The wonders of the internet recently brought me this fantastic article: Beyond beyond beyond beyond “Beyond embiggens and cromulent” by Heidi Harley of HeiDeas (if there’s a better example of blog name synchronicity out there I haven’t seen it).
Its part of an annual collection of linguistic jokes on The Simpsons.
You’re welcome.
Between conferences, webex demos, conference calls and vendor meetings, in the last 2 months I’ve sat through 24 presentations. Of course with few exceptions, they were all full of imbecilic PowerPoint presentations, composed strictly of bulleted lists that were either obvious or irrelevant and punctuated with distracting, inappropriate animations.
Listening to “expert consultants” give me list after list of how to be successful doing something they do not do is a sure fire way to send me to my happy place. Fortunately, while there I was able to codify an idea that had been hounding me for some time.
While a particular “expert consultant” was detailing Vogue-style for me the 10 Things That Will Cause A Creative Venture to Fail and the 4 Quick Fixes for Something Something Not Listening I wrote this, my only note from the presentation, on a note card.
Listening to practicing experts is great, and I do it as much as I can. But every project, every venture, every artist, book, blog, website, podcast and business is unique. Listening to the lists pushed by Snake Oil Salesman and Industry Pundits will have you imitating the success of someone they’ve only read about, and you’ll fail because you are not that person.
Everything works. But that doesn’t mean it will work for you. Your situation is unique, so don’t fail by trying to follow the lists you found on the internet. Brew some coffee, sit down with a sharpie and blank sheet of paper and try something crazy.
This post is as much for me as it is for you.
In April 1968, Dr. King was assassinated in Memphis, just a few hours by car from my home. I didn’t live through it, and I didn’t read deliberately (that is, outside of school) about Dr. King’s life until I was an adult, but even at 31 years old and 41 years after the event, I find it horrifying and desperately sad. I hope to visit the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis this spring.
I see everyday the remnants of segregation, overhear lingering discrimination of all sorts, and live among the great-grandchildren of slaves. As someone known for his stoicism, I may shock you when I say it is still painful after a year. Old habits, it seems, die very very hard; native sons and daughters of The South born and raised in this culture do not see their behavior and understand their prejudices in the same way I do, and as the rest of the nation would.
While I do believe that reconciliation is possible, and that one day these egregious wrongs can be made right, I am still a pessimist; I believe that the only realistic outcome in the longer-near term will be that society moves on to the next great horror and our national guilt is assuaged only in redirection.
Which brings me to the great fear that is the center of this short article. Reading of the great movements of the 1950s and 1960s I fear we may never see another Dr. King to lead us to next mountaintop. To develop this point briefly, the social movements of the 1960s grew out of a specific soil – the culture and ideas, the history, etc. If full civil rights and citizenship had been instituted after the abolition of slavery, Rosa Parks would never have been asked to move.
The social and media fabric of the time were just two of many necessary ingredients that leavened the bread. The media revolution that has occurred since, and continues even now, may be the new ingredient that spoils the dough.
The steady change in media since the 1950s, easily observable in the last 10 years, has been the diversification and fragmentation of media of every sort. TV stations, radio stations, websites, podcasts, newspapers, magazines, blogs and every type of media have multiplied in quantity exponentially since Dr. King was assassinated. It seems this makes it much more difficult for a broad movement to take root in the soil of our time. Because we now have hundreds of channels for the consumption of news, and humans tend to select sources which reinforce existing ideas, getting broad exposure is harder at the same time we are told our attention spans are shortening. Can the next, nationwide Civil Rights movement grip an entire culture in such an environment? Would millions march on Washington when they could just join a Facebook group?
My only hope is that the same revolution that multiplied the available channels (in the broad sense) has also multiplied the power and awareness of individuals and small groups, and has multiplied the diversity of ideas. If the United States is unable to produce another Dr. King, perhaps this new power, used for good, can make each of us in a very small way a Dr. King.
I’m going to go out a limb here. If this were an industry blog, or if any nerds actually read it, this post would incite some lively debate. Since neither of those things are true, we’ll just consider this a tip between friends to help you figure out what all these nerds are talking about. Here’s the God’s Truth on the tech topics du jour.
There is a lot of fuss around about Cloud Computing. If you want a definition, go to wikipedia. While you’re there, look up grid or cluster computing, client/server computing, desktop computing, mobile computing, web 1.0, web 2.0, and virtualization. Or just let me explain them ALL to you right now. There are only two ways to “compute” and they are as follows: (1) access the network or (2) don’t access the network. The rest is implementation details.
Of course, no one will shut up about social media. Here’s the truth about social media: All media is social media. The only “media” that isn’t social is the media inside your head. The evolution of communication on the web has multiplied the reach and power of, well, everyone. But everything possible with “social media” was possible 100 years ago, it just took longer and used different tools. Humans Beings use technology, and media is a technology, for one of seven purposes: Finding a Mate/Reproduction, Extending/Ending Life, Food, Shelter, Clothing, Entertainment, and Communication.
A netbook is a small notebook. That’s it. In the 90′s we called them Sub-Notebooks, but the internet wasn’t around so we couldn’t add “Net” to something and make it cool. Unsurprisingly, computer companies realized that in the bullet-point marketing world, you can’t sell a notebook with a 9″ screen against one with a 15″ screen. So they named a new category. If a netbook is all you need, you should get one. But they’re just a computer, nothing revolutionary. They’ll probably be the first PC segment to die as computing moves away from dedicated (unspecialized) hardware.
Those are the big ones bugging me. If you need a term demystified, let me know.
