That's Capital

The Way We'll Work

Meant to post this earlier. Via Time Magazine, a thoughtful and provocative essay on emerging models of work, especially in this country.  The Way We'll Work - The Future of Work - TIME 

Basically, it looks at how expectations of what constitute work and "jobs" are going to shift in the near (and perhaps distant) future given less expansive economic growth. Some of it is depressing, but not all. My partner at That's Capital, Titus Levi, sent me another older (2008) Toronto Star article that explores similar ideas.

Titus, having relocated from Los Angeles to Guangdong, China (adapting to his own work-cycle as newly appointed Associate Professor in the International Journalism Program of United International College), will be able to share working styles in a more robust economy.

What's a bit scary (or very) is imagining what will take the place of service-sector jobs without a consumer-based economy. What will fuel the need for services outside of health? I find hope in the creative potential of digital technology to assist formation of activity-generating local markets. For instance, look at Pickupalooza. For folks wanting to gather for pick-up ball games (or other sports), it's not a "market" in the traditional sense. And it doesn't focus on jobs. But you can imagine the imagination behind it, a company called Deep Local, coming up with ways to empower local entrepreneurs. Today's NYTimes had an article on another real-world activity generating site called Groupon. Again, it's not immediately about jobs, but its ability to collect people sharing various real world interests to take some type of collective action lends itself to market activity.

While such activity is less about traditional growth of big organizations (which might employ lots of people), to me they suggest the possibility of an artisinal or craft-based economy. 

Anyway, lunch break is over. Need to keep my own job. In the meantime, here's a more slightly more downbeat, but also thoughtful look at the future of work, or hearing on the radio. Worth a listen. And check out Deep Local, it's an interesting company. No personal plug, as I have no affiliation with them.

Interesting read

An intellectual profile of Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf. What's useful to follow is the man's philosophic journey, breaking the old dictum that liberalism is an indulgence of the young. More specifically, Wolf became more critical of 20th century capitalism as we moved toward the millennium, based purely on his experience in the world of economics.
Call Of The Wolf | The New Republic

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Culture and currency

In a post last week, I looked at why media organizations, unlike Madison Avenue, have been able to really exploit the power of digital technology, suggesting it's easier to use to generate content than money. Well, that's true, unless you consider money content. Above is a nice little video from the Wall Street Journal about emerging forms of money, with sub-cultures creating their own digital currencies.

Watch it, as it's fun. It also reminds me of something else in last week's post, namely the digital game "Beatle's Rock Band." Yesterday, WBUR Radio's OnPoint had a great show on the audience for this entertainment. A few musicians called in to the program, some testifying that playing the game at home with friends and family was as, if not more, satisfying than playing for actual audiences.

Like the video above, the program is provocative. In this case it provoked thoughts about alternative economies. Digital entertainment like Second Life in the past have generated such economies. And their own currencies. What makes Rock Band more impressive is its real world component, namely having aspects that live in the real and virtual world. Imagine all the people... (no pun intended) sharing this game and then going out to create something musical in the real world.

All to say that the different forms of performance, content, and ideas will themselves, in turn, generate new types of sharing. And markets. I guess all I'm saying is this idea of new currencies tied to new forms of culture isn't an abstraction. It's happening. And within mainstream American living rooms of folks playing in it.

Worth a read - from today's New Republic

The Next Financial Crisis | The New Republic Shared via AddThis

Some thoughts for week

This week Ad Age published a piece by Weber Shandwick strategist Chris Perry on how marketers have not yet found the key to leveraging social media. Perry writes "what if social media and its inherent benefits are so revolutionary, so potentially game-changing, that it takes time for people to figure out how to best use them? More fundamentally, what if organizational silos and constraints limit its potential to address a new brand-building equation?"

He illustrates his thoughts by looking back to the military adoption of airplanes in the early part of the 20th century. Put into service by the U.S. Army's Signal Corps, their imagination limited them to usage. It took another couple of decades for the military to create an entire new institution to fully leverage flight (the Air Force). Similarly, marketers may be operating under limited imagination in using social media, with the "pace of functional change isn't keeping pace with the unprecedented social shifts disrupting media and consumer behaviors and the possibilities that come with it."

