Still Eggplant

So, this is completely random, but has anyone been watching Aliens in America? What I find truly uncanny is how much actor Daniel Byrd (the native Wisconsin teen character) reminds me of Michael C. Hall of Six Feet Under and Dexter fame. The tone of voice is completely the same. The facial features are nearly identical. And even the hair coloring is similar.

All of this leads me to wonder whether Byrd is the son of Hall. Byrd was born in 1985, and Hall would have been only 14 at the time given that he was born in 1971. But he could have fathered the child and the baby given up for adoption.

Of course, this is all speculation. But the similarities are uncanny. Sit down and watch an episode of Dexter back to back with an episode of Aliens. Don’t watch the screen. Just listen to the voices. The speech patterns are exactly the same.

Anyone else see the similarities? Anyone know the real story here? I’ve searched and found nothing.

Technorati Tags: dexter, aliens in america, michael c. hall, michael hall, daniel byrd, dan byrd

How evil are you?

How evil are you?

Like many people, I’ve noticed a trend of late. It has to do with Web 2.0, the Howard Dean campaign, permission marketing and all of these newfangled technologies and ways of doing business. What do they all have to do with each other, I wondered. Why now? Is there, in fact a commonality between them?

Instead of trying to pressure myself into figuring it out, though, I simply sat back and watched. I used social networking sites. I used Wikipedia. I looked at the success of the netroots and how they’ve begun to influence the media. I read Seth Godin’s work on permission marketing. I read more about the Long Tail. I was intrigued. And I learned a lot along the way.

Then, recently, it all came together as I was preparing a presentation for a job interview. The job entails recruiting volunteers into research studies. There’s an educational component, a public relations aspect, and a selling part to it. The more I thought about the requirements of the job, the more I looked at permission marketing as something that would satisfy all of those pieces of the job. I decided to do my presentation on that concept.

In order to explain why permission marketing made sense, I needed to let people know where I thought people are. From there, I wanted to show the response to our changing world, and why permission marketing, in the context of social marketing, might make sense. And that’s when it hit me. Following are my resultant thoughts on what I’m calling Participatory Business Development. I have many other thoughts on the subject. I’ll write more in the coming days.

Here’s what happening in our changing world — we’re being overrun. Our attention is demanded constantly. The average American sees over 1,000,000 advertisements a year. That’s 3,000 marketing messages a day. We’re bombarded with too much information. But that’s not all. Work drives us toward greater efficiency while simultaneously asking us to spend even greater time at the office. Big money controls politics. The world has gotten smaller through globalization. Media consolidation has opened up the plausibility that the news we hear is only the public relations version of events. There’s a lack of physical neighborhoods where people really work and play. We’re all experiencing the effects of corporatization. And technology is taking over our lives placing a barrier between us.

This all has resulted in a lack of trust, I think. Basically, we have a world that is simultaneously becoming smaller yet less personal. People don’t have the same connections they used to have. We’re not a world centered around the family or our neighborhoods anymore. My feeling is this has produced a certain amount of fear and a grasping for some sort of control.

Some aspects of the business world have responded with a set of technologies and ways of doing business. The most famous of these is web 2.0. It’s gotten a lot of press within a certain segment of society. But that’s not the only thing going on. I think web 2.0 is part of a fairly linear path that includes concepts and business practices like the wisdom of the crowds, blogging, the Howard Dean campaign, social networking, YouTube, the netroots, 37signals, APIs, the long tail, permission marketing, open source software development, tagging, Wikipedia, and viral marketing.

What all of these things, ideas, practices have in common are that they are all about Creating Conversation. Essentially, they all put people back into the process. They give people a say in their world again — at least a version of control. The essential characteristics of this people centered process are: dialogue, iterative processes, responsiveness to customer needs, an openness about the process, learning on the part of the business, the desire to collaborate, relationship building with the customer, and a commitment to data.
This is the new way of doing successful business. The businesses and nonprofits that incorporate these practices will survive in this changing world. The ones that don’t take on these practices will fail . . . or at least become mired in the gunk of bureaucracy.

Oddly enough, these practices have some close antecedents in the noprofit world, particularly the world of evaluation. Early in my career I learned about an evaluation methodology called Participatory Evaluation. Basically, you involve various stakeholders in the evaluative process. The stakeholders would include users of the service or product, the managers, the funders, governmental officials — anyone who had a stake in the outcome of the product or service.This group would help decide what needed to be evaluated, the process, the research questions. They also helped with gathering data and then analyzing it. My goal was to facilitate the involvement of the product or service experts in the evaluation. Not only did I, as the facilitator, benefit from their expert knowledge but the product or service managers, as part of the process, gained a greater insight into the process. They are able to change tactics on the fly in need be because they can see what impact their work is having.

