The things that keep me up at night. How are things going to get better?

There are a handful of things that continue to popup in my weekly peruses around the web and trends that I follow.  Rather than try and write them out in-depth, I just throw them out there as one-liners:

- Let's start with the billionaires.  They need to pay their way.  They aren't mega-rich in a vacuum. Their wealth is on the backs of the people.  They need to help the people whose work they depend on

- Capitalism needs a reboot. The race to the lowest price is over. How much more squeezing of resources, efficiency is there to go and at what cost?

- We need to raise taxes in the United States - and no not on the middle class.  Let's just practical, raise taxes on the very rich please.

- The mainstream media are consistently burying the headline. Technology, re-urbanization, the end of urban sprawl growth, the end of 'everyone owns a home dream' are all converging. (We are at the beginning of a sea-change in the way we live. 30 years from now, we'll see this was the beginning.)

- Despite doom and gloom, things aren't that bad and could be worse.

- News cycles are shorter and shorter.  No sooner do we have a one international disaster (Gulf coast oil spill, Japan earthquake, Haiti, US tornadoes) that another comes up with the older disaster being forgotten.  This is an issue because the problems all pile up. Lots of lives are being affected with no one talking about them.

- Banks and the financial crisis of 2008 are still heavily affecting the psyche of the US. Somehow Americans seem to have let the financial institutions get off scott free?  Strange. 

- Technology entrepreneurs think far too highly of their contributions. They are changing people’s lives somewhat, but are not changing the world.  Humans are still humans. Change needs to come from people on the street.  Posts, tweets, Facebook fans and the like have never, NEVER overturned a government.  Real change comes from breaking glass, throwing punches, marching and conflict.  That hasn't changed for time in memorial. (See A Peoples History) 

- There is a lot to learn from sports and apply them to work.  Deliberate practice, drive to win, helping others succeed helps you succeed etc.  All the classic sports metaphors apply to business. If you read a sports success book, you'll see that the most of the same themes crop up.  See Bill Simmons on Bill Russell.

- The United States, while one country is not the same regionally. We're more fractured than ever.  It feels to me that we used to be a bit more connected as citizens. There were touchstone events that bound us together.  That does not seem to happen as often. (Media options abound) The rich are much richer, the poor are poorer and the middle is shrinking.  People in cities (New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco) are succeeding disproportionally to rest of the country and developing our own senses of self.

- Complexity abounds yet we continue to think there are easy answers.  News outlets and politicians will have us believe there are black and white, binary solutions to our complex problems. Well there aren't. The world of easy answers has disappeared. It now takes vision, focus and nuanced understanding to even see an issue as a whole. (See healthcare, education and the Middle East)

(You can understand why I don’t sleep.  I think of this sort of stuff all the time)

This post is long with lots of juicy stuff. Feel free to pick it apart.

 

Facebook is in trouble and here's why

I really like Facebook.  I use it everyday to check up on folks.  It's become a daily utility for life and for work.  I think it's in deep trouble. Oh,  not tomorrow,  not next week but one day sooner than we think.  Here are the reasons why:

1. Privacy matters to the majority of members.

Mark Zuckerberg has said publicly that privacy for young people is different,  the problem is young people aren't using Facebook anymore.

2. Young people don't want to be on a social network with their parents.

No one wants to be where there parents are. It is a fact.  As more and more older people join the more and more young people will be pushed off the platform.

3. The need to monetize has pushed them into the hands of corporations (Ads and brands are every where)

'Like' buttons are everywhere and are there for corporations. Every time you 'Like' something you are saying to a company "send me messages". When people realize that most of their feed is filled with brand messages they will leave Facebook.

4. Arrogance. 

Continuing to make changes without regard for it loyal users.

5. Trust.  

Fundamentally, it feels as though people do not trust Facebook.  Again,  they are catering to businesses to share your information.  Facebook has all your information and they have no problem giving that information away for the sake of making money.  Not trustworthy at all.

6. There is no driving ethos. 

Facebook doesn't appear to stand for anything like Googles' "Don't be evil" (Which they have gotten away from) .  What does Facebook stand for anyway?

7. They are stretched too far.  

While likely a function of their wild growth, the site is completely convoluted and things that are very important are hard to find.  

8. Alienation of people working with them.  

Any developer working on the Facebook platform will tell you that dealing with Facebooks' platform is a nightmare. Facebook has notoriously pushed game developers away from their platform giving a way crumbs of virality.

9. People are working to defeat them.

The replacement for Facebook is not known right now.  But there are hundreds of small developers, in their garages,  tech incubators or in our universities working on solutions to Facebooks' problems.  They are focused on privacy, they are focused on ease of use and they are doing it in the shadows.  Facebook will miss something the same way Google missed social.  

What do you think of this list?  Do you have pet peeves with Facebook? Are you using it less and less?

33 Ways To Stay Creative +1

Found this great image while trolling through Tumblr. Use of Tumblr is new to me. I get why it works - serendipity! You just pump into awesome little things all the time.

via Hello You Creatives

Are we in a revolutionary age? Has the Internet grown up.

