About Brands, Players, Startups

Expert analysis: When will it meet the people?

Silicon Valley is blessed with brilliance.  Which means we are blessed with opinions that grow exponentially with each new technology and trend.

Right now, the opinions about what constitutes data portability are swirling around in the air here.  Which I applaud.  But I'm having trouble with the fact that the cloud doesn't include anyone representing the people beyond the Valley.

Last evening, I spent some time reading the blogs of some of our most insightful journalists and commentators.  Looking for Joe User in their comments.  From podcasts to blogs to tweets, I'm still not finding Joe User front and center.

I am finding a lot of folks who think they know Joe User and are telling us what he wants.  But they might be confusing this with what they think he needs.  It is possible that these folks know something we don't.  I have begun asking them to share this knowledge with the rest of us [comment 22].  If that's not the case, I'm not going to rest until I understand whether regular users around the world want one sign-in, or the ability to scrape data from one network and port it to another, or simply the ability to share data on a selective basis via tools that work within acceptable bounds for the social networks.

Until then, I'm afraid I'm going to have to view the swirling opinions as circular chatter rolling around the Silicon Echo Chamber.  And to think about ways to understand whether openness and portability are as important to Joe User as his privacy.

Here's the thing we all must keep in front of us:  we may know best, but we must begin consulting the user and the user experience in testing ourselves.  Especially since it was Silicon Valley brilliance that brought them to the party in the first place.  We changed the rules.  Now we must play by them, too.

Data -- or is it content? -- bouncing around the blogosphere

Well, all the goings-on related to data this week have been exhilarating.  And exhausting.

Read Chris Saad, one of the founders of the DataPortability Project, for his personal take on the actions of the goliath players this week.

And thank you, David Recordon, for pointing your Twitter followers to Dan Farber's column about whether Google, MySpace and Facebook are really making their platforms more open.

As much as I'm an active laborer in the DataPortability Project, after reviewing the comments of a beta user in a startup, it hit me that I'm not satisfied that we know everything we need to know.

Aren't we taking it for granted that the mainstream Internet user wants an open ID that takes him from site to site -- or the ability to move her data from one site to another?

And aren't we being just a little too tough on the goliaths? 

OK, maybe they are jumping on the data portability bandwagon purely to protect their market share.  But isn't it at all possible that there is something we can learn from how they choose to wade into these waters?

I know we're inventing marvelous ways to make things open and movable -- shameless plug here for foldier -- but it was one of foldier's beta testers that made me stop and remember that we really need to think about the user when we're inventing stuff.

"Privacy is a big deal - I read the terms of service for the sites I use, and if one said my data could go anywhere without my knowledge or consent - I don't care what the benefit; I'm not using it."

Maybe the goliaths know something we don't.

Then again, maybe they are eating Wall Street's dogfood by now.

Data portability has captured the attention of the tech world and is emerging as an area of interest in mainstream business.  For good reason -- it's where technology and engineers have taken us so far.

Still, it's a good time for all of us to check our assumptions. 

And to be clear about what we really know.

Transcending coarseness

It's been a few weeks since my last post.  Work and life have made it pretty impossible to do any thinking, much less writing, about the path to the beautiful brand.

Tonight I can take a moment, at least, to reflect on what I've absorbed in these weeks.

I'm thinking about launching another blog, devoted just to the goings-on here at Technology Mission Control.  The Bay Area.  Silicon Valley.

For example.  Never have I seen so many brilliant people resort to skulduggery just out of sheer competitiveness.  We've got some things going on here that rival the Kremlin under Brezhnev.  And this is on a volunteer project! 

The only thing I've been able to tell myself is, when I was the same age as these engineers [in their twenties], I had the benefit of reporting to a bunch of what were perceived as old guys who had a heart attack if there was a typo in a slide.  That was a major professional slip -- almost an insult to the audience. 

Lucky devils.  They're out on some golf course.

Well, they deserve it.  They taught us a lot.  I learned that even the little things warrant your respect.  Not to mention the big things, like other people.  I cannot imagine what they would be saying about what gets posted on blogs and said in Twitter tweets by people about people with whom they say they're collaborating.

Fairness is a really big deal to me, and I'm getting some wacky emails about the upcoming election.  Which I can address in this blog.  It is about the American brand, afterall. 

I fully expected to see some really funny stuff flying around about the three senators chasing the Presidency.  I didn't expect to learn what names people are willing to call them, just out of fear of the unknown.  How can we have a woman?  How could we have an African American?  How could we have an aging man who might have post traumatic stress disorder?  Forget the sexism and the ageism -- that stuff is mild compared to what's going around that is racist.  And the worst part is, when the senders are called on it, they don't even realize they're doing it.  It's unbelievable.

So, on to transcendence.  Out, damned coarseness.  Starting with myself.  Listening.  Breathing deeply, trying not to shock or be shocked.  Hypnosis?  Slow food?  Yoga is too distracting.  Watching an old movie.  Looking at the Golden Gate bridge.  Learning.

One step at a time.

Barack Obama: Another magnificent speech

Mr Obama has delivered another landmark message.  This time, it's about the economy.  And it is as important as the speech he made about race issues.

Whether or not one agrees with his proposed solutions, he articulates the problems with American business and their root causes -- a first among today's political leaders.

It's another great speech not just because he addresses the spectrum of causes and effects. 

• Mr Obama neither speaks above nor below any person's level. 
• He speaks clearly. 
• He is in command of his text. 
• He has a theme. 
• He is interesting both to watch and to hear.
• He inspires action by going beyond pointing to the problems to offer solutions.
• He makes you think.

Linwood Holton: How to make politics personal

I grew up in a very small town in a remote corner of Virginia.  Big Stone Gap.

