connecting*the*dots

The Crimson Permanent Assurance, indeed, but younger… and willing to work with their masters while sailing the high seas… and a happy ending?

Arrr!!!

(shot by taoruspoli)

Founded in 2000, The Los Angeles Filmmakers’ Cooperative is a mobile production company based out of a fully equipped school bus. Loaded with digital HD video cameras, 3 editing stations, a portable library, a screening room, and room to sleep 5, the LAFCO bus has seen countless adventures in the United States and beyond, producing dozens of music videos, documentaries, and narrative films.

Click To Play

LAFCO’s clients include Sony Music, Big Imagination Group, JVC, dead prez, The Outlawz, Talib Kweli, Yellowcard, and several others. LAFCO was awarded the Best Editing prize at the prestigious Ann Arbor Film Festival for work on their first feature film, Camjackers.

Can you say dream gig?

Chris Anderson and Will Hearst talking shop in May of 2006:

Publisher, Will Hearst, on the evolution of journalism:

[..] In the era of 20 years ago, there was a notion of a professional journalist — I’m not saying let’s race back to that era — what I’m saying is that notion is utterly gone. And what we are seeing as so-called professional journalism is really freelance material, shot in Baghdad, shipped to New York, somebody voice-overs it and that’s supposed to be “live news.”

And we’re covering Israel out of London and we’re covering Nairobi out of Tokyo, you know, we’re kidding ourselves. So in a way, I think the cure is not to go backwards, but to go forwards and to label that stuff and get more of that material and do away with this pseudo-professional news, which it really isn’t.

I mean if we’re gonna have “citizen journalism,” then let’s have it. […]

I completely appreciate the sentiment, but Will Hearst knows better than anybody that isn’t going to occur through the existing mainstream channels.

Mainstream news outlets — television and newspaper alike — are busy attempting to figure out how to keep the best parts of their old revenue model in place while leveraging the independent voices of the information age.

While the conglomerates look for new ways to count the same beans, innovative distribution models with decentralized reporting have already taken hold.

This shouldn’t be the cornerstone of the conversation, though. Even without an organized effort to distribute decentralized reporting, there are already 30 million active blogs in play around the world.

The news is becoming hyper-local and hyper-topical without the steady hand of industry drivers to guide it; traditional journalism is going the way of the stock broker.

Now traditional ethics? Well, that’s another story entirely…

Marc’s Voice
Welcome IBM to the corporate world of social networking

[…]

Synchronizing corporate and business data between networks can take on a whole new level of possibilities once IBM gets the corporate world to bite off on this.

I can’t wait to see what the initial implementations of IBM’s Lotus Connections brings. This is the best news Broadband Mechanics has ever had!

‘Cause they’re doing my advertising for me.

Welcome IBM to the world of white labeling social media. Add in widgets or a mobile gateway, mix in some product databases and static propoganda - and you might even have stumbled upon “digital lifestyle aggregation�.

We’ve been betting that this day would come. That corporate social networking (which included blogging) would make it to the big time. Now I get to compete with IBM on price, service, features and brand.

Let’s rock.

I can see Marc salivating from here (hm, maybe that’s drool).

This flavor of passion regarding corporate change reminds me of Cluetrain, 8 years ago.

Please open your bible to Chapter 5, The Hyperlinked Organization:

The Web, in short, has led every wired person in your organization to expect direct connections not only to information but also to the truth spoken in human voices. And they expect to be able to find what they need and do what they need without any further help from people who dress better than they do. This has happened not because of a management theory or a bestselling business book but because the Web reaches everyone with a computer and a telephone line on her desk.

So, the gulf opens between those who are connected and those who think an office with a door is a sign of success. The gulf is one of expectations, and expectations always guide perception. As a result, the company thinks it’s doing one thing while accomplishing the direct opposite with its connected employees. For example:

