Jul
12

I’m Coming For You, Public Diplomacy!!!

 

Spider Jerusalem

Spider Jerusalem from Transmetropolitan. Image by Darek_Smid via Flickr

Inspired by a recent reading of Warren Ellis‘ and Darick Robertson‘s exceptional sci-fi journalism epic Transmetropolitan, I’m going guns up on a number of communications issues affecting the communities through which I circulate in DC. Ellis’ self-described “outlaw journalist” Spider Jerusalem – fueled by copious amounts of drugs and madness in a delightful send-up of Hunter S. Thompson – promises his readership “The Truth. No matter what.” In his writing, Spider goes after all that is wrong with his beloved society, targeting everything from corrupt politicians to the public’s ignorance of special sub-cultures in their fine City. I find Spider’s epic story a galvanizing bullwhip across my back, forcing me off my Xbox-addled arse to write about some of the iniquities in government I see as part of my work. This will be just the first in a series of posts on subjects across the communications spectrum. I’m coming for ALL OF YOU.

Today, my first target is public diplomacy.

OMGWTF

Readers of this blog should not be surprised by my intense disappointment in the modern public diplomacy (or PD) community.  Today’s premeditated murder was spurred on by my attendance and yet another PD gathering in Washington, DC: a meeting of the Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy (ACPD). On the shores of our august capitol, PD enthusiasts, practitioners, and executives met to talk about the same retarded problems they have been since before the U.S. Information Agency‘s (aka the USIA) absorption by the State Department during the Clinton Administration. Panelists lamented continued lack of resources for PD initiatives, the imbalance between the State and Defense Departments in strategic communication capability, and a dilapidated piece of shitheel legislation called the Smith-Mundt Act whose Cold War roots strangle in the crib any offspring of modern government communication and engagement initiatives.

At issue for you oppressed, tax-fucked Americans? These same people have debated this same issue for a decade with no charted course for reform.

Hunter S. Thompson would have brain-smacked you all by now. Be thankful for my gonzo. Moo hoo ha ha. (Image from TopTenz.net. Comedy shamelessly ripped off of Warren Ellis.)

“That’s not fair!” some asshole will undoubtedly object, choking himself masturbatorially on reams of “DipNotes” from PD officers both home-based and overseas, begging our pardon thank you very much, “We have changed SO. MUCH. in the Obama Administration!” Let not these purported achievements fill you with comfort, dear seekers of AWESOME, for they elicit mere “yays” from the govvies roaming the halls of cavernous Main State and snickering derision from their interagency compatriots behind the green doors of MacDill and Bragg and Langley. Progress made under Judith McHale‘s reign as Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs registers as little more than a cursory reshuffling of office space for most of the strategic communication community. Progress that scores an administration enough points for a minor electoral anecdote but changes nothing. In fact, Dame Judith hung her Mission Accomplished banner on July 1st and dashed back to the private sector, a political appointment weighing under her belt for new boardroom dances with wolves.

They define “progress” as anything more than what the last administration achieved. The politicization of public diplomacy continues. Even PD Jesus Bruce Gregory’s voice cracked with torpor as he queried the Commission about any indication of motivation amongst The Bastards of Capitol Hill to make revising legislation like Smith-Mundt a priority. No one could answer with anything but googly-eyed evasion and exhortations of more progress. All bullshit.

Key to these liver spotted deliberations is the disconcerting lack of any personage on the Commission the age of, it seems, 60? 50? 40? Said Commissioners are charged with advising the White House and Congress on the current state of PD and any required changes. Have these venerable veterans achieved any of these changes in the past? NO. Debates continue unabashed under their scrutiny, but ultimately, no capable young saviors have appeared to dash the fuckery of this decrepit profession into some semblance of modernization. Instead, more meetings. Many, many meetings.

Is PD even a necessary discipline in the 21st century? This existential question should be considered by this Commission and more. Panelists admitted that as communication becomes more social and content ownership franchises more to the individual… does a government agency have any equitable place in this modern communication continuum? How much of said agency’s budget could be repurposed into something more effective, especially in This, Our Decade of Economic Anal Probity?

In truth, some kind of coordinative communication apparatus is probably mandated, but a standalone office of diplomats still trying to get Teh Brown Peeples to read our press releases is not the answer. The profession of public diplomacy itself has even been attacked indirectly by the wild success of independent citizen diplomacy efforts. As much as foreign cultures balk at the elitist diplomacy practiced by our leaders, they clamor for more of US. OUR people. Our CITIZENS and THEIR culture. It is THIS influence, the kind Americans exude in their daily interactions with EVERYONE, that fosters our best destiny in achieving any kind of global equilibrium where U.S. interests and foreign policy objectives are met.

So. What to do?

Less bullshittery. More AWESOME.

We need not more reportage of the latest personnel changes in State PD to accommodate engagement with people of different cultures online. Instead, we need INSANE RISK TAKING. We need programs that make managers shit their pants. We need BOLDNESS. We need MADNESS. We need BETTER. Everyone lives in fear of breaking the law (i.e., Smith-Mundt), but no one has ever been prosecuted much less charged for it. COWBOY UP, PEOPLE.

Retire the old. Empower the new.

If PD is to survive, it needs to stop chasing off all its talent. Instead of rewarding the tired old Foreign Service Officers in their Cold War era suits with prime postings and political appointments, recruit badass social communicators and rockstars. Were I the President, I’d beg Jack Dorsey to fix my State Department. I’d heap tons of cash upon Katie Stanton and Jared Cohen to keep challenging the system instead of being chased off by white-faced, skeleton-eyed Statey lifers. It’s time for PD to evolve and kill its parents.

Flexible, dynamic interagency doctrine.