How we got there from an Italian-American enclave in northeast Pennsylvania is a long story.  When we got there, Virginia was dragging itself kicking and screaming into an age of enlightenment.  What I like to think of as an entire society understanding that being reasonable is a continuous learning process.

One of the lights of the age, and there were many, was a native of Big Stone Gap who became the state's first Republican governor since Reconstruction.  As this article tells us, he now has an autobiography.

Its timing is excellent, as the brief interview in the article demonstrates.  For example.  Governor Holton's son-in-law, Tim Kaine, is Virginia's current governor.  And he's a Democrat.  Both former and current governor have come out for Barack Obama.

Linwood Holton flies out of the pigeonholes that our society so often wants to use for labeling and digestion purposes.  He did it in 1970, and he's doing it now.  His story reminds us that the most important things are ideas and actions, and in American politics, that the focus should be keeping our nation's founding principles not just alive but relevant to our daily lives.  Whatever your political philosophy.

In this article, the writer recounts the story of how Governor and Mrs Holton made the decision to send their children to Richmond's public schools during the big integration ruckus in the state at that time.

Those who knew the Holtons understood this to be neither a political olive branch nor a grandstand.  Like many Virginians, some of whom had to learn it the hard way, the Holtons understood that fairness is the hallmark of a healthy society. 

And something else you should know:  in this famous photograph, Tayloe Holton is wearing a dress made by the people of Miss Virginia, Inc, a garment manufacturer in Big Stone Gap.  Where I worked a couple of summers in the finishing department.  A business my dad started and lost, but one that still managed to produce some winning moments. 

Including having the governor of Virginia remember the folks back home as he made a point to a larger world.

Richard Widmark

Reading obituaries, one learns about life.  And how to live it.

I also like the story behind the story, especially actors.  It's interesting to learn what propels them into a most public occupation.

Richard Widmark really knew how to do it.  That's why reading his obituary today in THE NEW YORK TIMES was bittersweet.

One thing he knew about was personal branding -- even if he never heard or used the phrase.  It's because he knew who he was and stuck to it.  That takes a great deal of discipline. 

Maybe it's because he had qualities I admire that I found the story of his life so very interesting to read.  Maybe it's because I'm starting to understand how the small decisions and observations all contribute to who we are -- to the personal brands we build over a lifetime.

“The businessmen who run Hollywood today have no self-respect. What interests them is not movies but the bottom line. Look at ‘Dumb and Dumber,’ which turns idiocy into something positive, or ‘Forrest Gump,’ a hymn to stupidity. ‘Intellectual’ has become a dirty word.”

He also vowed he would never appear on a talk show on television, saying, “When I see people destroying their privacy — what they think, what they feel — by beaming it out to millions of viewers, I think it cheapens them as individuals.”

A magnificent speech

Senator Obama's speech is a watershed in American history.

It is the beginning of the end of race as a front-and-center issue in assessing a person's suitability for office.  But it is so much more.

Senator Obama illuminates the power -- logically, personally, movingly -- of living a life that acknowledges pain but moves on from it.  He teaches us how to discern between blind loyalty and loving friendship.  He shows the worthiness of tying each American's journey, whatever his or her ethnic background, to the whole of the American community. 

Race never should have been a divisive aspect of our national dialog.  It should have been a quality used to demonstrate the landmark nature of our national call to action, as articulated in our founding documents. 

How appropriate that the senator delivered this speech in Philadelphia, where patriots of another age set down the most remarkable set of tenets ever articulated for self government.  With this message, the senator from Illinois reaches into those tenets to put any rationale for racial division to rest.  He has shown us that his legacy is our legacy, through anecdotes that could be from my story or your story, via a logic stream that only a rare mind can conceive.

I am grateful that this man has appeared in this time.  Whether or not he is the next American president, his capacity to lead through healing as well as mightiness will be of great value to us all.  The world will be better than he found it.

Data portability, anyone?

As part of my work with foldier, we are volunteering with dataportability.org -- a global group of technology industry people and companies dedicated to researching current standards for giving individuals control of their digital content/property.

When you visit the site, you'll see all the different aspects of portability that the industry must consider.  Our participation has been a real learning experience for me.

And since foldier is all about helping people manage their digital content, our participation is helping us to clarify the features we want to provide and emphasize on foldier.

Click here to read the February activity report -- things should really start rolling, now that the collaboration platform is set.

Self discipline and your social graph

Susan Mernit wrote an excellent short essay yesterday.  Gives the best definition of the problem with all the wonderful social doo-dads we have on the Internet.

Dis-intermediated, dis-rupted, de-served

We've all heard about how Internet applications and networks are disruptive.  They're rewiring the longstanding patterns of business and commerce, often removing whole channels of players content in established value and supply chains.

This is naturally making a lot of people nervous, especially those with equally-longstanding power bases to protect.

But the rest of us are seeing the possibilities and embracing change -- even when it's unclear what that change will actually mean. 

We've got one political candidate who is disrupting the political process of his party, and on Tuesday evening, we witnessed the resistance to his call to action.  There are voters with dependencies they don't want to break.  They went with the old-power candidate.

Candidates can run on platforms promising jobs in outmoded industries and more-than-temporary government aid.  But they can't hide.  We've already seen that.  And any victory, even a big one in November, would just be the last grunt of a dying beast -- not a wholesale resuscitation of Business As Usual.

The same is true in industries slow to recognize what digital access means to their performance.  Here are just three examples of many that point to the end of a tired era.

1. Book publishing.  Last week we had yet another story of a newly-published memoir, heralded by reviewers, rewarded with a large printing run, that was exposed by the author's sister as a complete fraud.
2. The mortgage crisis.  We are not only seeing the housing market rocked by really stupid loan decisions, those accountable for such decisions are probably going to get away scot-free.  With platinum parachutes.  Who picks up the tab?  Look in the mirror, you folks who live within your means.
3. The irrelevance of marketing.  Most people in marketing still don't see it, much less get it:  online interaction is changing every possible act of branding, positioning, competition and selling.  And who's paying for the ignorance?  The companies that think marketing is a done-deal, necessary-evil overhead function with no capacity to change.

