Shot of the day from friend and San Francisco übershooter Chuck Revell.
(Nice snap, Chuck!)
Amish Hackers
Kevin Kelly: "One Amish-man told me that the problem with phones, pagers, and PDAs
(yes he knew about them) was that 'you got messages rather than
conversations.' That's about as an accurate summation of our times as
any." [emphasis added]
link
Fool-ishness with Christopher Moore
Fave author Christopher Moore just came out with his new book, Fool. (Nutshell: King Lear told from the point of view from the court jester, in Moore's distinctive style.) So, being the fanboys and fangirls that we are, we built a Ventana for the occasion. Click on the pic to check it out. (Works on the iPhone, as a widget, on other mobile devices, etc.)
(Also went to the book signing last night…it was packed.)
Personality Goes A Long Way
Does what you are delivering to your customers have personality?
Room, Service
Singapore hotel experiments with letting customers set their own price for rooms. Neat. (link)
"The new Ibis Singapore on Bencoolen hotel just last week launched a promotion that lets guests choose the rate they want to pay.
Rooms at the 538-room economy hotel, which opens this week in the
heart of Singapore, are typically priced starting at SGD138 per room
including free wifi. Through March 15, however, the pay-what-you-want
competition runs during a designated portion of each day, as announced
on the hotel's site. Interested consumers need only sign up as members
and make a bid for the price they'd like to pay during one of the
announced promotion times. If they're one of the first to bid, they can
win a night at the hotel at exactly the price they offered. Bids have
gone as high as SGD100, and the first promotional rooms sold out within
minutes of the contest's launch last Wednesday, according to a report
in the Sydney Morning Herald."
Hat tip: Judi
SoCon09 Wrapup
Just back from Atlanta, and the outstanding SoCon conference. What a rush!
- Over 300 attendees
- Rampant, raucous live-Twittering all about #socon09
- Announcement of the $1.5MM grant to Kennesaw to develop "sustainable journalism models"
A number of folks asked for the slides from the keynote. I've uploaded them here, and they are embedded below as well.
Others commenting on the event:
And some great pictures here from Josh Hallett (including the one above).
Creat-ive
Seth says creative is “the stuff you do at the edges”
I disagree.
Creative, or create-ive is something else. It’s making something new. (Dave Gray first introduced me to this interpretation here, please read – gives a ton of back-story.)
Rich Gold defined it like this:
“Creativity is not just making things (factories do that), it’s creating new things, things that have never existed before.”
When you say “creat-ive,” say it with the hyphen. Completely changes the meaning of the word.
On My Mind
Transaction Failed
Based on the previous post, a thought:
How do we stop thinking about “transaction costs” and, instead, start thing about *relationship costs* (or perhaps their glass-half full counterpart “relationship *value*”)?
VRM Volleys
"Good ideas should stand in their own proven pudding." – Doc Searls
ProjectVRM is one of those Good Ideas. At its most fundamental, VRM is about "providing customers with tools that make them both independent of vendors and better able to engage with vendors."
From my point of view, there are basic underpinnings such as:
- I should be able to decide which vendors with which I want to develop relationships
- I should be able to revoke / change how I grant vendor access to my personal information
- I should be able to "relate" in a panoply of ways – everything from the mundane ("I want to buy that toaster" or "Hey, I listened to that!") to the sublime ("If I tell you a story once a week, every week, for the next year, can you embroider a shirt for me that illustrates that story?") to the ridiculous ("Please let me know every time you feature a product that has anything even remotely to do with bacon")
- I should be able to even just put information "out there," and see how creative vendors want to relate with *me*, based on that information
- I should be able to do all those things anonymously, if I so choose
- &c, &c, &c.
(By the way, the fundaments of a "You know it's VRM…" document exist here, if you would like to contribute. I encourage you to please do so.)
There are more that will evolve over time, I'm sure. This whole VRM thing is a (very early) work in (very early) progress.
So, when someone goes salting the soil before anything has been planted, it definitely gets my hackles up a little bit. (Please read both the original "Fallacies" piece from Graham Hill as well as its counterpoint by Doc.)
We're in the definition and building stages of this thing. Instead of saying it should be bulldozed, how about helping define its architecture instead?