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I’m very excited. At the last minute (9pm Monday), I was invited to join fellow Democrats in Denver on Tuesday.
The invitation came from a yet-to-be-named source who is both a major Democratic supporter and someone who knows how passionate I am for politics and the Democratic Party. (I’ll check to see if I can reveal the person’s identity once I arrive.)
Anyway, please follow along with me on my “NateCast” Drop over at Drop.io/NateCast
I’ll be posting photos, live video and audio accounts, and some notes. Of course everytime I do update the Drop you’ll get a Tweet over at my Twitter, so the best thing you can do is follow me there.
SAI did a piece on McCain’s and Obama’s YouTube viewership today, and pointed out which is the real Internet savvy political machine: John McCain’s campaign.
These numbers really mean something to me, because they prove a feeling I’ve had for some time.
I don’t think Obama’s people *really* “GET” web video. At all.
With 7-house-gate last week, the Obama campaign finally showed a little viral + rapid turn around skills with “Seven,” but this is really the best, first example of such productions.
And yet, it’s still not a web video. It’s a damn TV ad.
The Obama folks (or anyone, for that matter) need to be producing stuff for the web that only belongs on the web.
You may remember when my friend Josh Sugarman (and his organization TruthThroughAction.org) put out the short film “Blue Balled” a few months ago, and got it picked up on ABCNews, CNN, MSNBC, FOX, and The Huffington Post. It was a funny, effective (if kinda inappropriate) political message that hit McCain, well, below the belt.
Good thing we all evolve ;-)
Today, the TruthThroughAction.org guys are releasing a truly powerful film called American Centurion which offers a breathtaking and stark assessment of how the war in Iraq will effect America for the next hundred years. The film, which is embargoed until Monday (so please do not blog until then), shows a bloodied soldier in Iraq, in the year 2108. The soldier then has an encounter with a young Japanese girl who has teleported from her history class to ask the soldier “Why are you here?”
The lesson is clear: sending $10B a month to Iraq for the next 100 years will keep America from advancing itself, and will only fan the flames on our burning pedestal of international leadership.
Here’s a new way to figure out what your next business might be:
Step 1: Send an email to a subsection of the smartest technologists you know offering to open a tab at a local brew pub for a few hours of their time.
Step 2: Start the conversation at the event by talking about a few business themes you’re focused on.
Step 3: Dive into a few specific concepts around those themes.
Step 4: Drink lots of beer and brainstorm about those ideas and themes.
The result, well… so far so good.
This past Wednesday, I starting something I’m calling “beersourcing.”
I got about 7 of the smartest folks I know to come to DBA in the East Village, I then opened a tab, and got them to chat about some specific ideas and themes I’ve been thinking about for my next venture while the beers were flowing.
Total bill: $70 (I had offered to take it to $100)
Result: an amazing debate from which everyone took something, and I got some important early feedback on specific concepts I’m playing with. How awesome is that!?
The surprising thing, though, is that by making it “about me,” I think the little event became more worthwhile for others. Not, of course, because it was specifically about me, but because it was: a) a brainstorming/trendcasting session with guidance; and b) a handpicked combination of folks.
Next time I do this event (in a few weeks, perhaps) it will be another handpicked group of people, again picked to complement each other, still talking about the themes and ideas from last session, only with them a little more vetted and developed.
Each time, the ideas narrow, and develop more.
In the end: “E Pluribus Cerevisia, Unum Consortio”
Our of many beers, one company.
Or at least a bunch of expanded minds, new friends, and a sharper knack for examining business ideas on the fly. I look forward to it.
According to this filing on GroundReport.com, it seems my friend and fellow Silicon Alleyist Noel Hidalgo was recently deported from China for filming and uploading video from a protest held by Students for a Free Tibet, in Tiananmen Square.
Regardless of your opinion of Tibet/China relations or the politics of staging protests during the Olympic Games, Noel’s capture of this event, and subsequent deportation, should reveal an interesting and important balance between Citizen Journalism and world affairs to you.
