you want to start something?

As you may have noticed, my 100Blogs challenge stalled at #25 because I was using it to fight my way out of some writers block. I’ll likely pick it up again when I’ve got less to talk about

The 100Blogs Challenge is a list of 100 Blog titles that Chris Brogan hopes that people will tackle. Chris’ idea is for the community to have addressed all of them but I think it’s a good idea for anyone wanting to up the content on their blog or work through some block issues to start at #1 and aim for the sky.

Russell McQuillan, wireless guy and all-round scout, is giving it a go.

Tags: 100 by mj
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Continuing my coverage of Chris Brogan’s 100 topics:

Qabal
Really one for the LateGaming site more than here but this is a book I’ve wanted to write, more than any other, for a decade. Qabal is a roleplaying game about magic and the occult in the modern day. It draws heavily from archetypes and tries to update a mediaeval worldview for a modern one. Magic in the middle ages worked because people believed it did – pretty much the same these days. In this way, it’s kind of the ‘anti-Mage’.

Frontier
Another one for LateGaming , this RPG explores the things I loved about various science fiction. It incorporates aspects of Iain M. Banks ‘Culture’ novels, aspects of Star Trek (only the series’ that I liked) and explores themes of race, xenophobia, transhumanism, nostalgia and privilege. I’ve actually written a few pages of prose for this one. You never know. Maybe some day I’ll take a year off.

A poignant book about relationships and loss
Some of the books I’ve read (and, I suppose, films I have watched) which have affected me most have been about relationships and loss. For movies, P.S. I love you would be an excellent example, as would The Notebook. For dead tree, Anita Shreve’s “The Last Time They Met” left me feeling the lurch in my stomach as if the cabin in a plane hit an air pocket and plummetted hundreds of feet. Sometimes when I think of it, I’m still falling. I don’t have a copy of it right now, but I’ll buy it soon.

The Great Irish Novel
Slightly more difficult because I’ve never read one.

[Chris Brogan's 100 topics]

Tags: 100 by mj
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Somewhere in the shady world of sales and marketing and the cheery world of consumers is a role which transcends the paycheck: the evangelist

These are individuals who become fans of your product to the point that they will devote increasing amounts of time to the promotion of that product. Sometimes, like in a technology company, there may be a paid role for someone as a technology evangelist but they are often not much more than creative ways of saying ‘manager’ or ‘liaison’.

The biggest and most visible example of evangelism has to be in the Mac world. In all my years as a technologist I have never seen anything like the evangelism of the Mac. GNU/Linux has something of it but is hurt by the limited scope of the individuals (who tend to be technologists). With the Mac you might have an IT guy a teacher, a photographer, a civil servant, an artist and an athlete able to converse together about the same subject which they all enthuse about. The proliferation of Mac User Groups as shiny, happy places where you can meet like-minded individuals in a kind of social-network (years before the term gained such household acceptance) meant that even in the dark days of the mid nineties, when Apple’s future hung by a thread, there were still places to go and meet with other people (and to a degree, commiserate).

Other companies have evangelists too. Microsoft’s evangelists tend not to be as colourful or as interesting but they make their presence known by pushing through ‘homogenisation’ of networks and ’standardising of operating systems when what they really mean is ‘move to Windows because it’s the only thing I know. Thankfully, apart from in straight IT disciplines, this breed is dying out.

Google has evangelists which is creates by giving out limited beta invites to some people and allowing them to give invites to their friends, creating cliques of application users who inadvertently give the service exclusivity (and therefore value) as well as acting as a scaling test for the service.

Another breed of evangelist is the guy who just invited you to join FaceBook/Bebo/Myspace/LinkedIn or any of the other sites where they encourage you to rat out your friends to their marketing department. They want you to join because it makes their network bigger, they seem more popular, they can keep track of you or remember your birthday easier.

These big companies absolutely need you. They need you to attract your friends to these services so they can charge your eyeballs to their advertisers and make money.

This is how Google is a $150 billion company, why FaceBook was valued at $15 billion. Because they own you, the individual.

Apple needed the individuals to ‘keep the faith’ so they would continue to buy the product and, at the end of the day they need people to buy the product. Google and FaceBook need you to just try the product as they give it away for free. As Web 2.0 is all about moving the content from the traditional providers to the end users, Web 2.0 also means the revenue source comes not from the end users but because of them.

[Chris Brogan's 100 topics]

Tags: 100 by mj
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Continuing my work on writing about 100 different topics…

My mother is not on Facebook nor is she on any of the other social networking sites but there are members of my family who are. To be honest, my mother has just about gotten used to using a computer for email (though her replies are very infrequent).