The obstinate will tell you that these are random events which have nothing to do with digital democracy.  They think of the Internet as a toy best left to young people with time on their hands.  It's good for email and research and stalking old beaus and buying books or old china, but real commerce and communication?  No way.

I submit that the citizenry, in this country and around the world, is waking up to the fact that the old order is just not working very well. 

We're in a moment:  the integration of human need and human capability -- an integration that happens at random moments in history around new inventions and innovations.  Using my three examples:

• Publishing toolmakers such as blurb.com will enable anyone with a few dollars and a manuscript to publish -- hard or soft cover.  Instead of a market flooded with dreck, which is what the publishers and agents and writing "consultants" want you to believe will happen, we'll have cream rising to the top, via market demand fueled by word of mouth voiced on the Internet.  Impact:  Who gets published will no longer be in the hands of a tight circle whose center rests in New York and whose pockets get lined just for making an introduction or starting a manuscript bidding war.  Further, we won't have to deal with the outcome of editors who refuse to spend any time checking their authors.  [I mean, come on.  Didn't we learn something from the James Frey episode?  What more do you editors need to see before you'll start doing some elementary fact checking?]
• Micro loans and person-to-person investment will enable people to invest in other people.  Bankers who reap ridiculous "returns" based on manipulating the deposits of investors, making lousy loans that make them rich but rob the rest of us over the long term, will lose a large part of their franchise.  The new Internet banks that directly connect people who need money with those who have it will change the way decisions are made.  We'll see caution and appropriate risk because people will be using their own money -- not playing with someone else's -- and earn a reasonable rate of return, not one on par with loan sharks.
• Marketing will become a function that requires an investment in energetic, strong, quick thinkers -- not infrastructures of useless overhead, print waste and advertising campaigns.  Instead of people who spend most of their time networking for the next CMO position, we'll have professionals who actually know how to perform marketing tasks and use real skill to engage markets not preach to them, connecting their brands and brand promises to buyers.  CEOs, CFOs and COOs will be able to measure marketing performance.  Finally.

I've chosen three examples that are personal hot-button issues.  Just as we are seeing landmark change in the American political process, there are many more changes in other realms now and down the road.  Honest, creative, productive -- and democratic.

Girl geeks in THE NEW YORK TIMES

Read this excellent post by Mary Hodder.  She raises a pertinent question:  why does the paper put its coverage of girl geeks in the Fashion section?

What is going on at THE NEW YORK TIMES?

Whether or not the McCain story the paper ran today has any truth to it -- and I'm talking about the lobbyist and influence-peddling -- the article's publication is plainly irresponsible.  If most of the people in my age group had turned in a college paper so poorly researched and cross-checked, we would have flunked.

Wait.  Make that high school.  My English teachers were by the book.

This is the platinum standard in journalism?  You'd think that after all the paper's missteps in the past decade, it would have learned something.

Well, at least maybe we will. 

Journalists, writers and bloggers should take a moment to pause and consider the responsibility that accompanies the pen or the keyboard. 

Readers should work ever harder to analyze what's being put in front of them.

Companies should approach media relations with their eyes wide open -- know the journalist and his or her mindset.  It's unfortunate, but understand that while there are still journalists who value objectivity, their relevance in today's world is lost on the publishing powers that be. 

We all need to realize that having a tool like this little blog is not just technology democratizing the bully pulpit, it's a wakeup call to lazy, agenda-driven so-called professionals and their bosses.  You want to know why newspapers are losing advertising?  It's because they're losing credibility.  Antics like that article this morning irritate reasonable people -- the ones who want their news delivered in an unbiased, thorough manner.  Reasonable people are on to your game, so they're going elsewhere for news.  And your advertisers know that.

Another nail in the coffin, folks.  And you're doing it to yourselves.

Just words

I loved being a speechwriter. 

A lot of it had to do with sitting down with someone and hearing what he or she wanted to say -- then working over the course of weeks to help get it just right.  I was fortunate.  I worked with executives who took the time to labor over their speeches.

A speech is a vehicle for delivering a message.  The speaker's message.  Neither the message nor the speech should be concocted in isolation by a third party.  In fact, I quit my last corporate job when I was asked to work this way.

A third aspect of speechmaking:  every speech must be consistent with those delivered by the speaker before and after it.  Every speech must hold its own on a continuum that reflects the knowledge and values of the speaker.

I never did political speeches because I don't like writing by committee.  Plus, I suspect that most politicians do not review anything written for them before they actually deliver a speech.  Both the message and the speech are usually in the hands of a handler.  This is risky, because as pressure builds and polls swerve, a politician may lose control of more than the process.  In the hands of others, the messages may swerve as well.

Which is clearly what's been happening with one of the presidential candidates. 

I remember standing a few feet away from her during a speech in 1992 and thinking, why isn't she running for president?  She was fresh and earnest.  Unrehearsed yet prepared.  Clearly not handled.  Talking with the audience, not to it, without exaggerating claims to experience and perspective.

So, now there's this other candidate in her party.  He is clearly in command of his content, but his focus, as delivered in his choice of vocabulary, is on something outside of himself.  As a result, you are hearing his ideas first, which define his persona.  The words are plain, the sentence structure clear -- the listener does not have to decode the language and worry about what he really means.  You understand and know whether or not you agree with what he would do in the next four years.

And he's getting slammed for being good.  By the people who help his opponent with her messages.  Perhaps they have become so jaded by their own behavior, they see oratory in the hands of an accomplished speaker as some sort of red herring.  Maybe they are afraid of putting the real thing on the podium, so they don't know it when they see it.

