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Distilling the range of policy positions on our current economic malaise is a huge challenge, but fortunately Rortybomb is up to the task. I recommend his post – A Topological Mapping of Explanations and Policy Solutions to Our Weak Economy.

Not only does he provide spiffy venn diagrams that distill people’s positions he also provides extremely useful links to articles that lay out those positions.

As a business leader I recommend this post for those wanting to dig deeper on what the road ahead might look like for our organizations.

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level-32-nerdThere are bad ideas that become iconic for every era because they were popular fads. Pet Rocks, the Pacer, Supply Side Economics, and .com groceries all come to mind.

Looking back we all scratch our heads and wonder – why?

Gamification, ripping the reward and recognition systems out of video games and applying them to behavioral modification is likely to stand in for our current times in the future.

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PICT0091.jpgWhat do you do with 112 degrees of dry Texas heat on a Sunday afternoon? We sheltered in the Alamo Drafthouse for the Harry Potter matinee and brunch.

Our 17 year old son Peter was sitting between Leslie and I, his broad shoulders connecting us as a family. The cartoons had run, the infamous “no talking” video had played (nsfw), french toast was cooling, the lights dimmed.

As the Warner Brother’s logo emerged on screen I began to cry. This final movie, at the start of Peter’s final year of High School, was a moment that caught me completely off guard.

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Sign Danger Two Way FeedI just got back from two weeks off, really off as in “I read 6 books” off.* The whole family sat on a chilly island in the Northwest and just let the old mazooma roll in. I highly recommend it.

My time away generated the germ of a couple of meta posts about publishing in the era of social media. But, before we get to that I saw the worst use of social media on on my flight out. If there were social media police these guys would be doing hard time.

I use an off-site parking lot when I travel. They get all the fundamentals exactly right – there is always space, you are always picked up within 1-2 minutes, they are clean, drivers are pleasant etc. etc. They normally bring their A game to everything they do.

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Lovely, enjoy.

Background:

“Philips ran a contest called Parallel Lines in which they asked people to create a three-minute short film using only six lines of dialogue: :”What is that?”, “It’s a unicorn”, “Never seen one up close before”, “Beautiful”, “Get away, get away”, and “I’m sorry”. After more than 600 entries were submitted, director Ridley Scott selected the above film, titled “Porcelain Unicorn”, as the winner.”d

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1254880_shiny_brain_Is the Internet making us dumber or are we just using our brains in new ways? The BBC posted a great overview of a new study which makes the case for a neat trick the brain is pulling now that we have 24/7 access to the web.

The article notes:

“When participants knew that facts would be available on a computer later, they had poor recall of answers but enhanced recall of where they were stored.

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Wrong Way Go BackThere is a profitability model for companies promoting themselves on Facebook and Twitter. There a lot of people making good coin from the incessant flogging of companies and organizations in social media. It just isn’t the companies themselves who are profiting.

Here is how it works in four easy steps:

  1. An executive is at the dentist’s office and sees the plea to friend and follow them. A dim light bulb goes off – “we should do this too.” Lemming marketing almost never works, particularly when you are following behind your Dentist.
  2. Someone in Marketing with an advertising background is assigned the task of building a following in “social media.” This is so important that they are given a bonus. The performance metrics are the evil stepchildren of the “brand impressions” school of marketing metrics. Quantity over quality.
  3. A campaign of whinging pleas to friend and follow ensues. We see this in every piece of literature the company products (annual reports – really?), at trade shows (“it only takes a minute!”), and even on flashing freeway signs (“great idea, let me do that while I’m driving…”). Logrolling and sock-puppetry are rampant – many of the “followers” are marketing people at other companies playing the same game.
  4. The metrics are hit, the bonus is paid. PROFIT!

This whole scenario is so wrong on so many levels it makes my teeth hurt. Here are some thoughts to help reframe this approach that map back to each stage of the process above.

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