My own Facebook profile is/was very tame. I had links to my blog posts, links to my friends, music I like and places I’d been. I deliberately cut back on Zombie Fights, Werewolf invites, Admission to be a member of the Knights of the Round Table, SuperWall, FunWall, MetaWall and all the rest of that and my main reason was that My Mother could be on FaceBook

If you log onto a standard profile on FaceBook you’ll see a lot of these mini-apps and you’ll see the content (a lot of it adult-rated) that finds it’s way onto the SuperWalls and similar applications if you’re not monitoring the content. If not your mother, imagine a prospective employer reading this stuff. You might have an innocent profile but if you’re linked to someone who sends adult-rated content and you’re on their photo gallery shitfaced and dancing naked from the waist down at a local bar, it could damage your ability to get a job. That said, I’m relatively convinced that most recruiters here don’t have the time or wherewithall to use tools like LinkedIn or FaceBook to help them find or vet candidates. And none of my managers throughout my history of being an employed lackey would have the forethought to search for me online.

It is, however, only a matter of time.

[Chris Brogan's 100 topics]

Tags: 100, Social by mj
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#21 was listed separately on Lategaming

If I were an advertiser today, I’d be nervous.

I’m talking from the point of view of being a producer or seller and that I have a product or service to advertise. There’s probably more choice in the methods of advertising now than there ever has been and to my mind they are becoming increasingly less effective.

Dead Tree
I’ll tell you right now. Junk mail I receive goes in the recycler. I don’t look at adverts in magazines. I don’t look at billboards for product advice. I do look at billboards for event advice however, like a robot turning up at W5? My kids would love it. A Wedding Fayre? Her indoors will love it. A Tech conference? Yeah, sure, though my expectations will be low.

Zombie Hordes
Unsolicited commercial email, and much of the solicited commercial email just goes straight into the trash. Being spammed with ‘articles’ written by small-time CEOs doesn’t inspire either. If you’re emailing me something, make it content and make it something I want, not something I might be interested in. I’m not interested in offers of free laptops and phones, performance enhancing drugs or business opportunities where I get a commission on vast amounts of money being transferred from one place to another. Figure it out.

Jaded Eyeballs
Does anyone pay attention to commercials on TV? What about adverts on web pages? I don’t even process them these days. The only ads I watch on TV are Apple adverts because I’m a sucker for Apple. I don’t look at or click through on most adverts on web sites. Sponsors links are different however – so make your advertising targetted and relevant and make sure they’re relevant to the web site I’m on.

Conversational Media
Advertising via Blog seems to be just dishonest in some ways. Sure, I might rave about Rickshaw but that’s because I’m using it every day. It’s a product created by me and my friends (my input is solely advisory). But what about companies that give free product to bloggers? Or pay them? Or for journo-bloggers who get paid to write reviews? I think there’s a line to be drawn. If it were me I’d provide product to a group of bloggers and tell them to be honest. Because if you’re not in this to be honest in your business then why even bother. Mr Mulley has a recent post about fakeblogging which is being seized by PR houses who see it as a quick way to generate some buzz. Is this much different to the online viral campaigns being created by movie producers to support their releases (Cloverfield had one)?

Something new and exciting?
It’s not my job to think of new and exciting ways to advertise? Uh, yeah, it is. Ways that would appeal to me? The biggest issue of any business is awareness. The number of people who told Mac-Sys they were so happy to hear about a Mac Service Provider in Northern Ireland but they’d never heard of the company before. And the number who were referred from PC companies was startling as well.

You also have to consider the potential damage that unsubstantiated word of mouth can cause and you have to wonder why people have such negative things to say. That’s why it’s important for a business to engage with bloggers who have an opinion. Not so bloggers can get special treatment but so the company can show that the rumour is false and that the real performance of the company cannot be judged by mutterings from a couple of guys. I have no idea why Andy’s friends told him not to go to Mac-Sys but I would hope that Andy’s experience with us has shown him a little insight into how we work with every customer. As it happened, Apple and Mac-Sys worked together to provide a solution that was palatable to all. Not every situation will play out like that but engaging a company directly should always provide some sort of palatable result. Not everyone may be happy with the results but there’s been a miscommunication if people are badmouthing you – you’ve obviously not communicated the message correctly (or, in many cases, the individual is too angry to listen and in my experience the anger is usually at themselves but directed at others.)

If I were an advertiser I’d not waste money on TV or Radio. If I were hosting an event I’d put the event on billboards. I’d definitely start a blog and do detailed breakdowns of the products and services. I’d provide free samples to bloggers and ask, not bargain with, them to write honest reviews. Engage with bloggers, challenge their assumptions, respond to their blog posts and take on board their criticisms.

[Chris Brogan's 100 topics]

Tags: 100 by mj
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