Christopher Paul, RAND analyst and a speaker at the ACPD meeting, noted voluminous mountains of reports all describing the same problems with the US government’s PD and strategic communication enterprise. All of them, he said, cited failures in strategy, leadership, and resources. While this is true, understand that they can only be fixed with doctrine– legislated, enforceable operating procedures that name the leader and give them authority, power, and dollars. Said doctrine should be written and executed dynamically and train its future communications professionals to a standard of dynamism instead of the usual tired old PD goals shat out by Foreign Service Institute instructors.

An organization… or not?

Since PD people love to retread the same issue over and over, the ACPD discussion inevitably turned toward the idea of a rehabilitated USIA of the future or some such public/private organization that could strategically execute funding for PD or strategic communication programs. If you think this is the solution to your PD problems, I refer you to the abortion that is the Office of the Director of National Intelligence for a case study in placenta cannibalization. Ultimately, we will not know if a new organization is needed until we agree upon one final yet primarily critical issue.

Communication is communication is communication.

In the ecosystem of government influence, we have public diplomacy. We have strategic communication. We have military information operations and its subordinate components. We have public affairs. We have countless different ways of describing the same thing, mainly because Our Bastardry In Office refuse to modernize legislation and policy to reflect the present day much less prepare for the ever-fluid yet super-AWESOME future. Instead of rewriting arcane definitions and arguing them over interagency turf, we need a frank and fundamental understanding by our entire government that all of these things are influence and communication is the mechanism by which we engage that influence, be it passively or actively, openly or surreptitiously. We need a pedigree for professionals charged to operate in this ecosystem and high qualifications for the ones assigned to advise senior leaders and decision makers.

Hope Is Not Lost

It sounds doomy and gloomy from the PD pulpit, doesn’t it? Well, here’s another lovely fact for you to chew on: NOBODY CARES. That’s right. Outside of DC, Americans could care less about a minuscule communication discipline practiced by a cadre of foggy eyed concerto directors and staffs of douchebags wielding postgraduate degrees from learning institutions designed to pump out partisanly political clones year after year.

Within this black hole of apathy lies opportunity. While no one is looking, those with the drive and the passion to make change – not ask for it – can turn the modernization of PD into an ecstasy fueled RAVE. The Executive Branch needs not the pusillanimous posturing of political poobahs on the Hill to create true strategic communication primacy in government right now. But to make permanent visionary change, we will eventually need to rustle Congress into the pasture of the future.

To achieve this, however, we need YOU – that’s right, YOU – to get up off your ass and MAKE THIS AN ISSUE. Every time you vote for the guy who likes to tweet dick pics to his mistresses, you screw us out of balanced, effective decisions. Stop sending immense wankers to DC.

Next Time On Strategic Communication Theater…

In subsequent posts, we’ll explore more about what this weird world of strategic communication and influence looks like from Washington. Many of you dear AWESOMESAUCERS have no idea what I’m talking about, and that’s part of the problem. So look for a series of “WTF…?” posts detailing simple explanations of complex processes, systems, and disciplines related to Our National Communication Nightmare.

The gloves come off.

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta
Jul
06

IO Europe Wrap-up

Having been overtaken by events in London last week, I found it untenable to get out a daily blog post covering IQPC‘s Information Operations (or IO) Europe conference. There were also quite a few concerns from some conference-goers about how new media dorks like me attending could potentially bust up IO Europe’s tradition of “Chatham House rules” where none of the gathering’s discussions were attributable let alone reportable.

Wrestling with this personally, I’ve decided to go ahead and write up my thoughts on the conference because I believe the discussions are important to the wider global communications community. I will, however, decline to name some names to protect the guilty. ;)

That said, let’s see what’s new in another year of IO.

True Best Practices Are Usually the Most Controversial

From what conference-goers told me, this year more than ever saw more status quo-challenging presentations than ever before at IO Europe. The IO community, being as small as it is, tends to attack points of view that make these challenges. IO being a military discipline tends to rely on structure, plans, and doctrine that do not evolve. This runs counter to the promise of the Now Media Age (with apologies to MountainRunner) where we see communication innovation happening every day. And before people rail against that assertion claiming that our most popular conflict environments are in traditional media dependent regions, we also saw plenty of controversy that had nothing to do with the internet. Ed O’Connell – late of the Alternative Strategies Institute, which has now been acquired by Blue Hackle – gave a rousing talk about how he has conducted “interventions” into historically denied areas. The influence effects of Ed’s work dealt with providing forums for locals to air grievances in ways they had not considered before.

Ed’s a controversial figure in the IO world. He’s rankled quite a few feathers but his effects are undeniable. He is a fearless believer in personal, face-to-face rehabilitation of societies that have been brutalized by everything from violence and terror to poor economies. As much as we would like to put a new media solution on everything, there is still need for the de-radicalization work of someone like Ed.

Image courtesy Science 2.0

Most IO Pros Fear the Internet

Despite traditional approaches being successful and warranted in our current conflict environments, most of the IO pros I ran into at IO Europe are still massively afraid of conducting operations on the internet. While we have seen a huge ramp-up of media monitoring and analytical capabilities (i.e., programs that scour the internet for operationally relevant information and intelligence), very few organizations are actually doing anything with the information gleaned. Most arguments in favor of this fear have to do with limited policy and legislation governing influence operations on the internet but in my conversations with people, I detected a marked lack of motivation to even understand the online world. Many used excuses like “I’m too old to get it” or “My boss doesn’t care about this.” Worse, we even had a cybersecurity exercise one day lead by a facilitator who claimed to care nothing about social media and still professed to be an expert in online security operations.

IO Policy Still Stuck in the Dark Ages

Such fearmongering is exacerbated by onerous IO and strategic communication policy. There were more discussions on what simple terms mean than I could count, and when you factor in the international perspectives from the US, NATO, the UK, Canada, and many other nationalities represented, doctrinal debates became comical. Because of these debates, IO policy (and its overriding legislation) is still clawing for relevancy in an information age that has already left it behind. While professed IO policymakers and “experts” continually disagree over the meaning of “strategic communications,” citizens are moving on to the next platform, the next online game, the next social network, the next INNOVATION.