On the page they have stats about median valuations and funds sought by companies (both trending down it the last two quarters). Also they publish info regarding your actual chances of being funded (1.3%).
Check it out. Any stats surprise you? Did you know how few deals actually get funded?
Last night, I gave a talk at Ignite NYC (thanks Brady for pulling it together!). Above is the video of my talk and below more detail on what I talked about:
In college, I studied the concept of leadership pretty intensely (thesis here) — and, while that was challenging enough, the concept of Charisma, one inherently derived from that study, totally fascinated me to the extent that it still puzzles today.
This is no surprise: Charisma is one of the least understood social phenomenon’s in the history of sociology. Max Weber was the first to give great attention, and he did quite well; but I think French social theorist Pierre Bourdieu nailed a definition of Charisma when he called it “Social Magic which works.” I’m not saying that’s THE definition, I’m just saying it works.
Anyway, as with any magic, it’s hard to understand, but fun to explore.
One way of exploring social magic is identifying “tricks” — the how — people use to create charisma. Here are three social magic “tricks” — bundled capital of the “Charisma Economy” (a much longer post/book I’ll write later) — which “work”:
Tertius Gaudens with WONDER!
Ronald Burt used the concept of Tertius Gaudens (popularized by: Georg Simmel; roughly: “the third who benefits”) as a way to explain “structural holes” in networks. Simply, the idea is that when you stand in between two would-be interested “nodes” (people, networks, etc), you can derive either “informational” or “control” benefits: You know me; you know someone I want to know or has information I need to know; you can either control the condition through which I meet the person or you can learn the information and pass it on to me, with benefits.
However, this is basic power manipulation — not charisma, which happens through magic and wonder!
So, the charismatic terius gaudens must leverage his or her position to create a sense of awe. A great example of this is how my friend Gary Vaynerchuk has succeeded and then blown up.
As Gary will tell you, he’s a arbiter at heart. He frequently references trading baseball cards as the context with which he became passionate about wine.
Then, with that passion, he realized that the Wine World, as out of reach and snobbish as it was, needed an ambassador to the masses. Standing between the masses and Wine, Gary was a wonder. “How is it that he explains Wine so well to these people?!”
Beyond Wine, Gary has since found larger success as a Media Man. Again, he’s found how to stand between two interests who “don’t get” each other — Old Media and New Media — and has been a perfect pal to both.
When we, the New Media, see Gary on Conan or Ellen or Mad Money, we are in awe. “How has he penetrated Old Media?” we ask, forgetting for a moment that they are our enemy.
Meanwhile, when Old Media sees Gary reaching the EXACT demographic they would (and are) DIE for online, they wonder, “How. Does. He. Do. It?!”
And this, my friends, is Charisma as the tertius gaudens.
Pleasurable Cognitive Dissonance
Some call it irony, and they’re absolutely wrong. Pleasurable Cognative Dissonance [my friend Ronan says I'm using "cognitive dissonance" incorrectly here, so I'll come up with a new term] is what you create when you’re able to make people genuinely assume something about you and then be absolutely pleased then they’re blow away.
The caveat: You can’t deceive — it must be organic. It must be 100% authentic.
Look at him! Twenty-five years old and looks like the most eager, do-gooder teenager in the world. More over, he’s probably going to make a valiant effort at entertaining you, in his white t-shirt and video funky setup… he’s probably gonna sound like everyone else on YouTube, but you’ll give him a chance.
That’s what you thought.
Then: BAM!!! He starts singing and his voice — that voice — hits you like two big jars of honey. Whoa momma, this guy his good! And the lyrics are interesting!
And that’s how he got to 25 million plus views and a gig with Dr. Pepper to turn his song into an ad for a new line of Dr. Pepper named after him! Introducing… Cherry Chocolage Rain! (Will it cause Pleasuable Cognitive Dissonance too?)
Bricolage for Good
Now, Bricolage is a term I’ve throw around a lot on this blog — the most notable time being when I published the “cafeBricolage Manifesto.”