It made me think of another Ad Age piece, a presentation from New York Times' Derek Gottfrid speaking at the Conference on Technology and Creativity about what digital usage at the Times. As Gottfrid laid it out, in the last year, the Times has quietly followed the path of Facebook and Apple's iPhone, opening up itself to application developers to create mashups that help leverage and distribute the paper's content.

Besides giving dimension to interesting mashups, Gottfrid's talk is a great example of how module-based design has become a norm in the media business. Concretely, that means understanding that one's "property" is best composed as fluid and flexible, open to different attachments.The New York Times has done a great job along those lines, leading its reporters to move from print-only to multi-media savvy. Just look at today's front page digital edition.

There's everything from video to slide shows. Today's New York Times, in a sense, is every bit as much social media as destinations like Digg or any blog. Indeed, it depends on blogs for content. All to say that traditional media may be doing a better job exploiting digital technology and digital user habits than traditional marketing. And if that ability is less around ROI than solely creating audience-friendly content (some of which may never be monetized), it's still worthwhile to acknowledge movement there.

What we're really talking about is an ability to leverage new models of infrastructure. In an analog model, infrastructure is end-to-end, single system, fixed. In a digital model, it is open to evolution, open to outside influence. Madison Avenue has not been able to think tap into that model in any deeply effective way. What it has done is scramble of how to reassemble its existing workforce (media people, designers, etc.) to grow into a new professional class to manage it. A bit like the American military did with the Air Force.

From a media production standpoint, it's easy to implement modular-media to evolve, whether giving reporters video cameras or adding places for readers to contribute and interact with columnists. For more conceptual needs like branding (which is not so much about creating content as about catalyzing more abstract ideas about a business or organization) modular design raises more challenges than answers. Its openness defies the cognitive and emotional wrapping that brand messaging tries to quietly spread. It is easier to use digital technology to create content-filled blogs or videos (and experiment) than use the wired - and open source - world to create singular meaning to which brand messaging aspires.

But where the American military needed a separate Air Force to fully capitalize on using airplanes to dominate in battle, I'm not sure we need another institution or professional class for marketing to better leverage digital tools.  Perhaps the real marketers capable of leveraging digital media are salesmen, the original social networkers.

I know it's counter intuitive. Salesmen have a reputation for a highly individualistic ethos. Branding is not about single individual. Even if so many brand messages glorify "the individual," as a discipline it's devoted to the singular meaning that best captures the organizations and the series of constituents of which they're composed. But I wonder if structurally it's the one-to-one meeting the one-to-many nature of digital that lend themselves to a bigger place for salesmen in the role of brand steward. Where that may have only been talk in the past, the power of a wired salesman today to foster a highly brandable set of relationships is powerful. Or the wired service person. Just look at the funny resonance of thinking about "the cable guy." How that persona can shape an entire feeling about a brand like Comcast or Time Warner.

Honestly, I have to admit I'm drifting now. This is an admittedly half baked notion. A riff. But hopefully anyone reading this will be more stirred to add to this than merely find it lousy thinking.

What a glorious story

At age 52, a former Army intelligence officer (who also worked teaching college-level dance, selling antiques, and creating puzzles) started a new business. Called Phoenix Commotion, it was based in Huntsville, Texas. Even that detail offers sweet insight into the fertile possibilities of what human imagination can generate. To cut to the chase, the man started building homes from junk. Beautiful homes from the refuse of others. If only more economies could grow like this.

Read it here. It's uplifting, fun, inspiring.

Gmail Down

"Go out and play." That's a headline from the San Francisco Chronicle. I sometimes fantasize about waking up to find the network out and life totally unplugged. Literally and figuratively. This little outage, unable to easily access all my mail, brings the fantasies unhappily to fruition. Oh, not that unhappily. But it does remind you how much of life is networked now.

Haven't posted for months and months. Takes an outage to inspire me. Next time such urges strike, I may not be able to log on. But honestly been seeing an array of things in the news that continues my fascination with "local economies" being the catalyst for the global economy. Or at least the source of innovation. And wanted to write about a range of digital markets that are exciting, as well as the best political film I've seen in years, District 9, which is simultaneously disturbing, funny, and uplifting in very humble ways. Down with digital, up with digital! Onwards.