This facet of IO Europe upset me a little because this was one of the reasons I got out of the government business a while back. One of my former bosses used to say that government is about maintaining the status quo NOT innovation. Because of that, we will never see an IO or influence organization that thinks and operates ahead of the curve.

That Doesn’t Mean Innovation Isn’t Happening Though…

Quite a few private sector companies talked about communication systems monitoring platforms and methodologies. As we all know, entrepreneurial creativity occurs in the private sector. I met a number of companies who claimed to have technical solutions that provided end-to-end monitoring and sentiment analysis capabilities in multiple languages. Unfortunately, none of them were on hand to demo, something I would challenge all of them to rectify next year. IO Europe could be a great conference if IO pros could cycle from table to table to see the latest innovations in online data analysis.

Aside from tools, there were some great case studies of innovative approaches to operations. Hats off to the gents from Bell Pottinger for a supercool study of their strategic communications work in the Horn of Africa.

For Every Jerk You Meet, There Are 10 AWESOME Mofos

The IO community has its share of smarmy turd biscuits slinking through events like IO Europe, whether they’re government reps or otherwise. However, there are just as many, if not more AWESOME people hanging around with amazing stories, conversation, and things from which you can learn. I made twice as many friends at this IO Europe than I did last year, and these are folks with whom I anticipate having lasting professional friendships as well. The value of so many international perspectives in one place is hard to calculate, but may of the non-Americans at the conference gave me tons of new things to think about. I especially have to thank the gents from M&C Saatchi who recruited me to speak, offered some great conversations about music, and – in one case – hosted me at their home for my last day in country.

Final Thoughts: Be Better, Do Good

Ultimately, IO Europe was a great annual get-together for those of us in the community, but I think we can all do better. Too many of us got wrapped up in our own organizational prejudices, focusing on selling something or satisfying a government requirement. Instead, I think we all need to take a step back and remember why we’re in the influence business. For me, it’s all about experiential sharing – the process of understanding the complex global ecosystem in which we live that is made manifest by online means. At the end of the day though, all of us need to recognize a passion for communication, whether we’re a NATO PAO or a PR firm VP. There are too many people in this business who are just punching a clock, and that’s a shitty way to communicate with other cultures even if all you’re doing is approving comms plans.

See y’all next year.

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta
Jun
28

IO Europe: Day 1

Greetings from wet and humid London! Your intrepid host of AWESOME has skipped the pond to attend and speak at IQPC’s 10th Annual Information Operations Europe conference.

The guts of the conference don’t actually begin until tomorrow, but the organizers have a history of bookending the conference with operator-focused practical workshops like the one I started with today. Because wifi is a bitch to string up (shame on you, IQPC), I figure I’ll try my hand at a read-out via blog and livetweet when possible (under the hashtag #IOeurope).

Chatham House rules generally apply at IO Europe, so I’ll be judicious in my reportage.

Session 1: Can Commercial Advertising Teach IO Professionals Anything?

M&C Saatchi presented a case study on its Change 4 Life campaign against obesity, executed on contract from the UK Department of Health. I really liked this campaign’s use of iconography to get across its message: demographic-neutral cartoon characters aimed at borderline impoverished families. While several lessons could be learned from the case study, many IO pros in the room didn’t find application because the nuances of public information campaigns work very differently from military information operations. Most military attendees were fresh off IO tours in Afghanistan and Iraq where they have a very different environment in which to work versus the generally permissible domestic audience to which M&C Saatchi catered.

The Department of Health headquarters in Whitehall

The UK Department of Health (Image via Wikipedia)

 

This doesn’t necessarily mean there weren’t any good kernels of knowledge here; there were. But I think only in the context of those who are looking at evolving the IO practice. Unfortunately, few of those people exist as today’s current environment of budget cuts and drawdowns leaves very little research & development space for future state IO and influence. It may become incumbent upon the private sector PR, marketing and advertising industry to consider designing future state IO training pro bono or at least in such a fashion as it can be demonstrated as useful and effective to those who watch the number of zeroes in the check box. Most of the cutting edge work and thought in influence is happening at places like Edelman, Wieden + Kennedy, and the tech startup world… all of which are a long way from MacDill Air Force Base.

Side note: there was a fun little practical exercise where we were to put together an on-the-fly ad campaign for selling more caravans (RVs, to you Americans). It was interesting that all the groups arrived at many of the same conclusions when presenting their campaigns. Ultimately, however, the exercise was too short to get into the meat of the differences between IO processes and PR/advertising processes. I’ve long argued that communication is communication is communication, but delineations do exist between disciplines like IO and PR… even though they are very, very subtle.

Session 2: Afghanistan

I hesitate to mention too much about this session due to operational sensitivities, but suffice to say, there is no good news about the situation in Afghanistan. Everything every pessimist has written or analyzed about that country and our united presence there is true. Much of the problem involves flawed objectives and poor partnerships with corrupt Afghans not to mention the looming drawdown coming in the next year. Afghans trust Westerners very little on long-term promises or operations; they know our political will to sustain change in their country is fleeting. Worse, we keep pumping money and time into communication through a flawed-from-the-start Afghan national government, where tribal engagement at the lowest possible local level proves more effective in the long run.

Many of the Afghanistan vets in the room conveyed a sense of unfortunate hopelessness. They believe that it’s possible to sustain change in the region, but they’re not optimistic about it given the political and economic realities in their native governments.

Fish and chips, lads?

Coming up: THE PUB. Where the real work in the influence business gets done.