At TechCrunch Disrupt, Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures and avc.com fame said that the Internet is about to embark on it's social revolutionary age.  He mentioned a two or three quick historical annecdotes of technology moving us forward via infrastructure first, then applied technology on the infratructure with the final phase being the social changes due to the convergence of the two.

That may be a sound bite sized over-simplification but is fundamentally correct.  Too often history is forgotten when dealing with the present because of humans natural tendency to overvaluing what is happening at the moment.  We fail to see similarities to prior times of technological change.  Specifically, the technology community shuns the past and tends to look forward. It is as though the past has no value.  It feels like history and anthropology have value in technology simply becuae no one pays attention to them.

Is the Arab Spring, the first salvo in the Internets final phase of social disruption?

I'm not going to give the world a history lesson, but just think of the following mega-trend technological changes and the change they may have affected:
- The train
- The steam engine
- The telegraph
- Televison
- Telephone
- Nuclear power
- Jet engine
- Assembly line
- Air travel
- Internet
- Interchangable parts manufacture
- Genetic engineering in food
- Refridgeration/air conditioning
- Combustion engine

Please feel free to add to the list or call me crazy.

Why economic bubbles can be a good thing

The LinkedIn's IPO has the tech and investor world going bananas due to it's wild stock value.  LinkedIn was priced to open at $45 a share and is already up to $85. (10 AM ET)  Pundits are taking this exuberance as an opportunity to shout from the mountain top that we are about to enter a second technology bubble like we had in the late 1990's

The story being sold is that bubbles are a bad thing, that you should watch out for your money.  That is true. You shouldn't throw money around in an effort to get rich quick. But I think the press do us a disservice to label economic bubbles as completely negative.  In the short term, yes, they can have negative effects, but in the long term they have can create tons of hidden value.

Let's look at the positives that can come out of bubbles from a historical perspective:

Infrastructure
- the two biggest infrastructure advances in world history came because of economic bubbles.  The first, the laying of rail road rails across the US throughout the 1860-70's ending in The Panic of 1973  This overbuilding of rails laid the ground work for the US growth in the 20th century.(There was a second railroad led panic in 1893) The rails speed communication, the movement of resources and expansion of commerce. 
The second, the laying of fiber optic cable in the build up for the first internet explosion.  Just as we did with rail roads, we over built and created a vast network of connected data systems.  Google and others took advantage and created the speedy information networks and cloud computing we use today.

Talent creation
- bubbles have a way of getting people into the work force who may not quite be ready and releasing those folks into the unemployment line when the bubble bursts.  The 2001 internet taught lots of investors and venture capital folks what doesn't work.  Many of them got burned, learned and knew what to look for going forward.  Crashes also throw tons of people out of work.  Those out of work become the new creators, new business makers. Desperation can be the mother of invention. I don't have the exact numbers, but I have heard somewhere that in the 1930's more businesses where started than at any time before?  We're seeing that again today with the economic crash of 2008,  there seem to be more people trying to make new businesses.  Where in the years prior, the brightest and best would try and work at a hedge fund or go into banking we're now seeing young people starting businesses.

With the United States economy being relatively dynamic. It is flexible and money usually finds good ideas.  Those good ideas will become the new business.  We're less dynamic than we used to be,  but we're still the most open society in the world.  Bubbles can lay the ground work for growth, either through new infrastructure,  new talent or simply talent with idle hands.  There is a lot of pain when a bubble bursts, but there seems to be seeds that are sown during the darkest days.

What's not being said about social media and what you need to understand

Having worked on the social side of the web for over ten years, there is tons that I've learned. Sharing is what I do for a living and I want to share my experiences on the social web:
It's hard work
- getting traction, conversation and measurable results are hard work.  Don't be fooled that social media is a magic bullet.  There is work involved to grow your community and even more work to scale your conversations.

Choose your community
- the loudest person in your community may not be your best customer.  If you have trolls or cliques in your community keep an eye on them. They may be preventing your community from growing by creating an unpleasant online environment. With trolls, try confronting them head on. I found it best to pick up the phone and call them (always disarms them). Usually they either become advocates or agree to walk away quietly.  As for cliques, they tend to want special status. Give them with clear delineated boundaries with modest status. All in all, don’t let the lunatics run the asylum.

It’s all happened before
- online conversations are not new and marketing is not new.  Sure, the medium is different but what has worked on the past will work again.  For example, a good headline makes for a good tweet, free offers still resonate and being a jerk, is still being a jerk.

Don't get locked in
- technology is moving fast with innovation happening at a wild pace.  Old business models of getting locked into enterprise contracts are over. Can you imagine getting locked into a two year contract to manage your twitter accounts? I can't.  Find free tools, try them and combine them.  Using free tools and combining them can get you to near enterprise level functionality. Check out my example of managing all my Facebook fan pages with free tools.

