Reunion Generation

I belong to a generation of people who lived their lives going from one social sphere to another. Through the levels of education - elementary, junior high (now called middle school), high school proper, college, then grad school for some. In amongst those social milieus, there were others - various clubs, organizations, sports groups, etc. We moved in a progression through school, and in and out of activities, all the time meeting new people and making new friends. While we would carry some friends onward, and turn some aquaintences into friends, our steady march through school meant that we would have to lose touch with some people as we changed locations. Sure, some of those people stayed in our spheres, but the vast majority did not. It was a badge of maturity to leave high school and everyone you knew and loved and go to college somewhere else. Sure it was scary, but necessary - necessary for growth, we thought. If someone held on too tightly to the past - if they insisted on going to every high school football game once they started college - we saw them as somewhat flawed. It was imperative that we move forward, and a big part of that movement meant separating from one social circle and creating a new, often more diverse group around us.

Still, it wasn't like we wouldn't see our old old friends ever again. That was what reunions were for. Coming back to that homecoming game. Running into one of your best buddies at the mall. Keeping touch through holiday cards. And looking forward to the pinnacle event of them all - the organized reunion. We kept in touch with the major changes, high points and low points of our best friends through these tools. While we knew about computers, none of us had one. The PC didn't exist. Our biggest technical challenge was learning to type on an IBM Selectric. There was no Internet helping our communications fly at the speed of light.

There is a generally-used name for my generation - Baby Boomers (Boomers for short.) We define ourselves by our forward motion, by how many new people we can meet, become intimate with, pull into our ideas, or impress. We always look forward, to the next group of people, consigning those times we look back to those officially-sanctioned reunions.

Take a look at this great post by Seth Godin, which got me thinking about the Reunion Generation. In Facebook's generational challenge, Seth talks about how he's not used to using Facebook the way younger generations use it. He relates a small tale about a college student he knows who was able to contact tons of people in her upcoming class, so that everyone knew everybody before they set foot on campus.

This is, to me, related to information I've read about how the "younger generations" continue to be involved in their friends' lives through My Space, Facebook, and social media on the Web.

They build on their circle of friends as they go along. No need to move on to the next social circle, when you can keep everyone abreast of your life - and they, you - on a daily basis through online networks. I'm guessing that they don't see this continual contact as a negative thing, the way we in the Reunion Generation might. Their definitions of maturity don't involved sailing away from one shore and losing contact with the island altogether in search of the next beach.

8 Reasons Why Many Networking Events Suck
and how organizers can improve them...

I enter a roomful of people I've never seen before. I write "MIKE" in large block letters on a nametag sticker and attach it to my shirt. I feel marked, but nobody shoots. Nobody even looks. I wander through the throng, trying to find the bar. I can feel the noise. I reach the bar, order a drink and turn to see everyone in small, closed circles. How do I break in? I decide I can't, so I focus on the people outside the groups. Their standing alone, with dead expressions.

And how can I engage a zombie?

I'm pretty good at meeting people for the first time. I don't have a problem striking up and sustaining a conversation. People genuinely like me. So why are so many of the networking events I've recently attended so bad?

1. Nobody's acting as a connector, and people have to sink or swim. You can't tell the organizers from the attendees, and the organizers are most likely perched behind a registration table or inside one of those small, closed groups. It's the organizer's responsibility to make sure that people are connecting, and the shy are included, by searching out the loners, getting them introduced around, even providing icebreakers. Get helpers to move around, meet everyone, be visible. Have them wear funny hats. Jeff Pulver's methods at his recent networking breakfast are ideal for getting strangers engaged with one another. He should be cloned and distributed live.

2. Just when it starts to get decent, the organizers stop everything and start making announcements. Sure, you need to market the event and let people know about what's upcoming. But do you have to do that in the middle of my conversation? You may have cut short a million dollar deal (not likely, but who knows?) Send emails out the next day, create a handout you can pass around unobtrusively while people are talking, highlight your events on your web site. Just don't turn the crowd into a literal audience.

3. The venue is too dark, hot, crowded, noisy (or lacks carpeting). Loud music may require that people stand closer to each other to converse, but it also makes those small circles even smaller. Think about the American Need for Personal Space (read about "Body contact and personal expression") and do a site visit beforehand. You might not be able to remedy all the problems, but at least you can be ready to work around them.

4. Your event is advertised as networking when it's really a presentation (and some of those presentations may be about networking.) Close to #2, although attendees may feel more baited-and-switched. Make sure you haven't set up chairs in the dreaded theater-style. Ban PowerPoints, can the lecturers, and don't focus the group's attention. Provide multiple food/drink stations, and spread handouts on tables around the room - anything to prove we're not back in school.

5. Too much distance between the "old guard" and the "newbies." I went to a playwriting conference at Arena Stage a few years ago - I think I even got an invitation. There were equal numbers of established writers, artistic directors, and struggling playwrights. At lunch, the status quo all sat together, while we huddled at the kids table. Know who will be attending your event. Get clear on the range of people likely involved. If you aren't able facilitate some connections between the old guard and the new, then perhaps you should cancel the event, or at least not hold it again without some real evaluation (and not that checklist you hand out asking us how much we loved you.)

6. The event becomes a figurative fishbowl. Your monthly meetup is a big success. People mark it on their calendars and email you about the next one. Those small, closed circles of participants are really a measure of your success. You wanted people to meet up, and they have. The trouble is, your event has turned into Happy Hour With Friends. Put more time into developing how you want the event to unfold, rather than relying on the "y'all show up" kind of hospitality. Go back to your original reason for getting together. Your original goal is probably light years from "we want to keep the already-acquainted talking only to those they already know."