Enhanced by Zemanta
Mar
02

Conversations at American University: The Double Facepalm

I had a great time last week talking with my buddy Dr. Craig Hayden in his Public Diplomacy class at American University in DC. Craig and I are sometimes-partners-in-crime at the MountainRunner Institute (along with His AWESOMEness, Matt Armstrong, and “Georgia Peach” Shawn Powers). We have a lot of interesting discussions about public diplomacy, strategic communication, and the nature of information and influence in today’s post-digital world.

Craig asked me to bring my perspective on those discussions to his class. We managed to film parts of the conversation, so I’m going to be chopping them up into bite-sized morsels of BADASS AWESOME for you, my loving public, to digest. In the first of these videos (all of which will be hosted here on my YouTube channel as well), Craig asks why I chose the metaphor of the “double facepalm” in last week’s introductory blog post about my experiences in public diplomacy and government. (Larger, HD versions of the video are available via the YouTube link.)

I’d like to give a great big THANK YOU to all the AU students I met during this discussion. It’s really heartening to me to see so many potential citizen diplomat rockstars in this soul-sucking town. Great talking with you, and I hope we can continue the conversation outside the classroom.

Speaking of which: I know a lot of you are blogging as part of Craig’s class and on your own. Please be sure to call yourselves out in the comments section of these video posts. I’d really like to promote some of the student-led commentary I’ve seen since the in-class discussion. We build our audiences socially, so I’d love to feature some of your opinions and content on Must. Be. AWESOME!!! dot com.

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta
Feb
23

Public Diplomacy for AWESOME People… the Du4 Way!

I am extremely honored that Dr. Craig Hayden has invited me to speak to his public diplomacy class at American University Thursday evening this week. I met Craig through shared colleagues at the MountainRunner Institute, and we have since collaborated on a number of things. He’s a great dude, loves beer, and I thought it would be cool to throw up a landing post for me, him, his class, and anyone else who gets PO’d by the sure-to-incense incendiary fire that will come burbling out of my Macallan-addled lips Thursday night.

I have a love-hate relationship with public diplomacy. Coming from a background in the Department of Defense, I did not understand the peculiar delineation between PD and other forms of government communication and influence until my own graduate work at Johns Hopkins. Upon discovering the very simple definition that PD involves a government’s communications directly to foreign governments’ citizens (and thus bypassing that foreign government), I became instantly enamored of the idea. After all, in DOD, when you “communicate” with a foreign population, you’re usually dropping a bunch of comic strips from the sky written so badly that the recipients think all Americans really are retarded.

My work generally involved finding ways to improve the U.S. government’s communication capability, be it PD, public affairs, IO/PSYOP, or other means. One of my mentors, the late Jeffrey B. Jones, called all of these disciplines strategic communication, a term that has since entered the DOD lexicon and gone on to confuse and infuriate virtually everyone else in government. If DOD does one thing well, it defines its doctrine exhaustively, and an integrated communication and influence doctrine is something our government has needed for a long time. I became a fan of Jeff’s definition from the get-go, and I proceeded to execute my work under such a fashion.

This is how it feels like working in public diplomacy EVERY DAY.

How does this affect public diplomacy? Well, aside from all the other problems in the U.S. national security apparatus, PD practitioners have been almost historically kicked in the ass by said interagency apparatus. Since the U.S. Information Agency – the premier public diplomacy institution of the Cold War – was folded up into the State Department by the Clinton Administration, PD has been regarded as a largely unnecessary, unneeded career field.

However, some of the brightest information warriors I have ever met have come from PD backgrounds. Some still serve the State Department. But they are a dying breed, and State is not adapting fast enough to the 21st century to train, educate, and deploy PD officers of the future. Many communication and diplomacy experts have even called for the dissolution of the public diplomacy career field, arguing that others do it better in today’s day and age.

I come down on this issue very simply: communication is influence. Period. Call it public diplomacy. Call it public affairs. Call it public relations. Call it fuck all, I don’t care. It’s all the same shit and these penny-ante fights government gets into over who owns influence planning and execution are mere dick measuring exercises to protect budgets and retain standing within our own ranks. If any of us PD “professionals” had a whit about us, we would (re)read Unrestricted Warfare by Senior Col Qiao Liang and Senior Col Wang Xiangsui and understand that global communication, global influence, requires the strategic, national integration of ALL government branches and agencies and their communications initiatives. It requires, to borrow an analogy, for America to conduct herself as a composer would an orchestra, creating multitudes of musical movements that all combine into one big, beautiful symphony.

If you’re a student in Craig’s class, drop me a line in the comments. Send questions, concerns, or even challenges, and I promise to answer them to the best of my ability in class on Thursday.

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta
Jan
28

Links of the Week: January 28, 2011 Edition

Neil Pasricha: The 3 A’s of Awesome

I love me some TED Talks. Here’s the author of 1000 Awesome Things describing how he came up with that blog and subsequent book. As purveyor of all things AWESOME, I feel for the guy and get where he’s coming from. The downer part of this is that Neil’s presentation isn’t terribly… AWESOME. In fact, it’s kinda weak. If you’re gonna go AWESOME, bro-han, you gotta go BIG. Get some pep and CRUSH that sucker.

[Bit of an aside: I actually think that while his concept is pretty rad, the actual content leaves something to be desired. He should aim for 1000 AWESOME Things instead of 1000 Awesome Things.]

Why You Can’t Work At Work

What? More videos? Send the AWESOME, son!

Jason Fried’s frustration is shared by many, but I think a lot of that frustration comes from the tension that springing up in the modern workplace between social business and the 1.0 workplace of collaboration. People confuse meetings with collaboration and hierarchy with order.

