Category: Thought of the Day

The Difference Between Consumers and Customers Part Three

I’ve always found the Cathedral and Bazaar metaphor compelling.

Movie theaters, newspapers, television, radio, magazines are all cathedrals. The publishers place an artificial separation between them and the audience/consumers/eyeballs/gullets for their complete, discrete, highly-produced artifacts. One-size fitting all.

Weblogs, Wikis, Bulletin Boards are bazaars. Down in the dirt. Personal connections, relationships, conversations, building-blocks. Each new topic, event, person, site, the start of a new conversation. Custom, individual interactions.

This weekend I finally watched the Aviator on DVD. I’m sure this was fantastic in the theaters, on my non-HD, non-50″ television – the special effects were obvious and cheap looking. The story itself was good. Though, with the lack of Hughes biographical information and resources on the DVD, it felt like the end of a conversation. Not the start.

Apophenia – Seeing Patterns that Don’t Exist

I first heard the word ‘apophenia’ in Moira Gunn’s interview with William Gibson almost a year ago.

Since then, it’s meaning has come to mind more than a couple times – though I had forgotten the word itself. In each instance, I’ve Googled for what bits of the word I could remember – yet came up empty.

Today, skimming my aggregator, I noticed Erik Haugo del.icio.us-ed the apophenia blog.

Confirms my stance that the world will give you want you need – just have to keep an eye out.

Why Conferences Should Be Free

Earlier this week, Lori and I were talking about the crazy $500-$1,000+ ticket prices for industry conferences. Considering the you’d have to block the time off your calendar, close up the shop, and book travel, the additional admission cost seems like a good way to artificially prevent people from showing up.

At every professional-related meeting or conference I’ve attended, the best parts were between the formal, scheduled sessions. The hallway conversations, the happy hours, the lunches. The one-on-one with other attendees. Even at the local MIMA Salons, there’s a part of me that curses when the formal session begins.

With the MNteractive Information Architect Coffees and the PodcastMN Meetups, we pick a place, a time, and whoever makes it, makes it. Usually, it’s 80% the same core people and 20% new voices. Then again, there’s usually wireless – so if no one shows up – you can still get some work done.

All this is leading up to an emphatic ‘Damn Straight’ in response to Dave Winer’s Like a BloggerCon post – on the inherent costs of participation:

“Even so, there is a price of admission. To get to the BBQ, or the Homebrew Club, BMUG or BloggerCon, you had to have a ride. To get on the web you have to have a computer and a net connection.”

The best part of Winer’s post is (emphasis mine):

“My experience with these shows is that if you trust the universe, it will take good care of you.”

Elsewhere: 17 April 2007
“How much do conferences cost?” – Eric Rice

Web 2.0 is a Second Chance At Fulfilling the Web’s Promise

The promise of the web has always been frictionless communication, ease, speed, and joy.

Yes, the term “Web 2.0” is “a big, vague, nebulous cloud of pure architectural nothingness”. The lack of it’s specificity is a problem.

I’ve also heard the cynical:

“Web 2.0 is Javascript.”

Five years ago web developers failed at fulfilling the web’s promise. It’s taken us 5 years to get over it – and develop technologies mature enough to try again.

“Web 2.0” has very little to do with technology and far more to do with a New Found Optimism. Something we needed – desperately.

That said, saying you’re a Web 2.0 company is like telling the cool kids you’re cool. It’s one of the easiest way to get stuffed in a ball bag.

This Blog Isn’t Paying My Mortgage…Yet

We didn’t win the lottery last night. Thankfully, Tim from Winecast sent over the How Much is Your Blog Worth calculator based on the AOL-Weblogs, Inc deal.

Looks like I’m well on my way to easy street…as long as I keep typing…..must keep typing….fingers burn…must keep typing…

  • $57,018.54 – GarrickVanBuren.com
  • $ 6,774.48 – FirstCrackPodcast.com – the podcast really lives at firstcrackpodcast.com so I’m sure the “real” number is somewhere in between 😉
  • $27,662.46 – Working Pathways’ Work Better Weblog
  • $16,371.66 – MNteractive.com (then it’d have to split it a dozen ways)
  • $564.54 – Podumentary (this one’s split 3 ways)

Grand Total: $ 93,007.96.

A friend of mine has the Chicago Cubs World Series Retirement Plan – he sets aside funds each year to see the cubbies play the series. Then, when they don’t it goes into a retirement fund.