7. Networking is scheduled for the end of a long day of presentations. This usually happens at conferences. I've been to - and organized - so many meetings jammed full of lectures, slides and handouts, where any networking time longer than a coffee break happens at the end of the day. By 6:00, people are ready for drinks, dinner and conversation, but with their friends. So many attendees have told me they're "burned out" at the end of the day, yet they find the networking to be the best part of their participation. I personally know it's almost impossible to provide for additional mingling time at an annual meeting, where even the lunches are programmed. Someone, someday, will realize this and make the necessary changes. I think.

8. Unclear, or too wide-ranging, event objectives. Sure, I know the main methods of successful networking involves meeting people first, second and third, and then maybe you can get into what you can do for each other. But it's tough to get enthused about a conversation on financial planning when I'm looking to connect on a possible business partnership level. Icebreakers are great to introduce a focused goal - and they don't have to be intricate and minutely planned. I'll bet Jeff Pulver didn't spend much time explaining his goals at the recent breakfast - and you can be reasonably assured the event didn't try to be all things to all people.
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What would I have put down for my personal tag line? How about "Mike Ambrose: Making the Personal Universal."

Edgy Characteristics
Yet another great Seth Godin post - The caricature of your brand - got me thinking today about the brands I'm familiar with and how they admit (or hide from) their most telling characteristics. These are the things that people talk about, the thoughts that enter the room before they do, the points that our constantly-sorting and redefining mind choose to remember. Here are a few of my thoughts:

Gold's Gym
Gold's has a charicature in its logo - that intensely developed bodybuilder, holding a barbell that bends under its own weight. Gold's was a gym before there were gyms, and tells of its early days on Venice Beach, California. Everything points to the brand being for muscleheads - but they firmly attach themselves to the general gym-going public. In a recent mailing to me, the facility I'm a member of touted its new coat of paint as a customer service benchmark. While the walls look nice, they're not exciting, and certainly not mentionable. What if Gold's went all the way with the bodybuilder image? Not to alienate themselves from their membership (most of whom do not look like bodybuilders at all), but to create a place that people would talk about. Have you ever heard anyone say "I just love going to my gym?" What if Gold's designed its facilities to take advantage of a retro-California-beach image? What if you entered the gym and you suddenly felt like you were inches away from sun, surf and sand?

Dentists
Think of a dentist and what comes to mind? Little Shop of Horrors? Dentists get a bad rap all the time. They're usually the worse-case scenario in many a conversation: "I wanted to travel to that meeting about as much as I wanted a root canal." Some are fighting back, acknowledging the fear of pain in potential patients by rebranding their offices with spa services and decor. What I wonder is, why doesn't the ADA take this a run with it?

Atlantis vs. RSVP
In the extreme-niche of Gay travel and vacations, Atlantis and RSVP are the two best-known companies. Both offer sea and land excursions. And recently, Atlantis bought RSVP. In their news release, Atlantis stated that they would keep the RSVP brand and continue to offer vacations through that label. But they never said exactly what that brand is. My friends and I have pondered the difference between the two. . RSVP was the first to offer gay vacations. Atlantis came in and... well, offered the same thing. But the caricature of an Atlantis cruise is tons of buff bodies, all night disco parties on the top deck, stunningly gorgeous men and slightly better ships. RSVP? TanDog (who's been on both) put it this way: The difference in eye candy between an RSVP cruise and and Atlantis cruise is the difference between an atom and the Universe.

4-H
Everybody who's ever been to a county fair knows the green clovers with the H's on each leaf. 4-H brands itself as the nation's largest out-of-school youth education organization. They know their caricature: Kids, Cows, and Cooking. Still, they've spent years playing down this image, in favor of chasing after more modern visuals and trying to convince the non-familiar that it's sophisticated and cutting-edge. But people love cows, and cooking (not so sure about kids).

Washington, DC
I've written about DC's image problem before - and suggested that the city embrace some of the aspects it's known for...

I can understand why companies and organizations would want to play down their most prominent features. Just look at how many people go for plastic surgery to "fix" what they feel isn't perfect. We all have a huge desire to blend in, not be noticed for what we're ashamed of. But we also want to stand out. Trouble is, we can't have it both ways (although we try and try and try.) Organizations that capitalize on their possibly-unpopular images could do themselves some damage, but could also be branded with a sense of humor.

Top 23 Motivation Tips, Tricks and Tactics from the Blogosphere

Stuck in a rut? Can't get going? Moving backward instead of forward? The blogosphere has just the solution for you. "Personal Hack" blogs list all kinds of tips to kickstart our flagging motivation. But I've been wondering - how much of this information is repeated? Not that there's anything wrong with that - sometimes I need to read something a bunch of times before it sinks in.

Inspired by LiteMind's Lists Group Writing Project, I downloaded motivation tactics from 11 blogs (searched through Google and Technorati), then tried to sort them according to some overall headings I created just to answer my question. And I found a combination of repeated tips and original tricks. It's all below - the headings I created, the number next to the title which tells you how many tactics in all there were for each specific heading, and after the list, the blogs themselves:

TAKE A BREAK AND DO SOMETHING ELSE - 14 Tactics
Interesting that the most cited tactic is to get away from work and listen to music, do something physical, or just sit with your eyes closed for a few minutes. But it makes a whole lot of sense, especially if you're a "nose-to-the-grindstone" type of person.