The 5 Critical Social Media Skills You Need To Disperse

I saw Jay Baer speak at BOLO 2010 in Scottsdale last year, and he touched on these skills before codifying them (with Amber Naslund) in this post and his forthcoming book The NOW Revolution: 7 Shifts to Make Your Business Faster, Smarter, and More Social. He’s right on the money with every one, from Listening to Brand Immersion to Engagement. Business MUST understand that their people will ALWAYS BE MARKETING. A.B.M. ALWAYS! BE! MARKETING! If these businesses miss the boat on empowering their people to become marketers on the brand’s behalf, then they will risk those same people talking negatively about the selfsame brand. Be human, people!

China’s Global Dominance Tour: Next Stop Muslim World

This is more than a little significant. Fast Company‘s article is short on the details, but I HIGHLY encourage people to start paying attention to what China’s up to internationally. If you combined the entire population of China with the total number of professed Muslims, you would get a number worth paying attention to.

Amazon Launches Kindle Singles, Saves Long-Form Journalism

Long-form journalism that’s not book length? Not a bad business model here. At $1-$5 a pop, this is a GREAT way for writers and reporters to make some scratch off magazine-plus length journalism that’s too short for book distribution and too long for magazine inclusion. Further, it sets up a direct-to-consumer relationship, which is good for journalists and bad for journalism companies that can no longer charge a percentage against the writer for any work he publishes. I think you’re about to see a ton of for-profit writers start generating some AWESOME work this way.

Have a Great Weekend!

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta
Jan
27

JWT’s 100 Things To Watch in 2011

I got quickly overloaded by the abundance of “2011 predictions!” posts, white papers, and other internet ephemera that started spouting before the turn of the new year. As an armchair futurist and a self-described Challenger of the Unknown, I have to pay attention to a lot of the thinking bubbling up from the cesspool of teh Interwebz just to maintain a reputable degree of “cocktail party talk.”

No single source really jumped out at me as AWESOME in the 2011 prediction glut until I came across JWT‘s 100 Things to Watch in 2011 presentation on Slideshare (embedded below for your reading pleasure). What really struck me about this preso were a couple things:

  1. JWT leads with its track record. Not a whole lot of people out there honestly self-assessing their prior predictions. I can respect companies and people who are willing to include the credential of their work, positive or negative, before making predictions about the future. How accurate was JWT about 2010? Two words: BACON EVERYWHERE.
  2. They call Foursquare a “mobile gaming app.” This is the most accurate description of what Foursquare really is and how it works. Most netizens like to describe Foursquare as a geolocation social media tool, which completely misses the point. What makes Foursquare special is that it’s competitive, and that’s how you bring back users time and again.
  3. The preso’s author, Ann Mack, is credited as Director of Trendspotting. That is the BADDEST-ASS title I have ever encountered from a PR firm.
JWT: 100 Things to Watch in 2011

View more presentations from JWTIntelligence.

For these reasons alone I ascribed enough of a degree of credibility in JWT to actually consider their projections for 2011. Here now are the ones I found most AWESOME:

Auto Apps

I’m very intrigued by the integration of social and smartphone-type apps to vehicles of the future. The obvious one that JWT identifies is Pandora, which is the internet nerd’s answer to mobile radio. But think about where this goes: Security systems that tweet your iPhone when someone jacks with your car. Shutdown options for stolen cars. Intelligent maps that ask you if you’re interested in stopping at some AWESOME attraction while on your road trip. Lot of potential here.

Biomimicry

Design that takes inspiration from naturally occurring shapes and constructs? Love this concept. Sounds very posthuman to me.

Breaking the Book

Glad JWT sees that redefining the way we read is going to explode even more in 2011. They briefly touch on the future of publishing with Kindle Singles and the concept of serialized e-publication, but I think there’s more to it than that. With the advent of the tablet market, I think books are about to be redefined as a medium en toto.

Detroit

Everyone knows how sad of a story Detroit has become since the economic recession of the past few years. JWT proposes that Detroit is in for a turnaround this year, an idea I find curiously sticky given my sudden fondness for Detroit-set TV shows like Hung. Could Detroit become the playground for a new Silicon Valley-type creative ecosystem? We’ll see.

Group-Manipulated Pricing

I think this is a gimme just based on the data we all saw in late 2010. Things like Groupon are going to become more and more popular because it’s a social enterprise that crosses online and offline worlds. While people will gravitate to services like these to get monetary and consumer deals, I think they’ll become more popular because of the social act the service brings. People ENJOY saving money together, and this may even cross the geo-location boundary at some point when people get better deals by checking in somewhere as a group. The even more amazing facet of this phenomenon (which JWT missed, surprisingly) is how democratizing prices in this fashion looks VERY similar to a socialist economy.

Ignorance Is Bliss

JWT posits that if information becomes ubiquitous, as it seems to be doing via internet-age enabled apps and services, more people will simply stick their fingers in their ears and choose not to care. I identify with this to some degree because I do it all the time: do I really care that much if everyone on the planet knows I just checked into Samuel Beckett’s Irish Gastro Pub? Blow that up to the next logical question: If no one cares, are we bound for a sudden slingshot backwards in technology and progress?

Nanobrewers

I know TONS of people in the DC area that brew their own beer. The idea that these folks can sustain their own businesses by doing something they love is totally rad. The larger question, I think, is what’s the magic number that turns your hobby into a sustainable business? People will always want to drink a cold beer, but how well is that helping other more esoteric businesspeople (see Etsy).

Near Field Communication (NFC)

This concept is similar to RFID in that it involves the exchange of information between mobile and other devices within a four-inch zone. JWT sees utility in this for ticket purchasing, wallets, etc. Once that proves out as a useful method for data transfer (and it will), I’m more interested in the propensity for NFC-enabled wetware in humans. Why carry ANY device when you can embed it subcutaneously and turn your body into a digitally transmitting wallet?