There are many reasons this person and his ideas are taking hold, not just the way he speaks.  But the fact that he's a compelling speaker with a logic flow -- able to impress and get a point across in his own way -- says volumes about how his mind works and what kind of leader he would be.  You don't get the sense that the speechwriters or the advisors are steering him or catering to the latest burp in a poll somewhere.  There is consistency from speech to speech and I'll bet if he wins the nomination, there will be more specificity to the inspiration he values.

If his only slip-up is the snafu with the borrowed phrasing that he didn't acknowledge in one speech he delivered, we can live with it.  The slip-up was human -- not deliberate plagiarism and certainly not covered up.  His message is authentic, because he is.  And his speechwriters and advisors, at this juncture, anyway, seem to know their place. 

And that's the difference between being a Churchill, a Kennedy, a Reagan or an Obama; being handled; and the instant gratification of words lazily strung together by a charm-meister or desperately grafted onto a power-first, wavering message platform.  It is authenticity unencumbered by ambition, a desire to connect uncompromised by selfish superiority.  It is good speaking and a good speech.

Understanding clutter

A couple of posts ago, the topic was clutter and I said more was coming in the next post.  Then NEW YORK magazine did its issue on belt tightening, and I had to share that.  Back to clutter.

Until a little more than ten years ago, my work was in and around professional and financial services.  Helping to execute to brand messages, often helping to create them.

Then I decided to come out west to Silicon Valley.  Which meant a whole new layer of important clutter.  Namely, periodicals and books and newspapers.  I've always felt most comfortable walking into a project having done some secondary research and when possible, having had some conversations with people in the field.

Now that I'm in essentially two different fields, the amount of research I must do has exploded.  Since I've always been a structure nut, my world has imploded with the expanded reach afforded by the Internet.  While I've become expert at printing only when necessary and stuff is not piling up on my desk anymore -- there is work material on different websites and in my laptop, scattered in every program.  I now read the newspapers online and live for my RSS feeds, delivered through my growing Netvibes account.  [They're in beta -- I hope I'm not taxing the servers.]

So when I came across the Unclutterer website and found this post on how to retain more of what I read, I jumped on it.  The post has some useful tips.

But I think the biggest change has come through my work with foldier, a startup in which I'm currently the only purely business-tasked person.  Everyone else is a technologist or computer scientist.  Besides liking it that way, foldier has introduced me to what I believe will be THE way for me to de-clutter my work life.

We're in private beta, but I can tell you this:  foldier is going to be nirvana for three types of people.  [If you're like me, you have a bit of each type in you.]  And I can say this because I didn't invent it.

First, foldier makes it possible for me to collect my content from wherever it is on the Web or on my hard drive -- simply by tagging it.  This means no more files, no more remembering where I put stuff, no more making multiple copies for multiple files.  I don't even need a filing system.  If I'm looking for something on data portability, for example, I just search my foldier account under that phrase.  Everything I have on the topic pops up.

Second, foldier makes it possible for me to search my content under any word or phrase -- whether or not I tagged it as such.  The technology is intelligent -- it does its own tagging in addition to mine.  This means I might be able to find new subject matter in content I already have.

Third, foldier gives me a new way to share information with clients and friends.  Until foldier, the only way I could share important articles or news releases with clients was to send them the link in an email.  When we are in full public beta, I'll be able to share any kind of file -- video, blog post, newspaper, etc -- comment on it and hear comments back.  And, foldier automatically adds it to my virtual filing system.  All in a few steps.

There is more -- and it's not just about aggregating, organizing and sharing.  However, that would be enough for me.  Because there is nothing like having command of all the information you think is essential to your work.  Except for maybe cleaning out a closet.

A valentine from New York [the magazine]

For several years now I've been trying to articulate, for myself, mostly, what it is that has unnerved me since the turn of this new century.

I thought maybe it was the move to San Francisco, which is part Tony Bennett song, which is what seduces you, and part American Avarice 101, which repels me.  I just figured that along with great invention comes great [and often tacky] displays of wealth.  While I'm still not used to it, I can talk myself down from the ledge when I must.  And most of the time, it's pretty wonderful here.

What I've discovered is that I finally understand the danger of an evaporating middle class.  As exhilarating as life is among the startups just beginning the stories that become brands, it can be most exhausting -- because I cannot relate to the things that make many of the people here happy.

So the best valentine I received is not from anyone I know or even love.  It's from the writer of an article in this week's NEW YORK.  [The issue is about what is viewed as inevitable belt tightening, courtesy of the "no it's not a recession" recession.]

The article, "The Upside of the Downside," by Joel Lovell, assures me in every paragraph that I'm not nuts.  While I've always marched to a different drummer, I've had moments of feeling everything from obsolete to irrelevant to clueless for seven or eight years now.  Mr Lovell, by sharing his own thoughts candidly and often hilariously, conveys the reality of American urban life and why we must confront it now.

I have never purchased anything to impress another human being.  I have never wanted anything that someone else had.  My ambition has never been associated with doing better or having more than anyone else.  [This doesn't make me perfect, by a long shot.  I'm just saying that it has taken me my whole life, apparently, to figure out that some people will stop at nothing, including a body in their paths, to do these things.  It's human nature, and my faults are in other areas, OK?  Just not this one.]

It finally dawned on me that our current age defines all of these qualities as the root cause and the reward of success.  No wonder I've found myself a bit dazed at dinner parties and on Muni.  [Like the guy on the bus tonight, whose voice hasn't even changed, who had just run into a buddy and was describing his fabulous career trajectory since they graduated from college two seconds ago.  No, not a techie -- an "investment banker" turned real estate mogul.]

We've always had our elitists, and our neighbors who always had to be doing better than you at something, as Mr Lovell points out.  But more of us seem to have caught the bug, and I'm scared.  Our society is caught in the grip of something that can extinguish the very thing that differentiated American society from all others. 