FACE UP TO REALITY - 12
The "hard work ethic" phrases we've heard all our lives, including: life is tough, work through the difficult, be patient, stop thinking - just do, stick with it, remember there'll be ups and downs. They work, unless you make a steady diet of them.

FIND AND USE VISUAL OR OUTSIDE MOTIVATORS - 12
I found two categories of tips under this heading: objects you gather which trigger your enthusiasm, and ideas (both conventional, like recognition and power, or "doing it for someone you love.").

CLEAR AWAY DISTRACTIONS AND FOCUS - 12
Eliminate the non-essential and focus on your mission, vision, and goals.

GET SOME HELP - 11
Because you can't do it all alone, "get a coach, take a class, join a group, get a workout/goal buddy, find others working hard, or create a friendly competition"

START AND FOCUS ON THE SMALL AND SIMPLE - 11
Concentrate not on the huge amount of work you have to do, but on the next, small simple step, and build from there.

MAXIMIZE YOUR CREATIVITY AND DO WHAT MOVITATES YOU - 11
Why spend all your time on the awful, painful tasks? Find what you like doing, the stuff that fires you up, builds from your creativity, and do that for awhile.

BE POSITIVE - 9
Nuke negativity.

SET GOALS - 7
One goal, long term goals, a major goal, unrealistic goals, or no goals at all.

DEVELOP A PLAN - 6
Timelines, deadlines, bite-sized chunks - create a road map that will keep you on course and make sure you don't spend all your energy right of the starting gate.

BUILD (AND KEEP BUILDING) YOUR KNOWLEDGE - 5
Read, learn, listen, investigate, and educate yourself self - all on an ongoing basis.

KEEP TRACK OF YOUR PROGRESS - 5
Track, chart, follow, evaluate progress and journal it daily, so you'll know how far you've come and how far you have to go.

INSPIRATION - 5
Seek internal stimulation.

ANALYZE YOUR DIFFICULTIES - 5
Reframe problems, deconstruct your fears, keep notes on when your motivation sucks, know when you urge yourself to quit so you can fight back.

CHANGE THE WAY YOU DO THINGS - 4
Kill repetition and introduce variety into your tasks.

SURROUND YOURSELF WITH POSITIVE PEOPLE HAVING SIMILAR INTERESTS - 4
Look for reinforcers of positive thoughts and feelings, good company, positive friends, passionate people of similar interests.

HELP OTHERS - 4
Share, encourage, help and be of service to other people.

REWARD YOURSELF - 3
Often, after completing a task.

MAKE AN OUTWARD COMMITMENT - 3
Post your goal, commit publicly, make it big and fully commit.

BEGIN THE DAY - 3
Start with a To Do list to kickstart your day.

GO BACK TO SQUARE ONE - 3
Ask yourself "why am I doing this in the first place," find powerful reasons why and write them down.

DON'T STOP - KEEP GOING - 2
It's all about building and maintaining momentum.

GET THE RIGHT TOOLS - 2
Don't use a saw to hammer a nail.
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Thanks to the following blogs for writing the posts I was able to analyze for this list:

Lifehack -
8 steps to continuous self-motivation
How to enjoy what you are doing no matter what
Thirteen tricks to motivate yourself
11 ways to motivate yourself to complete any task in the new year

A List Apart
Staying Motivated

Daily PlanIt
What's the Motivation?

MotivationTools.com
Seven Rules of Motivation

ZenHabits
Top 20 Motivation Hacks
Get Off Your Butt - 16 Ways To Get Motivated When You're In a Slump

Made for Success
Finding Motivation: What To Do When You Don't Feel Like Doing Anything

Dumb Little Man
5 Simple Steps to Stop Procrastination Today

Freelance Switch
Staying Motivated Without a Boss

Ririan Project
Why you lose your focus and what to do about it

Lifehacker
Ten Ways to Defeat Brain Drain

Ian's Messy Desk
8 mental steps to self-motivation

The Video Resume - A Bad Idea Whose Time Has Come?

I've monitored some blogging chat recently discussing the pros and cons of video resumes...

Dan Schawbel, on his Personal Branding Blog sees them in our future.

While Nick Corcodilos over at Ask the Headhunter finds them wrong on a number of levels.

The ease and relative low cost with which people today can shoot, edit and post video leads many of us to believe that the traditional text, listing our experience and expertise, will soon turn give way to us, in head shots, communicating the same information.

Although, there are some who posit that "Web Video Is Neither Cheap Nor Easy."

And there are others who claim they can produce video while driving their car.

Me? I side with the Headhunter. And I think we're talking about what Seth Godin calls a Meatball Sundae. Although there might be a lucrative business in coaching job seekers to not only look good on camera, but also effectively show how they should be chosen for the job.

Still, it's going to be tough keeping resume reviewers from ejecting the DVD after five seconds of viewing...

Antarctica, Part 2
(Click here for what I previously wrote on this subject.)

The New York Times kept me in my seat on Sunday when they took advantage of "new media" capabilities with their arts section article "Unraveling the Knots of the 12 Tones."

Author/critic Anthony Tommasini contributed a video in which he performed examples of spiky, unpopular 12-tone music. Although his presentation may not be fully comprehensible by the general public (he uses words like "tonic" without much of an explanation), he is effective at showing us how the revolutionary 12-tone composition method pops up where we least expect it, and convinces us that we don't complain all that much when it does.

This is a great way to provide us readers with a better understanding of the article. However, the Times probably won't go as far as the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, which actually provides links to YouTube videos supporting articles.