Objectifying Objects

Love the idea of “fetishizing” – as JWT calls it – obsolete physical objects into decorative accouterments or other re-purposeable items. My wife and I buy things like this from the French Market in New Orleans all the time. She has two clocks up in her office that were made from old vinyl records painted in new artistic ways. I’m real interested to see new expressions of this “recyclable” art form this year.

Odyssey Trackers

JWT’s example is more extreme than mine, but this concept involves the aggregation and broadcast of all social and personal media information from people who go out to explore the world. I’m looking into some innovative storytelling uses of this when I trek across the country in a few weeks.

Older Workforce

I dont actually think this is AWESOME as much as it is alarming and shitty. My dad always told me he expected to work until the day he died and I should too. Data is clearly indicating that there is no way national entitlement programs will be able to satisfy their constituents without immense tax increases (something our already bloated deficit can’t handle). So the alternative is to continue to work past your retirement age. After all, what the fuck am I gonna do with $265 a month from the Social Security Administration when I’m 70?

Social Networking Surveillance

We’re living in a post-Wikileaks world now, people. If you don’t think there are little nondescript buildings at Fort Meade where tons of poorly-paid federal contractors are poring over your social media output, think again. Take it from a guy who’s participated in studies of social media and social networking in more oppressive societies (like Egypt): there is no more privacy.

Social Objects

Love love LOVE the concept of making THINGS social: attaching personal information, reviews, or other data to objects to advance the knowledge of a community of consumers. I thought JWT was going to miss the emergence of “cloud-seeding” in 2011 (I’ll talk more about this in a subsequent post) but their identification of this phenomenon coupled with apps like StickyBits makes it all better.

Space Travel Goes Private

FUCK. YES. It’s about fucking time. It’s the 21st century, for Chrissakes.

Storied Products

Transmedia Producers

JWT describes the first concept as something that involves consumers demanding more of a personal connection to brands they love. I actually think these two things on JWT’s list are interconnected in such a way that they deserve to be together. Transmedia producers have had a really hard time finding mainstream access and recognition beyond mere marketing effects (see the “Why So Serious?” campaign instituted for The Dark Knight). The more studios and companies blur the lines between marketing and production, the more transmedia’s reach will be seen. In the meantime, I actually think we’ll see more transmedia pros find better paying and better recognized work creating transmedia experiences for products on behalf of brands.

Temporary Tattoos Go High-End

According to JWT, there are places in Dubai that sell temp tattoos in actual gold. I actually think upgrading temp body art to designer levels (e.g., Chanel) is a new form of posthuman body modification. Up till now, I’d seen body mods as purely utilitarian and ability-expanding instead of cosmetic or vanity-inspired. So combine the functional with the fashion and what could you get? Solid gold Prince Alberts that deliver electrical shocks during sex? ZING!

Tintin the Movie

JWT’s calling this the next big franchise, possibly the new age replacement for Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings. With Spielberg AND Peter Jackson at the helm, I don’t doubt that it could be HUGE. But I’m not sure it hits the imagination highs required of big summer tentpole films like Harry Potter or Star Wars. Unless of course Spielberg and Jackson do some reinterpretations of the original source material and Tintin fights a robot zombie or something.

What Did They Miss?

Despite how great and how comprehensive this 2011 list is – and I encourage you to check out the entire preso – I actually think there are a lot of things JWT and other futurists missed. We’ll explore those next in a subsequent post.

In closing, I’d like to point out that this report is published annually by JWT Intelligence. Key in on the italicized word there and think about that for a second. From my experience, having worked in what many consider “real” intelligence (i.e. the U.S. government Intelligence Community), I find fascinating how many communication and public relations companies are choosing to characterize their future endeavors in the vernacular of intel. The term “business intelligence” has been around for quite some time, but I think its use in commercial enterprises like JWT implies another, more sinister intelligence-related word: espionage. So if this report compares as an intel assessment for JWT’s 2011 operations, what do you think its competitors and their communities of interest are doing with it?

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta
Jan
13

So Far, Digital Comics Are Not AWESOME

I have some fundamental problems with the way comics publishers are approaching their digital publication strategies. Marvel and DC – the two biggest publishers on the block – seem to be the most egregious trespassers against the simple 2.0 adage of “Everything: anytime, anywhere.” Here then follows a discussion of some of the ins and outs of the issue.

The Instant Catalogue

The thing that bugs me the most about how The Big Two have handled their digital offerings involves the massive back catalogue both companies possess. I should be able to download Paul Levitz‘s entire original run on Legion of Super-Heroes at a reasonable price. Currently, virtually all digital comics run about $1.99 and day-and-date releases can cost up to $3.99 depending on the publisher. With so much available content in their vaults, comics publishers can EASILY adapt whole swaths of comics runs for mere pennies in overhead.

Image courtesy Comics Alliance

Instead, what we’ve been seeing so far are limited runs or storylines from popular comics that get offered in digital stores and are sometimes taken away after a period of time. There are so many comics runs that I would pay for to have digitally on my iPad, but I’m leery of the cost… especially if they’re only available for limited amounts of time and there exists the possibility that the publisher may offer those comics again at discounted bundles.

The bottom line comes down to ABUNDANCE: there are so many comics available, why not sell them ALL digitally? I know there are obvious business reasons for this, and we’ll get into those in moment. But for a fan and reader – someone who is going to spend their scratch on comics – to not offer these extensive catalogues digitally and at reasonable prices is simply retarded.

Price & “Bundling”

Traditionally, comics are sold at a per issue price and then discounted for graphic novel or trade paperback collections. This has become the common practice in the comics business particularly because publishers make more money off trade collections (which can be reprinted) that are sold in traditional bookstores (versus scary comics shops). This has created two separate classes of comics readers: the periodical reader who buys issues as they come out, and the “wait-for-the-trade” reader who wants to read an entire serialized story in one volume.

