re talking about creating the means for leveraging customer independence, choice and rights to obtain respect and authority independent of any private online marketplace, or any search engine.

We’re talking about VRM, for Vendor Relationship Management. Some have suggested RM for just Relationship Management. Others have suggested XRM, for managing relationships with anybody, including one’s own social networks — ranging from memberships in organizations to email white and black lists. Whatever we call it, the subject will be front & center at the Internet Identity Workshop coming up in December.

We’re talking about individuals managing the means by which their every gesture is recorded (or not) and put to use (or not).

We’re talking about giving research organizations and their clients reasons to stop looking at each of us as “consumers”, “audiences”, or cattle that can be “driven” to do anything.

We’re talking about flattening the power relationships between vendors and customers, for the good of both.

I could go on, but it’s Sunday morning, and I’m off to make breakfast, have some fun with the family, and buy stuff from vendors who don’t treat people like plankton.

As much as some people might like to believe, we don’t define ourselves as a nation of market silos, with various connecting retail channels and media mechanisms enabled to advertise new and retreaded products for mass consumption — either in the brick n’ mortar space or the new wild west of the internet.

We define at ourselves as people, first and foremost. And, God forbid, we like to be treated as such.

The problem that Doc has framed in the past, and is dealing with in this post, is that the majority of players who guard and influence the American system of capitalism can’t seem to roll with the idea of influence neutral and people-centric business practices.

Why you ask? (come on, ask)

Because systematically backing individualism comes at too high of a cost.

Consider the fact that:

• mass manufacturing and targeted advertising in the industrial age set the standard approach to maximizing short-term and long-term profitability; customization and new media conversations throws a huge monkey wrench into that methodology of perpetual product pimping and production.
• the more catering the individual receives — regardless of the depth of their pockets — the more that the levers of the traditional supply and demand model must change; this affects not only the politics of the market, but the politics of the nation, as citizen participation and influence flattens and widens the playing field.

To me, it sounds like Doc wants to live in a world where we have enough breathing room to get a handle on our own needs and wants — as opposed to our current state of constantly being poked, prodded and influenced into needing what marketers and advertisers want us to buy.

Don’t we all want to live in such a world?

By enabling smart social mechanisms that allow us to — for a lack of a better term — ping the ether when we desire, alerting other human beings to hit us back who own aligning attributes of proximity, supply, price, quality, etc., we can move towards a way of life that is free of the walled constructs that serve the bricklayers more than the bartering parties themselves.

We don’t quite have such a commons in place yet, and our new economy mechanisms are still somewhat crude, but we’re heading in the right direction.

In order to ensure our new world dreams don’t get trounced by the same people who clipped the wings of ham radio operators and the promise of public access television, we need to be vigilant in monitoring the old guard who won’t evolve — for as innovation creates opportunities for the masses, it also marginalizes old technology and the people who hold on for dear life.

These people will not go quietly into the night.

Have they no shame! Heh…

(shot in Greensboro, NC by Lisa Scheer)