The Milwaukee example shows us that newspapers can add even more interactivity and cross-media resources. In producing their own video, the Times keeps us on their site, but probably runs into time constraints which keeps them from providing even more to readers. (Anthony sits at a piano the entire time you watch the video.) It's quicker and cheaper to research and provide links to a greater number of media sources than it is to produce a video on one's own. For instance, I found this video on YouTube, which is a great companion piece to the Times article.

And I hope no one thinks I'm stalking Chris Brogan when I suggest you see what he has to say and link to on the topic of "finding information."

Of course, there's nothing stopping us from going to YouTube ourselves and doing the research. So, we're going to leave the Times's site anyway. But it makes me wonder when the Times will realize it's more than a newspaper and a media creator?

Improving Public Radio Fundraising at the Local Local Level

I'm listening to WETA-FM's pledge drive - that week of programming public broadcasting inflicts on us in order to stay in business. The station's promised a shorter drive this time, and is playing more music during it than they used to. Every so often they include a story from one of their announcers, reminiscing about how they discovered and grew to love "classical" music. And I wonder:

Why doesn't the station catch and air listener stories?

The idea grew out of Chris Brogan's post on creating microcontent and hyperlocal media. I thought it might be easy for WETA-FM to set up a blog* to encourage listener's stories. During the fund drive they could scan the blog comments for stories, and promise to include some of them on the air. In fact, they could say "If you make a donation at any amount, and you've contributed a story to our blog comment section, we might just read it on the air." They could continue by contacting a few of the best storytellers and have them record their tales for broadcast after the fund drive is completed.

They're not doing that, though. They're not even reading contributor names on the air. Over the past weekend I heard one of the announcers mention "Of course, we can't read names on the air, because that would take too much time."

I tried to analyze exactly why WETA is not using "new media" to improve their fundraising, and I came up with these possible explanations:

they tried it once before, but the return on investment was nil;
they were still discussing it by the start of the fundraising drive;
they haven't thought of doing it;
they thought of it but weren't interested;
they came up with the idea but found too many internal controls to make it work.

I think it has a whole lot to do with the fact that so many people still don't know how to use "new media" and Web 2.0 applications, much less figure out how to make them work the micro, or neighborhood, level. However, I just heard the WETA-FM announcers mention that many people are pledging money online, at the WETA Web site. Now whether or not that's a sales tactic, I don't know.
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*or some other Web 2.0 online application.

But I Don't Want To Go To Antarctica

I'm currently wondering why the big newspapers (The Times, The Post) still don't hyperlink within their online articles. My guess is that they don't want people leaving their sites, a last-stand effort to regain what they've lost in having to provide so much of their content online for free. But that's just my guess.

This morning I read a Times music review online - "Musical Mysticism in a Search for God" - and once again I thought "it would help to have a link to somewhere I could hear a snippet of this music, so I could better understand what the writer is talking about." I found some samples of Messiaen's organ music on Amazon.com, and you can download individual pieces to your personal-listening device. Just think of what the Times could do if they recast themselves through the ability to hyperlink and started to guide us to a greater understanding, instead of keeping the doors closed.

I think of hyperlinks as wormholes, a doorways taking us from one Web site (kind of like a planet) to another. Online, newspapers seem to be ignoring these wormhole possiblities, or limiting themselves severely to building a wormhole from the bedroom to the bath. This morning, The Washington Post hyperlinked very oddly in the theater review titled "'I Love You': Out of Tune With the Times." Instead of linking to the theatre's Web site (where the play is onstage) in the text, they make you scroll "below the fold" to the end of the article. What makes it above the fold? A link to articles on Antarctica, which has an extremely tenuous relationship to the review. Check it out and see what I mean.

Maybe a better wormhole would be from The Washington Post to the official Web site of the Off-Broadway production.

How Personal Trainers Can Create the Remarkable
A buzzword currently circulating among marketing gurus on the Web is "remarkable." That is, what is it that you're doing which causes your audience, clients, customers, whoever to talk about you (and not like a dog.) An interesting post over on Remarkable Communication describes two hot dog street vendors, and made me start to look at this whole "remarkability" factor in my environment.

Of course, it's easier to talk about other people's remarkability rather than one's own. So I'll write a bit about an idea I had today: How personal trainers can increase their remarkability.

The idea's blindingly simple. Every so often - at least once a week - email your clients individually. Find something remarkable in their previous workout session and tell them about it. Guide them to an interesting article online. Encourage them to keep up with their diet/nutrition plan. The key is to come up with something encouraging and positive for each client - and not a canned missive that they'll trash without a moment's thought. Tailor the message to the person.

This may seem to be a lot of work, but it can be done with some planning* - and jotting down notes on the client's chart.

I worked out all last year with personal trainers, and none of them were shy, reserved, quiet and self-effacing people. They were fun, energetic, supportive, exciting people. None of them, though, made a point of extending their presence into my thoughts once I left the gym.

My idea would start them down the road to remarkability, since I don't think many trainers do this.

After they get comfortable with this idea, then they can start blogging! (Hot Dog Impresario Biker Jim has a blog - after all, people will talk about anything.)
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*Whenever I think of planning, that Monty Python sketch (Episode 4) about "defending yourself against attack from fresh fruit" comes to mind:

Self-Defense Instructor (SDI): Come on, come on you worm...you miserable little man. Come at me then...come on, do your worst, you worm.

(third man runs at him; the SDI steps back and pulls a lever; a sixteen-ton weight falls upon the man)

SDI: If anyone ever attacks you with a raspberry, simply pull the lever...and a sixteen-ton weight will drop on his head. I learnt that in Malaya.