Digital stores can go either way here. Dark Horse Comics – which will launch its own online comics store very soon – is actually undercutting other comics publishers by offering individual issues of their comics for $1.49 and larger discounts for “bundles,” which will contain multiple issues comprising a full storyline. Dark Horse has also been experimenting with releasing graphic novels and trade collections as separate apps in the iPad store at prices much lower than their print counterparts.

Image courtesy myappworld.com

Dark Horse’s example provides the best look at how well this digital comics economy can work. At the end of the day, there is NO REASON why digital comics should cost as much as their print versions. The overhead has already been spent (aside for some small costs in adapting the print version to digital readers), so it’s almost pure profit, which gets split between the company and the creators (and Apple). Dark Horse’s comics become a much more attractive buying option for those readers who are looking for affordable ways to get into comics, stories, and characters.

I still believe these prices are overinflated (music costs $0.99 generally), but I also understand that the economics of the comics business are such that some compromises have to be made. We’ll get more into that later.

The Direct Market

The comics industry pivots on the direct market, which is best defined as comics specialty retailers who preorder, stock, and sell comics out of their own stores. Beginning in the 1980s, the comics direct market sprung up to replace newsstand publication as the primary source of sales for all comics publishers. As such, comics publishers court comics retailers because that’s been their primary method of sales.

Digital comics changes all of this. The third party between me and the comics I love switches from the high-touch retailer to the virtual comics store app like ComiXology and the platform on which I’ll read them (i.e., Apple). This has created a huge uproar in the retailer community, which cannot compete with the prices digital comics can promise to readers. Some retailers offer discounts off regular subscriber orders, but digital essentially kills further instances of the walk-in customer, which has been on the decline anyway for years. Because of the relationship comics publishers want to maintain with their retailer industry, I can understand how it’s important for them to price comics similarly to what they charge in the direct market… so as not to shoot retailers in the back.

However, I believe digital comics is a needed wake-up call to retailers. Look up your nearest comics store and go visit. It’s not very pretty, is it? Usually, it’s a dark, scary hole in the wall run by swarthy longhairs in white-stained T-shirts full of unkempt pop culture product that may or not include statues of anime babes getting tentacle raped. There are exceptions to this perception of comics retailers: James Sime’s excellent Isotope in San Francisco, for example, is designed as a lounge instead of merely a comics store. But for the most part, comics retailers are the same subhuman basement-dwelling nerds they’ve always been. If digital comics don’t force them out of business, then maybe they will force them to at least take a shower and start selling comics as respectable professionals. Speaking as the former manager of a comics store myself, I can tell you that this is a kick in the pants the direct market industry sorely needs. Otherwise, they deserve to close their doors.

Periodical Versus Collected Reading

The great thing about digital comics is that you can have your cake and eat it too. Love a series so much you HAVE to get the latest issue on the day it comes out? BOOM. Buy it at full price from the digital store. Want to wait instead to read that comic when it’s been collected into a larger storyline? BOOM. Buy it as a discounted collection. This is possible RIGHT NOW. It just takes comics publishers having th balls to do it instead of catering to their direct market fanwanks.

One of the greatest examples of this is Robert Kirkman‘s AWESOME zombie epic The Walking Dead. Through its own iPad app, Kirkman sells every issue of this comics series for $1.99 and $2.99 for brand new issues that are available on the same day as their print release. Furthermore, he offers collected editions that contain full storylines at $9.99. I still think this is too expensive, but the availability of the comic and the options Kirkman gives readers is what’s important. He GETS that the more options he can give his fans to consume the content – and the more barriers he can lower to new fans’ entry – will result in more downloads and more access.

Stupid Sales Tricks: The Perception of Scarcity

Probably the worst, most offensive sales tactic the big comics publishers have tried out with digital comics involves the perception of scarcity. Marvel, for example, has developed a “Vault” in which they’ll place digital comics after making them available for a short period of time. Similar to what Disney does with its home video releases, this creates a false sense of scarcity– “If I don’t buy Daredevil #24 before February 1st, it’ll be gone forever!”

This tactic completely defeats the purpose of Long Tail-inspired digital product sales and marketing. It does nothing but demonstrate that the comics publishers do not understand digital content at all. NOBODY owns the comics you download from an app or a digital comics store. They are merely CONTENT one CONSUMES. Scarcity and value only have meaning in a physical world where only so many copies of a given comic are available and must then be traded at prices determined by the collector market. To try and engineer this system within digital comics stores is flat-out wrong and stupid.

The worst offender of this tactic lately has been DC Comics, who made a huge to-do about all the great new digital comics offerings they were going to sell via their online stores. Sure enough, they released initial runs of some very popular older comics like Preacher and Transmetropolitan. Go look for those comics now. They’re gone. With nary an announcement or a discussion, DC simply pulled them from their digital stores. So now, the next time they decide to put them up, there will probably be a run on digital sales as digital consumers rush to get these titles before they’re taken away again.

This is terrible, offensive practice that needs to come to an end immediately.

Image courtesy 148apps.com

So What’s Next?

The good news is that digital comics are still in their infancy and have a lot of room to evolve. I think within the next year, we’ll see a drop in prices for most digital comics. Within 2 years, we’ll see more innovation in terms of bundled or collected editions. DC or Marvel will probably release an entire title’s run as an experiment at some point, possibly at a high price point or as a separate app to determine how well something like that would sell. While this happens, smaller comics publishers and independent comics creators will beat the big guys to the punch by releasing their comics at the same time as print editions and even exclusively online.

For my money, here are a couple comics publishers that I think are doing it RIGHT:

  • Dark Horse currently offers some Frank Miller graphic novels (Sin City, 300) and a Serenity collection as inexpensive iPad apps.
  • IDW has separate apps for many of its licensed titles (e.g. Transformers, G.I. Joe) and is beginning to offer original graphic novels as apps (e.g., Darwyn Cooke’s Parker adaptations The Hunter and The Outfit).
  • Boom! Comics, while not quite day-and-date yet, are beginning to offer more and more of their comics close to publication date.