Run, don't walk, to this article.  In the very least, it will make you think.  If you're like me, it will reassure you that what you've been witnessing is not the musings of your own diminishing intellect.  If you've fallen into the trap set by the real "me decade," the 1990s, you may recognize yourself.  Either way, it's time to reflect and focus on the true nature of accomplishment.  And embrace the recession.

Defining clutter

The Unclutterer blog is a useful resource for ways to make life simpler.  It had a post today about a new book that clarifies the relationship between consumption, clutter and health, specifically the issue of weight.

This got me thinking.  Besides the obvious question of what the voracious consumer must do with all the clutter that results from purchases, I've come up with my own theory as to why we've been so materialistic since the new century began.

You won't find any blame getting laid strictly at one doorstep here.  Not even Osama bin Laden's.  Although it's abundantly clear to me that his actions were the straw that broke the camel's back.

If we are in fact going to see a change in the way brands must interact with people [see previous post], I think it's got to do more than address the impact of the Internet.  That heartbreaking day in 2001 triggered a quintessentially American response to pain:  go on with your routine and do the bad guys one better.  Go out and buy or eat something. 

We Americans see some sort of life affirmation in the act of a purchase or a bite of food -- moreso than any other culture.  So when the unimaginable happened, instead of letting ourselves feel the depth of the pain -- and make the requisite sacrifices consciously -- we began to bury ourselves in stuff.  We heightened our pursuit of pedigree, whether that meant clubs, college educations, pre-schools, neighborhoods or physical attributes.  Anything to distract us from the reality that this most blessed nation was despised enough that a deranged gang would try to bring us down -- just because we cannot be controlled.

I'm sure the psychology and psychiatry professionals could provide a list of the resulting afflictions.  However, most of us could probably just stand in front of a mirror, look ourselves in the eye and ask if we are really happy or at our personal best when we compare ourselves with the neighbors or eat twelve cookies instead of two.  Twenty minutes after dinner.

More in the next post, especially about how a work project is shedding light on what constitutes clutter.

Whispering your brand

Just yesterday I was discussing the various ways to build a brand.  With an attorney. 

He has a client who, as a plaintiff, is not being taken seriously by the arrogant, macho defendants.

The story has an all-too-common turn.  My friend's client did a large part of the thinking about how to revitalize the out-of-date product of a proposed startup, built the business model with the CEO and crafted a business plan that attracted the attention of some whopper VCs.  Now, of course, the defendants are offering the client only half of the fee owed and deny that they are using intellectual property for which they haven't paid.

Besides the common issues of not understanding how to value positioning expertise and refusing to believe that anyone other than themselves could rescue their five-year-old business idea and monetize it, I detected another problem in this story.

I asked the attorney if the defendants knew anything about the client's reputation or the impact of the client's work.  Apparently, the client has an underground reputation for skillful competitive analysis and positioning, distinguished by a facility with messages -- but prefers a quiet sort of self-marketing.

I suggested to the attorney that his client's case illustrates the downside of leading a productive professional life in the age of Egos that Suck the Oxygen Out of the Room.  Looks to me as if these defendants would have valued my friend's client far more if a hyped-up image were part of the picture.  They probably buy the marketing style of the past ten years, as exemplified by the obsession with Hollywood celebrities, celebrity CEOs and in this case, the self-proclaimed uber-marketers of our little silicon centered valley. 

People like that can only act respectful when they're intimidated, and my friend's client prefers avoiding bullies and bullying.  Doesn't waste of lot of time greasing big shots at big ticket schmooze conferences.  Not a member of the incestuous little circles that populate the industry.  Not on the radar screen of the World's Most Powerful Tech Law Firm.  [Will probably change after this case.]

In spite of the fact that this is one ugly story, the many high-integrity, down-to-earth players in high tech outnumber the creeps. 

And there's more good news.

It appears that the valuation of branding talent and skill -- and challenging adversaries -- based on loud, in-your-face promotion of self or enterprise is going to be a whole lot less effective in the coming era.  According to Faith Popcorn, the fact that the world is going to feel unsettled in 2008 will shift several trends -- one of them being the "shouting" around brands and marketing.

Popcorn forecasts a new trend, "branding in whispers." 

• Instead of logos on every conceivable piece of anything, consumers will expect luxury brands to return to their roots of letting quality of design and construction speak for brands.  [I think this will manifest itself in other ways -- companies will feel less of a need to pay exorbitant exec salaries or name-drop chic-chic suppliers.  Reputations will be built on performance again.]
• Instead of out-promoting their competitors to get buyers' attention, savvy players will see that their buyers want to be in on the discovery of their brands.  Products that introduce new functionality will attract the attention of these buyers.
• Instead of soothing their world weariness by trying to keep up with the Joneses, people will start to recognize the medicinal powers of simplicity.  And they'll look to other people to benchmark new sources of personal contentment.

In other words, as it has so many times over the centuries, human nature will rebel against its tendency to overdo by turning to quality, not quantity; to listening and watching, not competing for attention; to community, not competitiveness.

Boy, I hope Ms Popcorn is right.  [She usually is, because she studies what people actually do.]  Maybe we'll enjoy a decade or so of having people in brand and marketing positions who understand the nature of authentic connecting in the marketplace.

In the meantime, I hope my friend teaches those carpetbaggers a thing or two.

 

Johnny Depp: Three for three

• Johnny Depp, the brand:  Puts his talent to serving the character he portrays -- authentically.
• Johnny Depp, the player:  Builds upon his track record -- skillfully.
• Johnny Depp, the startup:  Tries something new with every role [this time, it's singing] -- fearlessly. 

And this morning, he's nominated for an Academy Award.

Is this just an excuse to make my first post of the new year about Hollywood doings and the very fine movie, Sweeney Todd:  The Demon Barber of Fleet Street?  No.