Student: Suppose you haven't got a sixteen-ton weight?

SDI: Well that's planning, isn't it?

Post-Cluetrain Rant

I finished reading The Cluetrain Manifesto yesterday. It's close to a decade now since it was first written, and I think it still has tons to say about our current and future online and face-to-face communications.

I caused me, also, to go on a rant. Here are my 12 theses in the spirit of Cluetrain's 95. Some of them carry explanations, while others sit there enigmatically. But I'd be please to explain my thinking to anyone who wants to start a conversation! And I will most likely expand on some of them in the days ahead:

Fluorescent lighting has to be the worst lighting in the world, and shouldn't be used anywhere except in hospitals and maybe restaurant kitchens.

CEOs of store chains: Look at your stores. Look at them!!!!

Do customers want to get in and out of stores quickly because they've got something else to do, or because the store's environment sucks?

CEOs of store chains: Look at your employees. Look at them!!!!

Everything, and I mean everything, speaks.

Retail, organization, and government leadership: Why aren't you worried about your the health of your employees and their families?

We have too much stuff. There are people in this country that can't get out of bed because they are so overweight. We have reformulated our plastic trash bags to stretch because we have too much trash to throw away.

Commerce: Surprise me. But not as I'm about to leave the store. And not as I'm walking in. Start with my "snail" mail box.

How dare you tell me I'm not worthy. How dare you.

Whatever you're doing, you're probably beating your head against a brick wall. You can stop. Now.

There's no excuse for dismal government office environments at any scale.

Nobody in the U.S. is more than an hour away from a better, more tranquil, more beautiful environment.

Not Just Small, But Tiny

A few days ago I mentioned I haven't gone to the gym for two months. Last night, something dawned on me. No, it wasn't the possibility that I'll turn into a pile of mush if I continue to avoid exercise. What struck me was the fact that my gym doesn't seem to care.

No one working there takes a look at the membership roster to see if any members have been chronically absent. Or if they do, they file the info somewhere in the back of their mind, and take no action.

It's not that I require attention from my gym in order to go back. But I think they're missing an opportunity to market their members. With today's connectivity and the easy use of their database, my gym could send me an email asking about my well-being. We're talking a few minutes of somebody's time here, time that could be used to foster a connection.

If you think about it for a few minutes, you'll find that there are just a few reasons why gym members might miss a month or two of workouts. It could be:

Work demanding more time;
Injury or illness laying a member up;
A job change forcing the member to a new location;
Loss of interest in exercise or that particular gym.

Whatever the reason, my gym is missing out on an opportunity to engage me more fully as a member. Of course, the real reason gyms don't consider this an opportunity because they can't see a direct line from their email message to money in their pocket.

As traditional "mass media" ways of thinking are undercut and forced to evolve through our massive online connectivity options, businesses are being called on the carpet because they continue to think BIG. I see my gym's opportunity, noted above, as a way of acting tiny, rather parallel to the thinking I read this morning in an interesting post at Brand Autopsy titled How Tiffany Saved Michael’s Life. Thanks to John Moore for helping me frame my thinking in this way.

For my gym, and many others, marketing these days really reduces down to small, miniscule, seemingly-unimportant actions that could combine to create huge results.

You Do Have People Working There, Don't You?

When I'm pulling up a "new-to-me" Web site, 90% of the time my 2nd click is either on "About Us" or "Contact Us." What I find on that page far to often is either an online form to fill out, or a generic email address.

What I want is: A list of staff and a physical, street, suite number, city state and zip address.

Why do sites continue to act as if they don't have staff? When I can't find people's names, it makes me think:

you're a fly-by-night group that doesn't exist;
you've got your people locked to their desks in the basement;
your employee turnover rate is close to 99%;
you're afraid that listing staff names will give them too much power;
you just don't care.

There's probably no real excuse not to have staff listed on an organization's Web site. Not anymore.

Showing the Plug and Not the Cable

37 Signals wonders why we show the cable and not the plug. That is, why we focus on what we think we should show, instead of what the other person really needs for us to show. It's a fantastic post, pointing up a flaw of everyday communication, and it made me remember an example I experienced many years ago.

As a graduate assistant for a television production class, I was the one who shot the student video, as guided by the student director, and later stuck all the shots together, as guided by the student editor. These were short productions, less than 5 minutes in length. And most of them involved a character walking through a door.

In just about every shoot, the director wanted a closeup of the actor's hand turning the doorknob. This meant one more setup, and a separate lighting procedure, just to show the grabbing the doorknob, twisting it, and opening the door.

An extra setup, to show us something we do so often we don't even think about it. The extra time it took quickly ate into our short shooting and editing window.

I started advising the directors that they didn't need the closeup doorknob shot, unless the doorknob was covered with peanut butter or slime or wouldn't turn at all because the door was locked (which had to be a part of the script.)

The professor guiding us grad assistants told me to let the students make the mistake and find their errors on their own.

Anyway, the 37 Signals post reminded me of our tendency to show ALL the details in, well, an incredibly detailed fashion, even if those details are so well cemented in our minds that we can move right past them to the good stuff.

And I'm running a level-3 diagnostic on my brain to find out all the myriad times I've done the same thing.
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photo from Scott Fisher: Environmental Media Archives - it's the doorknob from Disney's "Alice in Wonderland," I believe.