• The company communicates with me through a newsletter and company meetings meant to lift up my morale. In fact, I know from my e-mail pen pals that it’s telling me happy-talk lies, and I find that quite depressing.
• The company org chart shows me who does what so I know how to get things done. In fact, the org chart is an expression of a power structure. It is red tape. It is a map of whom to avoid.
• The company manages my work to make sure that all tasks are coordinated and the company is operating efficiently. In fact, the inflexible goals imposed from on high keep me from following what my craft expertise tells me I really ought to be doing.
• The company provides me with a career path so I’ll see a productive future in the business. In fact, I’ve figured out that because the org chart narrows at the top, most career paths necessarily have to be dead ends.
• The company provides me with all the information I need to make good decisions. In fact, this information is selected to support a decision (or worldview) in which I have no investment. Statistics and industry surveys are lobbed like anti-aircraft fire to disguise the fact that while we have lots of data, we have no understanding.
• The company is goal-oriented so that the path from here to there is broken into small, well-marked steps that can be tracked and managed. In fact, if I keep my head down and accomplish my goals, I won’t add the type of value I’m capable of. I need to browse. I even need to play. Without play, only Shit Happens. With play, Serendipity Happens.
• The company gives me deadlines so that we ship product on time, maintaining our integrity. In fact, working to arbitrary deadlines makes me ship poor-quality content. My management doesn’t have to use a club to get me to do my job. Where’s the trust, baby?
• The company looks at customers as adversaries who must be won over. In fact, the ones I’ve been exchanging e-mail with are very cool and enthusiastic about exactly the same thing that got me into this company. You know, I’d rather talk with them than with my manager.
• The company works in an office building in order to bring together all of the things I need to get my job done and to avoid distracting me. In fact, more and more of what I need is outside the corporate walls. And when I really want to get something done, I go home.
• The company rewards me for being a professional who acts and behaves in a, well, professional manner, following certain unwritten rules about the coefficient of permitted variation in dress, politics, shoe style, expression of religion, and the relating of humorous stories. In fact, I learn who to trust — whom I can work with creatively and productively — only by getting past the professional act.

Something’s gone wrong. Or maybe something now is starting to go right.

[…]

Bottom-Up

The Web is undoubtedly a part of your business plans. You’ve got it safely contained, under control, managed. Why, your organization has probably already installed a corporate intranet so it can publish the human resource policies that no one read on paper to people who now won’t read ’em on screen. Excellent!

Yes, your centralized corporate intranet has eliminated some paper and is making management feel vaguely cool. But that’s not the web that’s going to shake the foundations of your fort.

While you’ve been hiring consultants to create a slick corporate intranet, establishing policies about who gets to post what, and creating a chain of command to ensure that only appropriate and approved materials show up on your internal corporate home page, your engineers, scientists, researchers — hell even the marketing folks — have been creating little Web sites for their own use.

No one is controlling what’s posted on them except the people doing the posting. No one is making sure that the corporate logo is in the right place. No one is making sure that the writing is official, officious, and as dull as the pencil drawer of a recently downsized middle manager.

The real party got under way while you were still setting up the banners at the corporate prom. (This year’s prom theme: “Responsibility in a Web Age!”)

For example, by the time Sun Microsystems got around to counting, they had eight hundred intranets. And when Texas Instruments put in their corporate intranet, they invited everyone who had one already in place to register with the top-down one. Within a few months, two hundred and fifty internal sites had registered, and no one knows how many unregistered ones there were. Even a top-down intranet can take on a bottom-up feel, as happened at Lucent Technologies, according to an article in The Wall Street Journal. After Lucent brought together a product-development team of five hundred engineers across three continents and thirteen time zones, it watched dozens of them insert their own pages into the project intranet. Some of these pages related directly to the project; others were strictly personal, like, “Hey, look at this picture of me and my dog!” Either way, the project took on a human cast that never would have been present otherwise. In the end the team leader attributed the success of the project in no small part to “the ultimate Democracy of the Web.”

Granted, these are technology companies, but you don’t have to be a technical genius to create an intranet. If someone wants to share some information, they can turn their computer into a Web server. It’s free, and it’s getting easier every day.

The intranet revolution is bottom-up. There’s no going back. If a company doesn’t recognize this, the top-down intranet it puts in can breed the type of cynicism that results in ugly bathroom graffiti and mysterious golfing cart accidents.

The intranets under the radar screen — and the rest of the Net panoply, including e-mail, mailing lists, and discussion groups — ignore the corporate blather and ass-covering pronouncements. Instead, these new Web conversations are actually being used to get some work done.

And the work continues…

(originally uploaded by -Kerryn-)

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

(originally uploaded by SOUTHEN)

My Mom has always worked the financial system to the best of her ability — from triple coupon shopping at ShopRite to becoming a landlord three states away as a retirement investment — so back in my freshman year at Syracuse, she co-signed an application for me to get an American Express Gold Card. She felt that by simply holding it, it would go a long way in establishing my credit rating.

It did.

Over the years, I’ve made large and small purchases alike, while making sure to be on-time with payments. As a result, my credit rating spiked and just recently, I was able to purchase a home at a decent rate — even though dotmatrix is in its first year as a business.

So, as much as I dislike paying $85 a year for a credit card, Amex has more than paid me back in return with customer service that has always been extremely helpful and courteous.

Until today, that is.

Can We Just Upsell You Instead?

In moving from freelance mode to building a design consultancy, I figured it was about time to completely separate my personal expenses from my business expenses. So a few weeks back I applied for an Amex Business Gold Card and tonight, with Christmas finally behind me, I called to activate my recently delivered card.