Got any good digital comics recommendations? Send ‘em to me in the comments section!

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta
Dec
08

Posthumanity and the Creative Economy

I just finished reading A Whole New Mind by Dan Pink, which is an AWESOME treatise on how the emergence of a creative economy is replacing the abundance of inexpensive industrially produced goods and services. Pink writes about the mass economy becoming more automated and cheaper because of outsourcing to Asian companies. If this pushes down costs of production so much, he argues that people will begin to care more about design and emotion instead of functionality and utility.

But what if this shift also cheapens the product as a whole to such a degree that humans become bored with everything they create? Does this provide a transcendent motivation to evolve and thereby create more interesting and satisfying things? Is that motivation to transcend impetus enough to warrant a full-on pursuit of posthumanity?

2003 Zagato Coupe and Roadster Photographed by...

Image via Wikipedia

Picture if you will a society where an Aston-Martin is available for lease at your local Wal-Mart for less than $100 a month. Do you then get bored with such a fine piece of vehicular AWESOME? Of course you do. It’s so cheap, there is no penalty for early trade-in. This abundance, no matter how well-designed or how emotionally satisfying the product, will eventually challenge producers (by way of consumer demand) to create better things faster. In essence, your Aston-Martin becomes disposable. So how do you build rarity and scarcity into products that are now seen as somewhat artistic?

The theory I’m building here is an evolutionary theory of industrial production, I guess. At some point, humans developed automation to mass produce goods. As humans’ desires and tastes became more varied and aesthetic, that automation had to become more complex and/or new humans had to insert themselves into the production line to ensure quality. If we stay on the trajectory Pink outlines, then as our products become more creative (by design and aesthetics, for instance), either our automation will have to evolve or we will have to develop a new creative production class. The thought here is that automation (read, machines) cannot duplicate human creativity, and thus mankind may be forced to enslave a new version of Orwell’s proletariat to produce all the creative stuff we want.

More simply put, I observe two distinct posthuman implications to this evolution:

  1. The uppercrust of society will want rarer, scarcer, and more creative things more often.
  2. In the absence of automated production, that uppercrust will force lower classes to produce creative things for them.

In this creative economy, simple products & services will still need to be manufactured and performed, so as humans evolve past the desire to do those tasks, they will either create hardware/software to do it for them OR other types of humans….be they slaves, clones, or some other type of second-class worker human. Perhaps even a human that does not know he or she was fabricated or engineered specifically to act as a cog in a creative process. Perhaps we already ARE those humans and the uppercrust posthumans are on their way to godhood.

I tweeted a while back in response to the White Canvas guys’ survey about creativity that “Creativity is mankind’s discovery process for touching God.” What happens when we get to a point in discovery where we realize we already ARE God? See Dan Simmons‘ thought-provoking novels Ilium and Olympos for a possible scenario where posthumans evolved past the point of caring about their creative underclass and regressed: they used their evolved posthuman abilities to take on the identities of Greek gods and engineer the Trojan Wars for their own amusement.

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta
Mar
16

The Courtesy of a Reach-around

A wrench got thrown into my Gov 2.0 Expo preso planning while I was picking myself up a bride Down South. It actually made me question whether I wanted to go through with it at all. However, after some hard thinking, I’m putting on the smiley face and taking my cheek-splitters like a man.

Let me explain.

The Gov 2.0 organizers contacted me about my presentation, “Instituting a Culture of AWESOME in Government: The Case of the IED Task Force Tech Team,” a couple weeks ago. They told me that they were altering the format of the conference and that my presentation was being shortened from the originally proposed 50 minutes to FIVE minutes. Apparently, they thought it would be so much cooler if they bunched in a ton of 5 minute “rapid fire” presos around the keynote address. There were a lot of platitudes about how great my proposal was and how AWESOME it would be condensed to 5 minutes.

How do you “condense” a case study, which by definition is the result of an analysis? It’s like saying, “Hey, dude, I love your book! Can you give me a pamphlet version?” Considering how much effort I’ve already put into researching this topic, a FIVE MINUTE presentation does the material – especially this material – a disservice.

I wrote the organizers back expressing my discontent but also offering an alternative: how about I come up with something else related to creating AWESOME culture in government that I could adequately fit in the time limit? Apparently, the organizers really wanted the IED Task Force Tech Team case study but felt it wasn’t topical enough to warrant a full panel. They adamantly demanded I present the same topic as originally proposed. Basically, do it or hit the road, jack.

Now this all sounds like inside baseball and dirty laundry, but I’m recounting it to demonstrate something. Despite the sheer shittiness of the situation, it forced me to sit down and think hard about what I was being asked to do. Is it worth taking a stand against this tomfoolery? Should I risk standing behind my material if it means getting kicked off the ticket? Is it even possible to give a good presentation on my original topic under these new circumstances? Am I betraying my AWESOME if I cave to these new demands? In this case, can you still be AWESOME living on a compromise?

At the end of the day, I accepted… and here’s why:

  • I can’t trade the exposure I’ll get at this conference at this stage of my career.
  • It will be an even more challenging exercise boiling my preso down to something entertaining and valuable.
  • I think I can still deliver an AWESOME preso.
  • Who knows what I can get away with on the day of?

Don’t be mistaken though: I’m not compromising on this. I’m acceding to the organizers’ demands. I think that’s an important distinction.

All that said, though, I’m still gonna fucking ROCK this expo. Fifty minutes, five minutes, whatever. It’s just less time into which I gotta pack a more concentrated dose of AWESOME.

So bring a spare pair of panties– IT’S ON.

Related articles by Zemanta
Enhanced by Zemanta