All About the Package
A study has found some small proof of what parents have known for years: that children prefer foods branded McDonald's over foods in unprinted containers. Researchers asked children which tastes better, fries, carrots or milk in a McDonald's wrapper or the same foods in everyday, non-corporate garb. They answered McDonald's, as reported in today's New York Times.*

I could have told somebody that. Growing up, I saw it happen in my family. But my anecdotes aren't scientific, double-blind investigations, so it's interesting to see this behavior supported by some statistics.

The article taps into my recent thinking about this whole food-packaging issue. Urged on by all the "green living" info available online, I'm considering an experiment to see if I can go a week only eating grocery store-available foods packaged as simply as possible, with minimal marketing ink used in helping them jump off the shelves. I thought it might be difficult.

But once I took a look at my weekly diet, I found I would have to make such small changes, it might not be worth it. From bananas, wrapped in nature's best natural marketing wrapper, through free-range chicken, olive oil, fresh vegetables et al, my usual food intake requires little coaxing from Madison Avenue.

I would allow "coelacanth packages" - like egg cartons, which have been around since the dawn of human time, are absolutely necessary, and can be easily retro-fitted* with pipe cleaners, goggle eyes and multicolored paints to resemble caterpillars. I would have to give up peeled baby carrots though, in favor of the less-processed, straight out of the ground kind.

So I continue to work out the bugs in the experiment idea. But leave it to marketing guru Seth Godin to expand our thinking about wrappers in a still-relevant Fast Company essay from March 2001 that begins "That wedding dress is the wrapper on your wedding day." Seth's words have stuck in my brain over the years, as he analyzes our need for packages, boxes or bags:

"At the same time that we're abandoning some traditional wrappers, some businesses are becoming ever more obsessed with the wrapper. They understand that their businesses are really about wrappers, and so they offer their T-shirts, their soaps, their teas -- even their computer workstations -- in wrappers and packages that satisfy our inner need for beauty."

As further proof of the article's relevance, it seems that even in 2007 we'll gladly pay for the same cookies over and over, as evidenced in The Consumerist article "Like Those 100 Calorie Packs? You're Paying Twice As Much."
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*But not reported there first - CNN scooped the Times in early August, and Pronet Advertising posted an August 7 commentary on the study.

**Just find a bunch of kindergarteners and you've recycled, for a short time at least, months worth of trash; oatmeal boxes can become pigs this way too.

Horizontal Vs. Vertical

Just got back from spending a bunch of days in Fort Lauderdale, FL. For those of you who read this and are incredulous, saying "You went to Florida in August?!?!?" I say "It's a whole lot nicer than DC in August!"

I lounged on my friend's balcony and watched a parade of tropiclouds at every hour of the day.
I marinated in the ocean every day.
I read a book, one actual book, the same one, every day.

I'm finding it difficult to go back to reading blogs and other online information, though. I'm pretty sure it's because when I read the book (Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert) I moved my eyes from left to right, then down to the next line and left to right.

Online I read from top to bottom. Oh sure, there's left to right. But I think there's more perusing of lists, more text going by my eyes like the credits at the end of a movie.

It hurts. I'll get used to it again. Funny, though. I didn't have to get used to reading "the old-fashioned way."

As for Stumbling on Happiness - I really enjoyed it. Gilbert takes us on a tour of our brain's capacity to feed us illusions of reality. If that sounds just too metaphysical, I'll add that he also supplies us with easily-digestible results of actual scientific mind-testing, on human subjects that were not harmed in the pursuit of knowledge and, well, happiness.

I found much in the book that I've figured out for myself over the years, as well as examples in my own life that further pointed up how even I can completely delude myself into abject misery and despair. I'll post a couple of examples in the next post or so. Once I get used to typing, my laptop, and all these things called Web sites once again.

Job Search Communications:
24 reasons why they aren't calling you for an interview

Jimbo posted a piece the other day about his frustration with job search communications - he found out, through the "grapevine," he didn't get a job he interviewed for, instead of through the people who interviewed him. This is a frustrating problem in the job search process - who hasn't felt that they're communication with a giant black hole in applying for and/or interviewing for a job? Jimbo's dilemma prompted me to dip into my years of applying for jobs and reviewing candidate resumes, and I've come up with 24 reasons why you never hear back from a company or organization once you've sent them your resume and cover letter:

1. there's no longer a job at the company;
2. nobody has time to review all the resumes;
3. the job's been changed and they need new resumes;
4. none of the resumes matched what their needs are, and they're really really picky;
5. they called you, and you called back and left a message, but they then decided not to call you again;
6. you're overqualified;
7. you're underqualified;
8. nothing on your resume, in their eyes, convinces them that you're even a slight match for the job;
9. they can't make a decision on who to call;
10. someone reviewing the resumes knows who you are and tells the hiring manager you should not be contacted;
11. it's taking them a really REALLY long time to review resumes;
12. you're just plain wrong for the job;
13. they think you'll ask for too much money;
14. your name reminds the chief reviewer of this bully that used to torment him in school;
15. they lost your resume;
16. the post office lost your resume;
17. you thought you sent your resume, but you really didn't;
18. the email you sent with your resume attached got lost;
19. the email attachment - your resume - got lost;
20. the resume attached was in WordPerfect and they have MSWord (or vice versa);
21. something about your resume turned them off;
22. you didn't send them all the information they asked for;
23. you're not the right sex, age, etc. even though this is illegal (it's tough to prove);
24. your background on the first five emperors of Holy Roman Empire is not up to snuff - that is, any reason whatsoever that you could never guess.

What's Brand Me?
Revisiting "Personal Branding" a Decade Later

Ten years ago this month, Tom Peters' article "The Brand Called You" appeared in Fast Company magazine, and an era was born. The term brand stopped being the exclusively property of cattle ranchers and breakfast cereal manufacturers, and started being our property too.