But I realized as I sat through the movie [eyes shut during the authentic blood spurts] that efforts like Mr Depp's -- as well as the vision of Timothy Burton and the prowess of his entire cast -- inject our lives with the artistic version of what every one of us should do and find in our own work.  Not how to get rid of annoying colleagues under the guise of a haircut and a shave or deal with competitors by turning them into pot pies.  I mean how Burton & Co look at their work and how they deliver.

The whole brand thing has been overdone when it comes to personal branding, but there is something to knowing who you are and immersing it in the task at hand.  The personality part -- for people and companies -- comes to how you choose to build a relationship with your stakeholders. 

In Mr Depp's case, his stakeholders are diverse.  The camera, the scriptwriter, the composer, the director, the cast, the audience.  When you go for the truth, it's much easier to perform -- and the more you find new ways to convey the truth, the more powerful the message for all the stakeholders.

Many experts would say that players and startups have a long way to go, as groups, with striking upon a true brand for themselves.  Let's say those experts are correct.  Seems to me the one thing that bears trying is learning from each other.

For players, it would be shedding the years of tired, cliche marketing to get back to the original idea behind the company.  For startups, it's realizing that the patina of experience and being part of the system doesn't have to mean old or old school.

For both, it is recognizing that brands begin with the desire to create something that works for the organization and for the community -- and they end when things start getting phony, lazy, complacent or too expensive.

The next time you go to the movies and feel that the exorbitant ticket price was completely justified, think about the factors that made it so.  Those very same elements have parallels in every other kind of business, not just "the pictures."  A desire to dedicate oneself to the story and its characters.  An interest in community, not just quarterly stats and whipping the competition.  The capacity to innovate and act like a startup every day.

A leader that has the talent and focus of Johnny Depp?  Couldn't hurt.

A new trend in advertising?

According to Harvard's John Deighton, in a paper he co-authored with Leora Kornfeld, the digital advertising revolution is generating landmark change in advertising as a whole.

The great tradition of exaggeration is giving way to authenticity, courtesy of empowered buyers.

Read a brief about the paper here, which will take you to a link for downloading the entire document.

The problem with the semantic web: Semantics! The solution: foldier!

On November 19, VLAB, the MIT/Stanford venture lab, held a panel discussion on what was categorized as a Web 3.0 concept:  the semantic web.  It was excellent.  Thought provoking.  And between the audience and the panelists, the conversation could have lasted well into the evening.  [For Silicon Valley and nearby, this is a strong series on where technology, startups and the market intersect.  Sign up.]

The discussion was perfectly timed.  We've had a great deal of talk around here about the semantic web. 

It's actually a new-century successor to the artificial intelligence topic that fascinated so many business and technology types in the 80s.  Nearly everyone on the panel agreed that the big difference between the semantic web and artificial intelligence -- hence the Web 3.0 classification, I guess -- is the impact of the Internet-as-a-platform on both the gathering and morphing of collective intelligence.

The scientists behind "the semantic web" moniker clearly value marketing.  To avoid putting people off with "artificial intelligence," they've decided to build interest in the topic by attaching themselves to social networking and online products and services the public is beginning to demand.

Also, to succeed, the scientists need good, old-fashioned traffic.  Because they need to gather the intelligence of the masses and track how they share content and change it.  Because the scientists must be able to manipulate the underlying data if they want to create a huge base of knowledge, or intelligence.  Since the Internet has opened a comprehensive, infinite number of knowledge exchanges, it is the perfect place to chase and capture content.  Today's scientists know that the Internet is the promised land of intelligence.

Somebody has advised some of the semantic networks to adopt the behavior and use patterns of Facebook and the like.  Employing marketing tactics targeted to the masses would be fine, except that when the masses get there, they find a serious science project suited -- by design and interface -- to what I call "high knowledge holders."

I'm actually pleased about this, because I'm working with a company that really does all the stuff the semantic networks understand people want.  And we do it in an accessible way.

Yes, we have a significant point of "competitive" differentiation.  But before I go there, I want to say first that the semantic thing is terrific for all of us, so I'll catch a ride on their coattails any time.  The semantic scientists deserve praise, support and a lot of attention.  And we're getting closer to clarity on the whole subject.  [Read this post by Richard McManus, linking to an article by Tim Berners-Lee.]

Eventually, our startup -- foldier -- will incorporate intelligent, or semantic web, technology.  But first, we're focused on people and content.  It's where we believe all of this intelligence, artificial or not, begins.  With people and what they're reading and doing on the Internet.

For people to gain supreme command over their digital content, whether it's on their own computers or all over the Web, we have to get in the habit of reaching beyond email programs, instant messaging and social networks to communicate ... of using search to use and organize our own data ... of thinking of the Internet as a distinctly separate entity.  To gain digital control, we have to integrate our digital actions and sources.  This requires sophisticated technology, yet you can't lose sight of why you're doing it:  for private individuals to use among themselves.  This has been foldier's balancing act.

When the semantic web buzz heated up over the past few months, I would read what the semantics sites said they would do for people and shudder.  We had been keeping a fairly low profile at foldier as our programming team massaged the code, but we had come up with a description for what we're doing.  Search.  Share.  Relate.  The semantics folks were using similar language.  Plus, they do have dough-re-mi.  That means sponsorships of high-visibility conferences and the like.  Lots of attention.

Since I'm big on differentiation, I began to dig underneath everyone's market positioning to find what we are doing differently.  Here's what I found. 

There is some wonderful technology in the wonderful world of semantics, but when you really read what some of the semantic scientists are saying, and when you see demos of their networks, there is a bit of a disconnect between the message and the functionality. 

The scientists are already aiming at the creation of a database that stores our collective intelligence.  They're way beyond searching, sharing and relating one-on-one.  Note:  this is NOT deception on their part.  It's semantics!