There are some strong corollaries between participatory evaluation and these new business practices. They are both about learning. They are both saying that all of the expertise doesn’t reside in one place. They are both about changing things as you go along to make a better product. Until more recently, businesses have listened pretty hard to their funders — whether stockholders or venture capitalists. But there has not been as open a dialogue with their customers. But, as we can see, that’s changing. It’s not just about taking a poll and measuring what will make the most people happy. It’s about truly listening, about being fleet enough to change messages, outcomes, services, the whole product, on the fly based what you’re hearing. It’s about openness — taking the fear and the proprietary nature out of business. It’s about building trust.

And that’s why I’m calling these new business practices Participatory Business Development.

Technorati Tags: 37signals, advertising, api, long tail, marketing, netroots, open source, participatory evaluation, permission marketing, social networking, tagging, viral marketing, web 2.0, web2.0, wisdom of the crowds, youtube

A new report suggests that HIV rates are going to soar.

“At an average annual rate of increase in new infections of 4%, three quarters of black gay men will be infected with HIV at age 50.”

Technorati Tags: black, gay, GLBT, HIV, LGBT, AIDS, queer, same gender loving

Wow! A bit ago a group of Rhea County politicians tried to get the Tennessee state government to allow them to criminalize homosexuality. They didn’t want any of that kind in the bucolic county sitting on the shores of Watts Bar Lake. Of course, the state government didn’t follow through. And the resolution was quickly rescinded. But it showed a dangerous strain of homophobia by the politicians. But in a spate of sanity, voters in the county have thrown the homophobes out of office. It wasn’t the only reason they were thrown out, apparently. They were seen as fairly ineffective. Yeah! for my home county.

It all points, though, to a pull in politics these days toward legislating on things that have little to do with the daily lives of most people. When are politicians from both sides of the political fence going to just buckle down and deal with the real issues? I don’t know. But I’m looking forward to that. Hope, after all, springs eternal. Though it feels a bit like it’s only trickling out of late.

Here are a few random links to things you might have missed:

- How one guy traded one red paper clip into a house through 14 increasing-in-value trades. Awesome!
- Interview with Barak Obama on The Street Prophet on religion and progressive politics.

You know soccer has hit the big (a.k.a American) time when it starts to take after black America and the players play the dozens. Reports now say that Zidane head-butted Materazzi because he called his mother a whore.

Can’t you just see it? The rules will change and instead of penalty kicks at the end we’ll have players talking about the mothers of the other team! “Well, even if you didn’t put your hand on the ball, your momma puts her hands on my balls every night!” And the crowd lets out a collective “Wooo! No he didn’t.” The announcer then goes “Well, folks, that’s a fatal knock-out for the Italians. The French have won the game this time. And I think we’ll all agree that the Italian’s mother is a skanky ho.”

And you know, just like when Madonna made Vogue, the world loves to move to the beats of American subculture (the blacks, the gays, etc.). It’s only a matter of time before America will become a soccer behemoth. ‘Cause America’s reaction is always to beat everything into submission.

File this under Soccer Goes Ghetto

(Source, Source)

Technorati Tags: head butt, soccer, the dozens

The netroots, I think, is somewhat suffering from an ideological and practical upheaval. On the one hand, you have some folks who are just itching for a fight where they (the netroots) can win to gain power within the political establishment — to be taken seriously. But oddly enough, they tend to keep touting their “wins” — wins that are often simply ways of looking at a situation rather than clear cut wins. My take is that the progressive blogoshpere is definitely a force. But the structure, power and influence are not complete, as of yet.

That group often talks about itself as progressive. And they tend to be fairly ideologically pure. I would say, to my mind, Chris Bowers represents that group most succinctly.

On the other hand, you have Markos Moulitsas Zuniga who, while progressive, is less ideologically pure and a bit more about being strategic. His book, from all I’ve read (because I confess I haven’t read the actual book), is about strategy and not as much about ideology. Ideology is talked about within the context of the strategy for how to make up a winning coalition. Zuniga, I believe, thinks that America is actually a lot more progressive than we tend to think of it.