I remember reading the article, and finding the concept interesting. But I was too busy working full time, writing plays in my off hours, and managing my life (both the social and everyday upkeep aspects) to work at defining my personal brand.

I've got a much better idea of it now. Today, something moved me to read the article again. I not only found out it's ten years old, I could see how, even today, people would still a difficult time explaining who they are according to their brand.

Simply put, my personal brand is what enters the room before I do.

We used to call it "personality." Or "personal style." But simple doesn't mean it's easy. I'm sure you've had people tell you "I hate working on my resume" or "I hate developing my yearly performance appraisal."

That's because we're really bad, and hesitant, at thinking about ourselves in this manner. Here's a thought exercise I've found useful to get around that problem:

Think of a friend, waiting for you in a restaurant. You're meeting for lunch, drinks or dinner.

He or she is thinking about what the experience will be like once you show up.

Is your friend looking forward to:
- laughing because you always say funny things?
- exciting political conversation because you're always up on what's happening across the country?
- telling you some great personal news because you're always happy and congratulatory?
- a long afternoon because it's going to be all about you?

The person waiting for you is attuned to the experience he or she is going to have once you show up.

Now take it wider. Think of how others might view you at work.

Are you:
- always ready to lend a hand, when it's needed?
- someone who people tiptoe around?
- the go-to person when anyone has a problem?

All these thoughts and opinions are elements of your personal brand. They're the things people instinctively feel even before they see you. They're the things people expect from you.

They might expect:
you'll always be positive
you'll always be difficult to deal with (and so maybe they just don't and you're left
alone!)
you'll always be energetic at every moment of the day
you to be calm but kind of out of it until the coffee kicks in
you'll always be there.

It even goes to the work you crank out. They might expect that:
it's always nearly perfect
it's always missing something
it'll be delivered so quickly that they won't be ready for it
it's always delivered timely
it's something they'll have to fix later

It really helps if you have some examples of things you know people have said about you. Snippets of a conversation, or the positive things written about your work in your last performance appraisal.

Simply put, our personal brand is what enters the room before we do.

Once I started thinking about myself and "my brand" in this way, I started laying a foundation which I can build on quickly when I need to. Like, when I apply for a job. Or when I'm about to meet a bunch of people I've never met before. Or if I need to change something I'm doing in order to make the outcome better or surprising, instead of the boring old status quo.

I can't promise you'll end up happy working on your resume, but you might end up much happier with your results.

And read the Tom Peters' article (again, if you've read it before.) Reflect on how timely it still is, especially 10 years later (which is a billion years in cultural time.)

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Picture from The Arizona Ranch Web site.

But That's Not What We're About!

As a promotional stunt for the upcoming Simpson's movie, some 7-11 stores are now Kwik-E-Marts, Homer's version of Whole Foods.

Jeff Brooks over at Donor Power Blog thinks it's a nifty idea, one that some nonprofit organizations might learn from.

According to Jeff:

"So often, a company's brand image bull-headedly flies in the face of reality, stubbornly insisting in an ideal that's baldly untrue. That's why 7-Eleven's willingness to laugh, even at their own weakness, is so amazing. And appealing. They've actually left behind their phony brand image and joined the real conversation. Maybe they figured out that being authentic, even when it's less than flattering, is better than sticking to an irrelevant playbook... I'm waiting for a nonprofit that can do that."

Every nonprofit I've worked for has complained "people just don't understand who we really are and what we really do." Among the specific "misunderstandings" I've run across in my career:

1. Everyone thinks we're a bunch of hayseeds and hicks, when we're actually quite sophisticated!
2. People believe we want to use these strategies and tactics for punishment, when we're really working to improve interpersonal communication!
3. We're not trying to destroy the concept of parental consent - although a prominent radio personality keeps saying we are - while we're trying to get kids and parents to talk even more!
4. We're characterized as sadistic money-grubbing technicians, worse than auto mechanics, when we're more necessary for good health than anyone thinks, and we've got the research to prove how we're just like everyone else!

In fighting these perceptions, each organization has run to solutions based on external communications, while trying to work through a certain amount of anger at those who won't listen or have their idea set changed. I like the Kwik-E-Mart idea of taking what you fear is your biggest stereotype and, to use a touchy-feely concept, totally owning it.

Think of the fun when, in your marketing meeting, you fill the flipcharts with all the crazy, negative assumptions leveled against your organization. Think of the bumper stickers you could design with slogans based on your most cutting criticisms. Even if you decide not to proceed as 7-11 has done, oh what collective wisdom you'll unleash!

In each of my cases, I'd bring the following ideas to the table:

1. How about we develop a character right out of Green Acres as our spokesperson - and give him or her a sophisticated edge that even he or she doesn't quite believe or understand? Like mixing tractors and caviar?

2. What if we put our practitioners into corrections-inspired outfits. Maybe dayglo orange jumpsuits or old-time prison stripes. Could you imagine them delivering services in that getup? Would the clients get it, and even laugh?

3. Maybe we could develop a PSA that says "Yeah, we think parental consent SUCKS!" And we're shouting it to America over a bullhorn from atop a really high building. Then we end with ways parents, guardians and kids can work together to avoid the need for parental consent.

4. Could we really get outrageous and create a Web site gloryfying our most negative attributes, and then deliver the facts along with the myths - but it would be up to the site users to find the clues that we're pulling their collective legs?