It may be that the marketing folks throw the messages at the scientists and since they sound good, the messages stick.  Or, the scientists really want their technology to do this stuff -- but on the way to building that collective intelligence.

Foldier came from the opposite direction.  It was created purely to enable the founder, and now those of us in the company and our beta users, to search, collect [aggregate], organize and share our content -- our digital stuff.  Our revenue model:  a new kind of advertising network.  Right now, though, we want to attract people to foldier so we can see how it works, make it better and entice investors who see that we have something here to offer to people and the advertisers that want to reach them.

We have a blog over at foldier, too.  We're writing about the many aspects of personal digital content -- and showing folks how they can use foldier, too.  I also have a guest essay on FoundRead.  More coming there, too.

The great thing is, foldier is pretty much what you make it.  How you use it.  Some people focus on sharing, others on aggregating and others on searching and organizing their content.  The latter is going to be my favorite, I think. 

On foldier, you can tag your items and never file them.  When you go back later to find an item, you just search by a tag or even just a word that's in the item. 

For me, no more trying to remember which folder has that article on semantics in it.  Just search for semantics and find all the ways it's being used this week!

America, the brand, reflected in Plymouth Rock, the symbol

Courtesy of the Pilgrim Hall Museum.

"This Rock has become an object of veneration in the United States. I have seen bits of it carefully preserved in several towns in the Union.  Does this sufficiently show that all human power and greatness is in the soul of man? Here is a stone which the feet of a few outcasts pressed for an instant; and the stone becomes famous; it is treasured by a great nation; its very dust is shared as a relic."  Alexis de Tocqueville, 1835

Happy Thanksgiving.

Burnishing the Silicon Valley brand

Marc Andreessen announced the gift of $27.5 million that he and his wife, Laura, are pledging to Stanford Hospital, in Palo Alto, California. 

He writes at length on his blog of what motivated the donation and where the funds will go.  And he does it in a way that is the opposite of self-serving.  A remarkable feat not just from an editorial standpoint but in terms of our local ecosystem as well. 

I hope that other achievers of the Andreessen level take note of not just what success can deliver but what it is for -- to pave the way for more success by others via example, not mandate.  It helps to remind oneself that while talent and skill are the primary factors of success, the luck of the draw figures into it, too.  Takes away some of the unseemly stuff associated with wealth.

Robert Scoble applauds this generous act today on his blog, too.  One of the commenters there notes that he is uncomfortable with private donations going to support healthcare. 

Friend, private funds are exactly where such gifts should originate.  American civilization -- as tarnished and as weary as it is in the current decade -- was built upon and will revive again through the efforts and sacrifices of the independent individual.  It's the corresponding sense of accountability -- whether it's taking responsibility for our own health and the costs of maintaining it or making it possible for others to do so through private means -- that has distinguished our civilization through the ages. 

And by the way:  personal charity and stewardship clearly set the foundation for the finest healthcare services in the galaxy.  Combating the greed and bureaucracy of today's insurance sector by turning over management to another set of inept bureaucrats is the last thing we need.  The first thing?  Those of us in the position to recognize that we will never spend all the money we've amassed -- and listening to that little guy on our right shoulder reminding us of what that money can do.

No time to write, thanks to RSS!

So I'll start sharing some of the terrific blogs I read.  They run the gamut.  Technology, venture capital, style, business news, commentary.  And branding, of course.

The latest addition to my Netvibes account is Motorcycle Misadventures.  My friend, Carla King, a wonderful writer and technologist, is currently wrapping up another one of her colorful journeys atop a bike that she knows inside and out. 

Carla is a ladylike trailblazer -- she proves that femininity is perfectly compatible with carburetors.  In fact, she shows how they work better when you know about both of them.

Carla's recent posts take us with her and her travel mates Diny and Teresa through China.  Read it and you'll want to jump in the sidecar.

She's geeky, not angry

You know, Mike Swift of the MERCURY NEWS did some work yesterday talking with participants in the unconference.  He was here almost all day, so I don't understand how he got the impression that the spirit of this gathering is anti-male.

THEREFORE:  I'm repeating here what I shared with Mike yesterday.  As an alum of a women's college, I can tell you that the last thing women are thinking at all-women gatherings is that we don't like men.  What we are doing at She's Geeky is talking about work.  How to develop products, what we think of the Web 2.0 and now 3.0 labels, trends in Open ID, running a Linux server, how to work with the government, user interface design.

Here's the real scoop, guys:  this unconference is not about you.  IT'S ABOUT THE WORK.  People like me -- and by the way, venture capitalists and scientists -- do not have the time to get together and sing your praises or kvetch about how you distract us.  We are launching startups, writing books, inventing.

AND:  I would not attend anything aimed at men.  Critical or supportive.  On principle.  I happen to like men.  Some of you, anyway.

She's Geeky. And grounded. And performance-ready.

She's Geeky is an unconference that continues tomorrow.  It's for women. 

There are many attendees blogging their observations in real time.  Journalists visited today, and answering their questions revealed as much about those in attendance as it did the gathering.  Which is the point.

She's Geeky is a beautifully spontaneous, productive and business-oriented exercise.  Most critically, the unconference is about the women on the technology playing field -- not about making a splash, building a database of targets or being "where the elite meet." 

There are women from every walk of tech life, at every level and at various shades of visibility.  The result?  Down-to-earth dialog, unscripted and unrehearsed, between people who want to work and contribute as true players in one of the most exciting industries on the planet.

Last week, we had several splashy startup announcements coming out of one of the industry's glittering events, here in San Francisco.  As I read the coverage and the company blogs, it strikes me that we are still plagued with a sort of self-centered, look at me-aren't I brilliant approach to building visibility for startups.  Some of these startups are already funded to the tune of millions of dollars rounded up via connections as opposed to merit, bloated with employees and laying claim to the highest levels of innovation.  Yet nowhere do their leaders illuminate the underlying functionality.  Very little airtime is given to the customer experience -- and what's there is self-congratulatory hype that treats customers as props in the startups' march to fame and fortune.