While activating, I asked the operator to transfer my points (close to 100,000 from 17 years of purchases) to the new card. Of course, that couldn’t be accomplished by the account opening specialist, so within a few minutes I was speaking to another CSR in the Membership Rewards department.

No problems there; the guy added the program to my new business card and proceeded to transfer my points over in one fell swoop.

Then I told him that I wanted to cancel my old Gold Card.

Wrong move.

Five minutes of hold time later, I was speaking to a guy in another department with a glossy title that, once decoded, equated with “card retainment specialist.”

I told the guy that I wanted to cancel my personal Gold Card, but before doing so, I needed to know that I would be receiving my End of Year Summary — essential documentation of my numerous business deductions over the past year.

The guy didn’t listen to one word I said.

Before I could say AOL nightmare, the guy began to upsell me about the benefits of the card. He said he could throw in a $40 credit due to my long-standing account status (for you non-math majors, that’s a benefit of $2.35 per year).

I repeated that I needed an answer to my question.

Instead of transferring me to customer service — who apparently held the knowledge as to when I was to receive my summary document — the specialist continued along the same line of reasoning.

Next, he tells me that it’s almost impossible to get an Amex Gold card and that I’d be missing out on a ton of great benefits. Getting a bit annoyed, I lost track of my request and challenged him to look at my account and tell me what exactly I’d be missing — especially now that just I opened a Business Gold Card.

Instead of doing what I asked, the guy took the opportunity to challenge me to name one of my Gold Card benefits — you know, ’cause I’m a dumb customer who doesn’t know what he needs.

Okay, now I’m starting to get pissed.

I returned to my original question about the summary and the guy just kept on going, telling me all about the great benefits of card membership, including more points with a second card. When I told him that I had that angle covered — for free with a non-Amex card — and that I didn’t need advice along those lines, he kept pushing, insisting that most people don’t know what they’re missing out on.

I tell him I’m an adult and don’t appreciate the continuous upsell.

He tells me that I’m not listening; everybody needs a Gold Card.

I hang up.

Next: Customer Service

So taking the only valuable info the retainment specialist gave me, I decided to call Customer Service to find out when I would receive my summary. The new guy must’ve checked his CRM tool (man, is this a call for VRM or what?!), as he was ready to deflect my question and continue to upsell Gold Card membership.

Only after I made it crystal clear to him that I just added another Gold Card to my account — keeping the beans coming in at a steady pace — did he stop his Lomanesque discourse long enough to put me on hold and find out for me exactly when I could cancel my card, yet still receive my summary.

After another five minutes, he comes back and tells me that I can’t cancel the account until March 9th — my anniversary date.

When I tell him that I receive my summary no later than early February, he pauses.

When I ask him on what date I was to be charged next year’s $85 fee, he meekly responds with “March 9th.”

Motherfuckers.

Learn Or Die

I ended up hanging up tonight, to wait until I receive my summary before I cancel prior to March 9th. I messed up: I never should have mentioned canceling the card before getting all the information I needed.

I guess I had too much faith that being a longtime card member should mean something — like not having to game my call to people who are supposed to be servicing me, the customer.

It blows me away that companies continue to develop CSR scripts along these lines, in an attempt to maximize profits. For 17 years, I considered Amex to be a great company — not based on the bills I received each month or the ridiculous $40 per year points program I’ve paid for since obtaining the card — but for their impeccable customer service.

Well, they’ve now joined the likes of Sprint as far as I’m concerned.

How much more money have they now lost through this piss poor brand experience? I don’t know, but I can tell you one thing for sure:

Momma didn’t raise no motherfucking plankton.

(originally uploaded by dsearls)

Doc and company are working on making VRM a reality. Well, here’s my shout out to the ether: I wanna help!

(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.

(originally uploaded by axb500)

My iPod battery died years ago; it now lives permanently attached to the cigarette lighter in my truck as if on life support.

Until DRM is dead, and I can use the music I’ve bought at the iTunes Music store on a player other than an iPod, screw ‘em both.

The TaskWatch clock & whiteboard won’t organize my life by itself, but it’ll be a good addition to my home office and a worthwhile investment..

(via Neatorama)

UPDATE: Lex was right, this would’ve been a waste of money. ;-)

Tonight @ 7pm in Congdon Hall, Room 138 at High Point University (Directions), John Ford and myself will be rapping about this little activity called blogging.

If you’ve heard about it before, but don’t know how blogging can assist you as a small business owner, an activist, a writer, etc., come on down and get both the back-story and the 411 on how to publish to the internet.

And if you’re already a blogger, well, come on down and live-blog our presentation!