Nevertheless, the real point of Bricolage in this post’s context is that it has the highest percentage chance of creating Social Magic.
First, let’s start with this definition from French anthropologist Claude Lèvi-Strauss:
And in our own time the ‘bricoleur’ is still someone who works with his hands and uses devious means compared to those of a craftsman.
Now, the kind of deviation Lèvi-Strauss is talking about is the process of doing things unorthodox-ly.
For example, if you’re supposed to buy a single speed bike when you want one, the bricoleur finds old parts from any old kind of bike, and figures out a way to create a single speed bike that rocks!
The reason this is a high form of social magic is because you’re essentially creating something out of nothing. Magic!
Another form of bricolage is hacking. The “good” hackers often use devious means to find security holes, and then report them to the right authority, essentially creating value from a devious act.
For those of you who don’t know, the Million Dollar Homepage was a gimmick gone right.
The idea: with a million pixels on a web page, one could sell perpetual advertising space on the page for $1/pixel. Now, the only reason it would be worthwhile for an advertiser is if people come to see it, which makes it a good thing the whole idea is so ridiculous.
End of story: it worked.
With a trio of social magic tricks, Alex Tew got his $1,000,000 by:
1. Standing between advertisers and views (tertius gaudens)…
2. neither of whom knew why it was beneficial to be there, but thought it was intriguing that the other was (pleasurable cognitive dissonance)…
3. which then created a screen full of images and a $1,000,000 for Alex (creating something where nothing existed before).
I wouldn’t call myself a PR or marketing guru, but since starting my new life as EIR at Rose Tech Ventures, it’s the skill-set our portfolio companies and friends have called me in for more than anything else.
“Nate, you’re the marketing guru…” they say (am I? I ask)… “how should we handle our next product/feature/point launch?” or “Nate, you seem to know how to get press, how do we get the attention of the press?”
Until recently, I never had a standard answer for those question. However, after working through this question several times, I’ve already discovered a “Midas Question,” which elicits the most useful set of responses:
“How,” I ask, “does your new product/feature/update/company change the world?”
Change the world? Yup.
When asked such a weighty question, it’s incredible how quickly all the other marketing crap people think up melts away.
The effect seems to be two-fold:
People stop thinking/talking about incremental improvements (”This is [slightly] better than other things.”)
People are forced to identify the paradigm-shifting aspect of their business (”If we succeed ordinary people will be able to publish in a way that competes with the NY Times.”)
So, next time you’re stuck thinking about how you’re going to get some buzz around your product, step back and ask yourself how you’re going to change the world.
Today, I’m excited to announce that BricaBox, LLC is taking the first steps to open source the BricaBox Platform.
Since I announced the end of BricaBox as a business last month, I’ve heard from a number of people that open sourcing — or “freeing” — the code would be a good way to let the dream live on. After speaking with with several folks in the open source and free software communities, I believe this is the right thing to do.
So, today I’m asking you to help me make the dream live on. The code isn’t ready for downloading yet — readying a large, once-private code-base with will take some time and resources — but there are still several ways you can get involved today.
First and foremost, if you’re a fan of our vision for the BricaBox Platform (see this great article and video to refresh yourself), we’d like to you be an early member of our BricaBox.org community, where you’ll be able to influence and/or take charge of important roadmap and development initiatives within the community of developers.
Join us today on our developer list, where we’re already discussing next steps in readying the BricaBox code-base and debating which license to use.
Meanwhile, we’ll be using Google Code as a place to organize bugs, tasks, and to-dos, so check that out going forward.
And lastly, having BricaBox open source will require some legal fees and hosting costs (we’d like to keep BricaBox.com live, so people can see it in action). If you’re interested in donating, please follow the link on the BricaBox.org homepage.
We’re very excited to start working on freeing and open sourcing the BricaBox code-base. While we have no expectations, we do revel in the prospect that someone else may. If you think you’d like to work with the BricaBox platform in the future, please join us today.
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