Outsourcing

Do you know the feeling that the universe is trying to tell you something when a topic keeps coming up and up and up again?  Well, I do and it just did these past days.  The New York Times had several articles on outsourcing.  One in particular, Outsource Your Way to Success, talks about how a couple invested in a housekeeper even when they were starving students to be able to focus on their studies and be more productive. I wish I had that kind of singular focus, actually, no, I do not. I’m interested in just about anything; at least for a while.  But you get the gist.  I get excited.

So, the other day I decided that it was silly to pay programmers and designers to do all the work on my websites and I could go ahead and learn with the help of templates and WordPress, or Square Space how to set up and implement websites myself.  I signed up at General Assembly for a two day class called “WordPress Bootcamp”. Our teacher Nate Cooper was awesome (that is patient, humorous, and of course, super hero knowledgeable) and off we set into the sunset.

Digital Citizen

I became an American citizen a few years ago and I feel very comfortable being an American.  Actually I should say, being a New Yorker.  The rest of the country can be a bit more challenging, then again: I don’t think that’s an issue of being American or not American, but merely goes to show that New Yorkers are a breed of their own.

 

About being a ‘digital citizen’ I feel similar. I’m definitely not a native, I was born in the wrong place on the time line, but I feel totally comfortable moving around in the digital arena. My job and my personal curiosity have made it a necessity and have given me the drive to learn ‘digital’ as much as I have learned and continue to learn being American.

Let’s “Meta” one More Time

The New York Times Magazine had a “Riff” on Meta, called “Welcome to the Age of Heavy Meta” by Devon McCann Jackson (aka David Zweig).  A highly recommended read.  He says it so much more elegantly than I did in my riff, “Big Data, Megatrends and Meta Trends” in this blog back in July. The article’s subtitle sums it up perfectly: “Somewhere between Aristotle’s “Metaphysics” and “Family Guy”, the world “meta” became shorthand for wry knowingness.  But the advent of metadata shows us just how much – and how little – we truly know.”  

"I love you; you're perfect; now change"

Yesterday I had an epiphany of sorts.  At the kitchen sink no less.  Of late I have been thinking a lot about people and their behavior and the realization that people do not change. Not fundamentally so. I think a person can learn to modify certain behaviors, but our basic wiring is our basic wiring. Of course we learn along the way and modify behaviors and change our opinions (or not) and hopefully become more attune with our surroundings and wiser in our decision making, we might mellow and be more forgiving, but we will fundamentally and with our gut always be “who we are”.  

Internet 3.0

So where are we going? Quo vadis? That could be asked, no: that has to be asked of all aspect of our lives. (And yes, we’re back to one of my fave topics) This entry: quo vadis www? Where are we headed with the internet, and these days the internet seems to be near synonymous with social media. 

So: we moved from being consumers to being co-creators. That means media now engages with communities (niche audiences) and (should) no longer cater just to a generic audience. Companies that communicate to the outside no longer push information (or products for that matter) to a community, but need to be ready to pull information into their organizations and to LISTEN.  Organizations that are traditional hierarchical need to rethink being flat(er) in structure and allowing for a network of employees to listen and communicate with consumers.  Flexibility is key.  Leadership needs to move from control to empowerment.

Coincidentally that jives with my earlier entry (the Culture Code) on generation y – or generation “me” (aka Millennials): the need to be heard, to be empowered and to be co-creators.  So, at least www. 3.0 is squarely catering to generation y – surprised?  Ok; I agree it’s a chicken and egg situation. Did you know that by 2025, 75% of the work force is going to be generation y-ers (aka Millennials)?    

In summary, below a table put out by Vodafone Enterprise Plenum after their work trip 2013 in New York and Boston:

	www 2.0	www 3.0
Individuals	Consumers	Co-creators
Media	Audience	Community
Organizations	Hierarchy	Network
Markets	Products	Platform
Communication	Push	Pull
Leadership	Control	Empower

Blogging

The other night I found myself at the bar of one of my favorite restaurants, Cedric in Harlem and sadly watched Roger Federer lose a match in the quarter finals in Flushing. After getting over my Swiss pride being hurt, I started a conversation with the gentleman sitting next to me and we soon where in a deep conversation about blogging and selling.  His wife has a flower boutique, Katrina Parris Flowers a few blocks from my house and they are big on social media. 

The Culture Code

There’s a book with that title I wish I had read after a year or so of living in the States.  The Culture Code found me in 2006, the year it was published and it was a veritable “aha” experience.  Clotaire Rapaille, cultural anthropologist and marketing expert (not without controversies), originally from France takes an advertising approach of distilling each experience, i.e. cultural differentiator into one word.  He gives the example of car advertisement in The Culture Code. 

 

What would the one word be that comes to mind when advertising cars to Americans?  It would be “freedom” – look at the truck commercials in particular – the car in the wild-wild west scaling some desert mountain, or roaming freely deserted down town streets:  it screams freedom to move around as you please.  How would you sell a car to Germans?  “Precision” – Germans want to know their car is of highest quality precision engineering possible.  No “over-engineered” Mercedes would ever come out of Detroit.