So, I think what we have are two, perhaps three, different larger groups within the netroots who have formed an aliance that actually is less aligned than I think people think it is: 1) True, old style Democratic progressives who more closely resemble, to me, the Christian fundamentalists in terms of their place within the party, and 2) Party loyalists who feel that the current road to the center does not reflect where America actually is and is part of the losses the Democrats have been encountering. There’s a third group, I think, that is less concerned with either ideology or strategy. That group is really just along for the fight.

I’ve taken a bit of a step back from being part of the whole netroots movement and have just been an observer of late. I’ve come to believe a bit less in technology, which was the story about the blogs and the movement for a while. I’m also feeling less about the need for a voice for all of the people. Yes, I believe we need a people’s voice. But I also believe we need systems and strategy. I believe the netroots needs stronger leadership. This new leadership needs to be both more facilitative and more directive simultaneously. It needs to create trust. It needs to be more transparent. But it also needs to be less elitist.

One of the reasons the whole netroots movement has been as successful as it has been is because of the numbers. But the numbers aren’t exactly what one would think. I know I’ve been surprised by the number of activists who actually follow through on actions. For instance, while DailyKos gets somewhere in the neighborhood of 6M visitors a day, it only has about 100K registered users (around 95K just a few days ago). A very popular service that provides users with ways to keep up on political action has over 5M users (registered for different services) but only has about a 20% rate of users who are actually acctive with the service.

What this means to me is that while some are content to “chat” and read along with the blogosphere it’s often more of a pastime and not something people engage in with a regular basis. Something needs to change, I think. There have been some efforts to organize people on the Internets. But those efforts have not really succeeded. There needs to be a way to float the cream to the top (there’s always too much to read! since everyone wants to say something), and the leadership is fairly passive, I think. Yes, there’s a certain amount of leadership in the blog world. But it’s often, in my mind, more about reaction, posturing, single issues, news sharing, and trying to build a place for the netroots.

I’m talking about a more facilitative leadership that both listens and persuades and helps develop a certain cohesion within the blogosphere. I think that’s a hard thing to develop. And it has to figure out a way for everyone to actually feel like they have a voice even if it’s one that only comes in once in a while. It has to be a leadership that will engage even the most passive part of the netroots and help them feel a true part of the blogoshpere.

One idea that I’ve recently had is to develop pods. I don’t know how they would be organized: geography? issue? random? other demographics? And this is just one ideal. But it’s reminiscent of cell structures in that there’s a way for each individual to have a real voice within a larger structure. Each pod’s voice would then be ushered into a larger structure. Hmm. This feels a bit like representation. And it is. It would be sort of like a shadow political process but with a better referential/communication structure that is about influencing policy and our current political process. Pods would need to be small enough to make sure that each person, even if she/he only chimed in only once every three or four months, would be heard. Right now there is a level of commitment that’s part of the netroots process that is too high and that keeps well-meaning, engaged people out of the process or on the sidelines.

I don’t know if this is the right structure. But something has to change, I think. There’s so much energy among the netroots. Somehow that energy needs to be harnessed and directed. There are far too many in-fights right now. There’s a lack of acknowledgment of the true rifts between various groups. And while it looks like there’s participation by the masses, that participation is actually far more limited people want to acknowledge.n

Technorati Tags: daily kos, democratic party, democrats, emerging voices, establishment, internet rant, MyDD, netroots, powers that be

As many people know, I have extreme ambivalence about the whole issue of the netroots. I’m very much a people-powered type of guy. I’m against, in principle, imperialistic structures. But I also believe in order. And I don’t think anarchy really achieves much — well, except chaos (and that can sometimes be a good thing). I also believe the Establishment (the political Powers That Be) has not really been listening a whole lot to the voices that have been coming across the transom from the people. That’s a bad thing. Then there are all of the issue groups fighting to make their particular issue heard, and not just heard but a priority. And I think these issue groups fighting for primacy amongst themselves and beginning to take an agnostic approach to party loyalty is a thing that I’m not always sure how to deal with (I sympathize with most of the issues while thinking that the public and our government only has so much attention span and ability to change).

Anyway, The New Republic published a blog post on how the netroots might help to break the hold the special interest groups have on the Democratic Party. I, for one, think that would be great! Actually, the more I think about it, the more I wonder if having the special interest groups outside the party process might just be exactly where they need to be. They can lobby Democrats and Republicans, alike. And it keeps the Dem Party from being too closely aligned with just a set of issues and gets it to be about a more cohesive policy approach. Or that would be my hope.

We’ll keep watching and posting thoughts . . .

Technorati Tags: democratic party, democrats, netroots, the new republic, special interest groups