UN

Last night the moon was absolutely beautiful. Thanks to my good friend Jen for pointing it out.

Happy 2009 everyone!

If you’ve read my blog, you know how much I enjoy RhettandLink. Well, they did it again. They turned a social contest they had conducted, SuperNote, The YouTube experiment, into a holiday greeting.

Talk about remix culture.

This is the time of year for looking back and things with ‘12 days of’ themes.

This one is for the geeks. Thanks Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

Have you heard about the shorty awards?

The Shorty Awards honor the world’s top Twitterers.

Wow. Did you know you could be the best when you started to Twitter? The things that the community comes up with continue to delight me.

I nominated some of the people I follow:

• @shortyawards I nominate @jennyholzer for a Shorty Award in #artist for sharing her art on twitter
• @shortyawards I nominate @fireland for a Shorty Award in #humor because even though I cringe, I also always guffaw
• @shortyawards I nominate @jowyang for a Shorty Award in #business because he illustrates how social media sharing reaps biz rewards
• @shortyawards I nominate @armano for a Shorty Award in #advertising because he is helping to seriously advance the conversation
• @shortyawards I nominate @whitneyhess for a Shorty Award in #personal her tweets make me feel connected to my community and she is so upbeat

As I thought about who to nominate, I ruminated about what people really did enhance my life because of their Twitter stream. And then I thought, I’m actually happy to get a chance to recognize these people in some way because their stream has made my life better in one way or another.

Maybe their is opportunity there. Where there is value, often you find a world of opportunity.

If you want to nominate an awesome Tweeter, check out the Shorty Awards. It’s simple and kind of fun if you enjoy giving people kudos or just saying thanks.

I tend to get reflective this time of year. I go into hibernation mode and reflect upon the nature of things-usually over the past year. Recently as I was reflecting, I discovered that the number eight had appeared in my life a great deal. Some of 8’s in my life this year include:

• the place i’m spending time now is closely connected to the number eight.
• the phone number of my only place of employment this year had many eights.
• a  baby born to a friend in the 8th month.
• the last deposit to my banking account contained many eights.
• that number has popped up a lot this year.

It is symbolic and i believe i have divined the meaning of its significant appearance in my life this year. Here’s my reading.

• In math, eight is a power of two: my year is ending in a power of two, in my work i am part of a power of two.
• In nuclear physics, eight is the second magic number and in many philosophies and world myths it is the beginning and it is lucky.

That’s how I’m feeling about my life and work right now. Things are at the beginning and many of us are lucky. It’s not great times right now for everyone, I recognize that. I’m not saying let them eat cake. But we have a reason for hope. There are some amazing things happening right now in our world that have the power to make life better for more people than ever before.

8 in 8 ad infinitum. The beginning of lucky.

What things have you noticed in your life this year that might be trying to tell you something? It’s a good thing to think about.

Individual as a medium
medium is the message
i am msg

These are some deep thoughts I’ve been trying to wind my brain around lately. Twitter has made me think about this more deeply, because I am seeing this occur in action.Twitter is fairly easy. The barrier to adoption is fairly low if you are already an Internet or mobile texting user.

So now we can all talk to each other. We all have the power to be curators and to be publishers. The power of the printing press is in our hands.

Mobile devices bring the ability to publish everything and anything in a heartbeat. Live blogging from a concert to reporting from the scene of horrible human tragedy.

Some of the tools can be hard to understand. So that’s the next thing we can work on. Now that we have this platform, let’s make it easier for people to create with it instead of wrestling with tools.

i m msg

When we think about the statement, ‘i m msg’ it’s multi-dimensional meaning is inspiring and mysterious.

It looks like something you would see in a live chat conversation. The small ‘i’ the ‘m’ abbreviation for ‘am’ and the word ‘message’ shortened to ‘msg’.

It sounds ominous and omnipresent.

It is derived from Marshall McLuhan and current thinking about social media.

It is imperative to participate in order to understand. In essence BE the message.

Represent what you believe in.

We are all ‘i’ and so how do we use this new ability to get some good stuff done?

That’s what we should be thinking about.

There are so many reasons people love their Twitter. Even when there is a fail whale. Hey, we all have our days.

Twitter love song

When someone in your family is having surgery and you can’t be there, it’s a comfort that technology enables you to be closer.

My mom had back surgery today. Thanks to SMS I got updates from my sister all day long. I was also able to send funny messages to entertain my poor sister.

She must have been bored out of her mind. But we had a connection. That was so comforting to me. It was just much more convienent than a phone. I am working and need to continue doing that and a phone call takes all of your attention.

SMS just delivered the messages-like sending comfort vibes through the air.

‘It went well…..’

‘I’m just hanging out here waiting….’.

Whew. Even though I will be going home soon to help, I could not be there today. And thanks to my two awesome sisters, my mom is in great hands.

These devices just keep bringing us closer to each other. And the reasons - the stories - about why that is important are what makes it such an amazing time to be alive. It’s a smaller world than ever before.

Seth Godin has put out a call for you to spend 6 months with him. It’s not an internship. It’s not an MBA you have to pay for but it’s something in between. He’s coined it an Alternative-MBA.

This is the core of the experience that he is looking to provide, the best part is you get to live in NYC:

From Seth Godin’s web site:

Here’s the program I’m interested in creating:

One hour a day of class/dialogue
Four hours a day of working on my projects
Three hours a day of working on your personal project
Five hours a day of living, noticing, doing and connecting

At the end of the six months, it’s quite likely that I’ll ask one or more people to stay on. Everyone will get a letter of reference and a certificate worth framing. I think it’ll be pretty scarce.

WOW. I want to go. If you want to go you should apply, but hurry, the application is due by December 14th and Seth says he won’t look at it if it is late. So, don’t be late!

You need to think about changing it.

I recently received an email from an online photo site. I have diagrammed the email to illustrate how unfriendly it is and why it does not incent me to remain a customer.

1. ‘don’t forget to preserve your Snapfish account’ -really? It probably is a good thing they reminded me because I would have forgotten. But why do I have to preserve my relationship with them? It is not to my benefit.
2. ‘Just a friendly reminder…..’ telling me the reminder is friendly does not make it friendly. This is essentially a scare tactic.
3. ‘So what are you waiting for….’ Hmmm, maybe I’m waiting for you to offer me something as a customer that I might want. If I haven’t ordered from you in such a long time that you need to send me warnings, maybe you are asking the wrong question.
4. ‘risk losing…’ I’m not losing anything.
5. ‘Lastly, remember….’ Except this isn’t the last message, so the use of the word ‘lastly’ is just plain wrong.
6. And finally after all that, “Thanks for being a customer….” Thanks? If you really wanted to thank me perhaps you would stop sending hostile email and use some form of persuasion to bring me back.

They do provide a benefit to customers, free unlimited online photo storage. However, this benefit is provided at many other places and it is buried deep within the email copy.

I think this is a really good illustration of how marketing materials get created at companies but they are not really created with a customer in mind. We have much to learn about online marketing. This is a good example of what not to do. We need those examples so we can strive to be better.