It is so refreshing to participate in an alternate experience, stripped of artifice and dedicated to facts.  She's Geeky relies on sharing what we know with others just for the pure pleasure of the interaction.  On discussing performance, strengths, weaknesses, wins, losses -- all in the context of making sure that we can contribute to the industry and own the contributions.  On showing how reason is the foundation of fairness, not the exclusive province of the connected caste.

Think of it this way:  if two heads are better than one, why not make at least one of them a woman's?  More than likely you'll see a fact-based result that considers all parties and possibilities.

The fall of the empire?

A few people have been writing this week of their concerns about too much connecting via social networks and too little personal exchanges.  That we're relying too much on the Internet to sustain relationships.  And those relationships can only be of questionable quality.

It's timely they are raising these concerns because it gives some long-time experts the opportunity to put the Internet in an historical, cultural context.  Its introduction and immersion into our lives are as important as the telephone, the airplane, men walking on the moon.

Stowe Boyd wrote a terrific post on why we must not fear use of the Internet but embrace it as the tool that it is. 

I think if the empire falls, it will be due to the importance we place on what we project instead of what we think or do.  The fact that a lot of the posturing occurs on social networks is of less concern than the fact that we humans continue to pursue status and honor acquisition.

One week until She's Geeky

I'm looking forward to She's Geeky.  It's an "unconference" -- which means a few scheduled talks, informal breakout sessions and an opportunity to hear and digest the perspectives of just about anyone who comes.  This year it's for women only. 

If the stars align, I'm going to livecast some conversations from the site, using Ustream.tv.  This way, those who can't come this year can have a quick look into the subjects that bubble to the surface. 

If you can break away, She's Geeky begins Monday afternoon and ends Tuesday afternoon.  This will be a good way to gather data on the technology experience to the benefit of all.

Google + Random House = higher book sales?

Epicenter reports a rumor that Random House is caving/cashing in to join the Google book scanning initiative.   

I hope they at least wait to load books of recent vintage whose writers are still on the planet.  [Like yours truly.] 

The article reports that this might give RH a boost in sales.  Search me, but I still think publishers ought to look at their current business models before they embrace something that could mess with their writers' intellectual property. 

They should move online to market their books, not run the content there.  Launch Internet campaigns.  Livecast author interviews.  Provide advance copies to bloggers.  Create interactive websites for books and authors.  Revive the old-fashioned serial approach, if you're bent on putting content online.  Use dynamic language to invite readers' interest.  Focus groups of people beyond NYC and the East Coast.

Finally, try publishing fewer and better books.  Then you can apply more marketing muscle to those books instead of spreading your staff too thin.  That means better message platforms, stronger analysis of sales trends and a brand that readers everywhere recognize and understand.

Lipstick Queen on products and a point of view

A couple of weeks ago I heard Poppy King participate in a panel discussion on doing business in the US.  She is Australian. 

When Poppy was barely out of high school, she invented her own line of lipsticks, marketed it, got it into the best stores and sold it to Estee Lauder.  She is finishing a book about the whole experience, scheduled for publication next year.  And she has a new company called Lipstick Queen.

Poppy remains very close to her original inspiration:  her love of lipstick and desire for a unique color range and consistency.  She has come up with a straightforward way to keep focused on the essence of her business [in the cadence of the wedding day ritual, "something borrowed, something blue..."].

Something simple
Something true
Something consistent and
Something with a point of view

Of course, the trick is, you have to understand and deliver "simple" and "true."  Without these realities, there's no need for consistency or message.

I like how Poppy has taken an inanimate object and stressed the importance of having a point of view about it.  No matter how many times we have an example like this -- whether it's Lipstick Queen, Apple or a Web service -- I like being reminded that putting a product out there deserves your attentiveness to what you want buyers to experience.

If you have a point of view -- whatever your role in an enterprise -- it will come across in every task you perform.  Your point of view is where differentiation begins.

She's geeky -- are you?

I'm excited about a brand-new gathering scheduled for late October:  She's Geeky.  The plan is for women who are geeky, think they might be geeky or want to be geeky to get together outside the traditional conference box.

There are lots of interesting events planned for geeks these day -- so many that we lose count.  The ones that are focused on attracting more women into the industry are certainly worthy of notice -- but this one is going to be different.

First, it's an un-conference. 

If this is the first time you've seen this term, it simply means that the detailed agenda will form at the event with the attendees contributing topics, participating actively in discussion and leading sessions.  This makes it possible to be flexible around emerging developments as well as help the cream of thought and experience rise to the top.

Second, for the first year at least, it's going to be only women in attendance.

Normally, a lot of people, yours truly included, shy away from this protocol.  If the guys did a conference and said men only, we'd be up in arms, right?  But the fact is, without anyone even wanting it that way, it's pretty much what is happening these days in technology.  And even though it's not a conspiracy, until this day and age, a lot of girls never even thought to study engineering or computer science -- or to consider going into a business that's technology centric.  It's been a man's world because that's who is mostly there.

This has an impact on how ideas are floated as well.  Which is why I'm looking forward to She's Geeky. 

Today, many conferences follow established forms of communication -- speaker to audience -- and content determined by a few people.  It's the command-and-control model.  Many of us are used to it and accept it as the best way to go. 

The women-only thing of She's Geeky will expose and leverage another way of brainstorming and learning -- something at which women excel:  conversation.  Insights and strategies will emerge organically, out of conversations that to the naked ear may seem random.  In the ensuing moments, however, attendees capture specific results and practices -- and tailor them to their goals and vision.

So:  if you're in or interested in technology and you're female, come to She's Geeky.  Join the conversation that is technology.