Of course, there would be massive problems in getting a nonprofit to Kwik-E-Mart themselves. Mainly because:

Nonprofits almost always are in a struggle for money, and would fear spending time and energy on something that could blow up in their faces and ruin their fundraising.
Nonprofits deal with subject matter and issues that often aren't funny at all, and could be severely anxious about coming across as "making fun" of the sufferers.
Nonprofits rely on established practitioner methods and traditions to make themselves credible in a highly professional marketplace - and traditions stick with the grip of epoxy cement.

But, as Scott the Nametag Guy writes today, sometimes you have to dream up some really crazy ideas to get anywhere.

And it'll be interesting to see if anyone follows Jeff Brooks' call...
Meanwhile, there's a blog carnival all about authenticity over at Sea Change Strategies.

Nuke the Office:
10 reasons small nonprofit organizations should go virtual

1. You've probably got a good number of part-time employees, and the rest of your staff is probably traveling, so there's a bunch of space going unused right now.

2. Your rent most likely eats up a significant portion of your budget.

3. It's getting tougher and tougher to raise those unrestricted funds that go directly to rent and other on-site operating expenses.

4. Half your staff probably doesn't really get along with, and won't mind not seeing, the other half.

5. You've got no bureaucracy to support.

6. Down deep, you know there's no "exchange of ideas" among staff when they're in the office (see reasons 1 and 2 above)

7. You're already farming out most of your communications and other administrative tasks, and staff spends a large percentage of time managing vendor, member, and committee contracts, tasks, and relationships via phone, email, and off-site meetings.

8. Your bookshelves are filled with reports and monographs and books and brochures and pamphlets that: A) you never look at, and B) are probably available online by now.

9. Your decor is early 90's castoff furniture, and your artwork is either your organization's framed publications (BORING!) or IKEA posters (FLÄRKE HANNES-KRISTER!), which will impress nobody, since they've got them too.

10. You've inherited some previous organization's warren-like maze of offices, cubicles, and dead-ends that would give Mozart composer's block.

In olden days, before we could send information wirelessly ourselves, the office suite was all about communication. Letters, memos, faxes, meetings, phone calls - they all required we be physically present to generate and be answerable to communications. Today, it's even more about communication. And with cell phones, the Internet, email, overnight package delivery, we workers don't become obsolete, but the previous structure of our workplaces do. How many of us fret over the look of our Web site, but never give a second thought to our office design?

Read more about it:
What Gen Y Wants From Work at Web Worker Daily,
and
Twentysomething: Start a company in 3 days with 70 friends at Brazen Careerist.

I'll be weighing in on this issue again, with:

• The real reasons for offices.
• Answering the naysayers questions.
• What to do with the money you'll save.
• Creative ways to deal with the new markets you'll create.
• What we'll still need offices for - and why we might not.

How Green Is My H2O
12 Ways WASA Can Help DC Break Its Bottled Water Habit - and Improve Our Plastic Container Environmental Impact

Fast Company's fascinating analysis of the bottled water phenomenon ("Message in a Bottle," July/August 2007) inspired me to come up with some more ideas for improving WASA's public outreach (see my previous post on the subject - 7 Ways to Improve a Municipal Water Report to DC Residents.)

According to Fast Company, America's water supply is "impressively safe," yet we prefer to spend billions on a substance we can get for free (or at very very very low cost), not to mention the environmental cost of all those plastic bottles.

I think this provides a great opportunity for DC's Water and Sewer Authority to take back their main product and reposition it in our lives. How to do this? Some examples:

1. Publish a "Did You Know..." series focusing on
- how much money we can save by filling our water bottles from the tap
- tips and facts about water's health benefits
- how municipal water purification is not that far removed from bottled water manufacturers' water processing systems
- why using DC's water is better than using bottled water.

2. Create a fact sheet itemizing all of WASA's benefits to DC residents (sometimes these things need to be spelled out, even the ones that can be termed "common sense.")

3. Design a snappy DC water system logo that looks less governmental.

4. Provide DC households with a free plastic gallon refrigerator water jug - prominently featuring the logo. Make the jugs, as well as reusable individual water bottles (adult and child/aquapod sizes) available to DC residents for a small fee.

5. Revamp the consumer sections of WASA's Web site to better represent the DC water "brand" and upgrade the graphics, writing style, and user information.

6. Start a DC water blog, highlighting facts, short tutorials, and breaking news around DC's water supply. Plenty of opportunities for puns here, which I won't burden anyone with at this point.

7. Develop a "Save the Water, Save the World" campaign, which encourages residents to keep track of the money saved through bypassing the purchase of bottled water, which they can then donate to charity (like WASA's S.P.L.A.S.H. Program.)

8. Conduct taste tests at community gatherings (farmer's markets, flea markets, neighborhood festival days) at a newly-upgraded WASA exhibit, which pit DC water against the top bottled water brands (and give away t-shirt sporting the new WASA logo.)

9. Create a school science curriculum showing the extensive water reclamation system and its component technologies.

10. Collaborate with DC's Department of Public Works on a program that encourages residents to lower the amount of plastic we throw away by reusing water bottles for DC tap water, and informs us on how much garbage we currently produce with bottled water.

11. Launch a "develop your taste for water campaign."

12. Combine forces with DC's Health Center on a "Water Fights Obesity" campaign that shows the positive health benefits of DC water (when combined with healthy eating and exercise.) Identify (and facilitate) some neighborhood "Jareds" (a la Subway) as spokespersons for the campaign.

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Extra Added Attraction! Dumb Little Man offers "9 Reasons to Drink Water, and How to Form the Water Habit."