2010.01.28

Function follows form

Somehow, I’ve managed to avoid a lot of the discussion about the iPad — no easy feat considering Apple’s newest piece of technology has been the focus of a lot of buzz over the last 24 hours (er… several months).

With the exception of hearing that some people can’t get their hands on an iPad quickly enough and that others can’t believe Apple would release a glorified iPhone/eReader, I’ve dodged all of the details about the device. So, what I’m about to share is based almost exclusively on the demonstation of the iPad during yesterday’s product announcement which I watched earlier today.

Like many Apple products, the iPad is a groundbreaking new form with the potential for incredible function. At the moment it’s somewhere between a MacBook and an iPhone, offering some of the greatest advantages of mobile convergence (save the phone) and desktop productivity, with the added bonus of having an eBook reader built in. This means the iPad isn’t going to compete with eReaders like the Kindle and its brethren based on the iPad’s limited battery life (10 hours), but a brand new technology that will likely displace the eReader because it does so much more as both an entertainment centre and business tool in a single device.

That’s right. The iPad is supposed to make you leave your laptop and Kindle at home. If it had a phone capabilities, you could leave your cell behind also.

The iPad is first generation, though. And that means Apple put it on the market to make waves and set the stage for something bigger and better. That’s to say, future releases of the OS will make the iPad a Blue Ocean of mobile computing. Imagine – and I’m speculating here – a stylus that turns the iPad into ePaper. You could take notes, doodle, draw, sketch and design, and have the ability to dog ear and scrawl notes in the margins of your eBook. Uh, oh! There’s the real threat to commercial paper AND eReaders.In fact, the iPad could also become a threat to the Livescribe pen if Apple unifies a stylus and audio recording capabilities.

Remember when I said I wouldn’t buy an iPod? Now I don’t even own a PC. Yeah… I’ll probably get an iPad. Just, maybe not until OS or hardware 2.0.

2010.01.05

CrushIt!, passion and the AE formula

If you’re not familiar with WineLibrary.tv, you need to know something. Gary Vaynerchuk is wildly passionate about what he does. I’m talking truly stratospheric passion. He’s harnessed that passion to his energy and drive to turn his family’s wine business from a $4 million to a $50 million dollar business. And, he continues to build that business everyday using social media as his main platform.

There’s no denying you need some form of passion to achieve any degree of success. In fact, I’d agree that passion serves as the foundation of success. It’s after this that Gary and I diverge in our thinking about the formula that’s led to his success as he describes in his easy-to-read and very insightful and entertaining book CrushIt!

Gary spends a lot of his time pushing the need to create lots of content. He notes that content is king in all forms: text due to it’s power when indexed by search engines, audio because almost anyone can speak without needing to be seen, video since it’s amazingly popular these days, and live streaming because it’s an oft overlooked way to engage with your audience. Gary suggests tools to use for each of these delivery mechanisms and then urges his reader to get out there and start producing content everyday.

I believe that content is one-third of an important equation for audience engagement, a dependency of media success. The other two-thirds are:

  • Context: the elements that determine the meaning of the content. Context can be the descriptions that support all forms of media, the ambient sound of an audio recording and the visuals that create the setting of the video. Without context, the content is just words that anyone can read.
  • Delivery: the way in which the message is delivered by the speaker or the media. Gary makes no apologies for his delivery which he describes the way most people describe a used car salesman. His style is certainly unconventional for the world of wine. Yet his delivery works because it’s a strong contribution to the equation, and while it may seem obnoxious to some, there is an authentic and relatable charm to Gary’s style.

There’s a catch to this equation; it’s not a sum of its elements. The audience engagement (AE) equation is a product of content (C), context (X) and delivery (D):

AE=CXD

If any of C, X or D have a zero value, then AE will be zero. Meaningful audience engagement depends on a positive value–even a decimal value–for each of the three elements.

“We” use this equation everyday without actually substituting the elements with numerical values. This is the equation that determines which actor made us connect with their character and the story, which news anchor we trust to tell us what’s going on in the world and which author writes the books we always want to read. And, for each of those scenarios, a casting director, producer or editor made a similar decision to select the best candidate for their needs.

It’s also the same equation that has made WineLibrary.tv a huge success, landing Gary lucrative speaking engagements, appearances on CNN and ABC news (among many others), the Ellen Degeneres Show and Late Night with Conan O’Brien, and countless appearances in newspapers and magazines.

CrushIt! is a great read. Gary did a fantastic job weaving his own personal story with the story of his family, WineLibrary.tv and how to cash in on your passion.

2010.01.04

Yes, and…

One of the challenges I have is finding enough time each day to read. This means that a book like Trust Agents, which would take the casual reader a couple of weeks to read, takes me about three months.

Chris Brogan and Julien Smith aren’t just two people capitalizing on the the trend of pumping out books on the social web and digital engagement. They’ve been living the principles behind their book since before Twitter. They’ve blogged, podcasted and presented  their ideas for years which has created a following large enough to have made Trust Agents a New York Times Bestseller in the first week following its release this past August.

To make their ideas accessible, Chris and Julien have broken up the concept of being a trust agent into six components:

  • Make Your Own Game
  • One of Us
  • Archimedes Principle
  • Agent Zero
  • Human Artist
  • Build an Army

They use stories to map out relationships between social media, real life and pop culture to add depth to their ideas. I particularly like the way they stretch your thinking at various points in the book rather than serve you the obvious.

Readers of Trust Agents who are new to world of social media and whohave picked up the most highly recommended of these books may think very little overall has actually happened since case studies like Dell Hell keep coming up. We really need a new batch of stories so we need more people sharing them — something Chris and Julien ask people to do by sending their trust agent stories to stories@trustagent.com.

My biggest takeaway from the book was being introduced to a basic theory of improvisational comedy: “Yes, and…”. I love this idea for three main reasons:

  • “Yes, and…” speaks to the importance of being curious, creative and adaptable, forcing us out of critical thinking and into creative thinking and collaboration.
  • “Yes, and…” reinforces the  idea that we need to look beyond our own domains of specialty/interest and spend more time studying what other people do and how they do it, then figure out how to make it our own.
  • “Yes, and…” abandons the word “but” which is routinely used and defended even thought it puts an exclusive spin on one end of a statement. “Yes, and…” recognizes both realities co-exist and then seeks to make progress.

This, of course, means that I have yet another book to read — Improv Wisdom by Patricia Ryan Madson. It looks like 2010 is going to be a read-y one for me.

And… while we’re on the subject of reading outside your domain of specialty for inspiration and ideas, I recommend the following books:

© 2005 - 2010 Mark Blevis. Design by SnowyDay