Welcome to my fully-diversified, fully-tongue-in-cheek Weblog Retirement Plan.

Broadcasting From 20 Years Ago

Anyone else catch WCCO 10pm Weather on Friday night?

Mike wore a boring brown suit, held a big fat wired microphone in one hand, and a big fat wired graphics remote in the other. It’s like he was doing the weather from 1985. Bizarre.

Over at KSTP, everything was discrete and wireless. Phew. I wasn’t stuck in a timewarp.

Help, Help, I’m Not Being Oppressed

There’s a renewed DIY/independence/hacker vibe going around, Dave Slusher says it needs a name. I agree.

From my perspective, this vibe is about all of us making effective use of cheap tools – to serve our own individual/custom purposes first, and offering the finished product to others to extend and enhance. I hesitate to use the phrase “finished product” – for the end result is not a static, defined product – it’s another tool.

I’ve done enough home renovation to know building materials and tools are not expensive and the renovation is not extraordinarily difficult. It simply takes time to do.

There’s a tinge of Populism in here, but without the belief that the common person is being oppressed by the elite. It’s not socialism or communism – for despite the people owning the means of production we are acting as individuals, not a collective.

My library has far too many Ayn Rand books on it not to consider Objectivism. But it’s not, because everyone expressing the vibe in question places value in being starchy rational and subjective and emotional.

All this digging around makes me wonder if the formative philosophies of our time were defined around striving to get something – rather than what to do once you have it.

Back to the problem at hand….

In the television cartoons of my youth, the “good guys” always seemed to be more unified, more of a collective, more in unison than the disorganized albeit nefarious “bad guys” (the phrase “Herding Cats” comes to mind). Considering how we’re all working in parallel (not unison) on this and in honor of the Dave for throwing down the gauntlet, I suggest the moniker “Evil Genius“.

And since those of the cyberpunk/diy/hacker vein are not without their backup, I also offer: “MacGyver“. ReadyMade Magazine has a regular MacGyver Challenge.

On third thought, perhaps “Dennis” from Monty Python’s Holy Grail, he inspired the title of this post.

Starbucks is Ideal for Lazy Vacationers

The wife and I spent this past weekend in the middle of Wisconsin. We’re both particular about our coffee and we both enjoy joking about measuring distance in Starbucks. At home, we prefer local roasters like Dunn Bros or White Rock.

But you don’t know the relief we sighed when Wausau got their first Starbucks. Like McDonalds, Starbucks’ offering are consistently mediocre. Yet, they are still leagues above the native coffee shops in terms of quality, they’re the only place in town with a wireless network, and the only coffee shop open on Sundays.

This makes Starbucks the obvious answer for grabbing a decent morning cup while out of town. As much as I’d prefer a quirkly, quaint, local roaster.

Now, with 2 Starbucks in the area, we also had our first “Best in Show” moment – meeting people at Starbucks…just not the same Starbucks.

This post was inspired by The Excess of Access over at Brand Autopsy

A Suggestion for Shareware-ing TV and Movies

I’ve got a handful of password-protected PDF files. I can share those files with anyone, back them up on as many computers or discs as I’d like. If I want to actually read them, I need the password. The password cost me a $10 or $50 or what have you.

I’d like to see this model applied to TV shows and movies. If I want to watch my favorite TV shows for free – then I have to wait for a new episode each week and have it interrupted by commercials. If I’d rather watch on back-to-back episodes on my schedule, here’s $50 for the digital files and a password to open them. I’m far more comfortable paying for .movs than I am DVDs.

As a quick aside, this is what Doug Kaye talks about for IT Conversations in his conversation with Moira Gunn.

What about crackers writing patches to break this loose DRM? Yes, that’ll happen as it has and as it always will. They don’t really care about your stuff anyway, they’re just looking for something to break. If you’re real worried about that, just makes the files available for download and on BitTorrent and put a ‘Pay $50 to remove this message’ over the video. I’m confident a quick search at MacUpdate.com or VersionTracker.com will shake out more than a handful of software developers this model is working very well for.

TV and movie producers – if you’d still like a place in my daily life, I’m going to need your stuff in a format that fits my life. I’m not interested in filling my closets with DVDs or chaining myself to the sofa to purge the TiVo recordings. I’d much rather play your latest offering in the few moments I have in waiting rooms.

I’m weaning myself off public radio for this exact reason and I like them.