You are on island
- the work can sometimes feel like it isn't going anywhere.  You can spend hours using twitter and get 5 referrals to the site you are representing. It can be discouraging.  Keep working at it, try different platforms and see where you get traction.  It will pay off with focus and understanding of your audience.  Focus on the process and the results will follow.

Know your audience
- understanding the demographics and size of the platforms you are choosing to use is vital.  For instance, if you're hired to work for AARP and focus your efforts on tumblr, you might be disappointed. (Tumblr is has a younger demographic). Or if you are working in sports and targeting males with your outreach, you don't want to use your time and efforts with FarmVille players (60% female audience)

Do you have any other advice on work that that isn't being discussed?

Mobile, social and local for games

Mobile, social and local (MoLoSo) are the big consumer mega-trends that are going on in technology.  Lots of start ups are creating great products in these areas.  The big players in the trend are Foursquare, Groupon, Instagram and more.

Not So Much in Games

In the online game space we do not see much in the way of MoSoLo platforms.  Most of the work done in this area is on a per game basis with reliance on the individual app stores to provide platforms.  There are exceptions.  OpenFeint is a platform that allows mobile game developers to socialize their games. Apple's Game Center was supposed to help as well.  Unfortunately neither has quite caught on.

Mobile Games are Different

I think the reason for this is a fundamental difference in the mobile games space.  Mobile games are played in quick, disconnected moments and do not have the time spent per session that drives sharing.  For example, if you do two, or three flings in Angry Birds that take 30 seconds while you are waiting for a train, you aren't likely to feel that sense of accomplishment if you had been struggling in a game for several minutes or hours. Additionally, with short sessions and limited screen real estate prompting the player to do something other than play will quickly sour them from playing your game.  

So what should we do?

1. Provide quick and tangible feedback.

Just playing the game first time should be an event that can be shared! If most apps are barely used more than once, the second play should be an event that is celebrated.

2. Give me something for playing.

Perhaps a post-game note for playing will help?  Sending an email or a text message could be an interesting way to remind players to play again. I think some connection between the mobile and the web experience would be interesting.  After all, email isn’t dead as far as I know.

3. Connect to the outside world.

Using location provide tangible rewards attached to game play.  For example, you are playing Words with Friends and win a game while you were playing in the bar waiting for a friend. What if the bar, provided a free shot, or beer to you for winning? Using location, plugging into games that people are playing we give tangible local rewards.

There is room for companies to use local incentives to provide mobile games that hook, that will entice players to share their game experience.  Just think of that moment when a game gives you a tangible gift, that you can redeem at that moment and how much you would be likely to tell a friend.

2nd Wedding Anniversay - What I am learning from my wife

Today I celebrate the best and most important decision in my life.  Two years ago Lisa Graves, became Lisa Graves Courtines, my gorgeous wife.  Before you get spooked, I'm not going gush lovingly in a public post, Lisa knows how important she is to me.  I want to extoll all the great things that I have learned from my wife and am continually trying to get better at.  I strongly believe that if I can become more like Lisa, I'll be a much better man.

What I learned from my wife:

Give thanks and praise

- Lisa appreciates every one of her friends and co-workers publically and authentically.  She gives gratitude to others effortlessly.

 

Gets things done

- She does not believe in putting things off.  She has her trusty notepad (or Google Calendar) and goes down the list.  Nothing that is important is put off.  Her motto, "I don't want to think about this tomorrow, so let's get it done"

 

Follows her passions

- Lisa is a great production artist and can work in a pre-press environment with her eyes closed. She had mastered it.  Feeling confident and curious about digital photo retouching, she made a complete pivot of her career. She took the classes, did the work and became a professional digital photo retoucher in less than a year. She's now a Photoshop expert and never stops trying to learn new tricks of the trade.  I am in awe of her. It was and is unbelievable to have seen the transformation.  She took her passion and made a new career out of it. How many people actually do that? Simply awesome.

 

Never stops working to improve

- She does not accept that she knows everything. Always pushing at the edges, my wife continues to press the issue when it comes to new things.  She is into energy work so she learned reiki. She found kindred spirits in certain types of books and read them all. She searches in herself and is in a constant state of self-improvement and discovery.  I have very little doubt that as an older woman she will be incredibly wise.

 

Deep understanding of communication and forgiveness

- If you ever meet my wife you will notice this immediately. She listens intently, cares what you have to say and has empathy for your emotions.  She doesn't hold things in. If something is on her mind, she'll let you know.  There is no going to bed angry.  She'll accept apologies and will apologize if she is in the wrong. (She's never wrong) Those skills and powers of communication are what make a great partner, friend, wife and marriage.

 

Thanks for the best two years of my life!

 

 

Social Media Weekend at Columbia University: Observations

I spend most of my weekend up at the Columbia Journalism School's Social Media Weekend conference. Sree and his band of volunteers did a great job.   It was small, chaotic, slightly seat of the pants but very effective.  Held in just two rooms across the hall from each other, it was easy to get around in.  Sessions were longer than your average conference and there was on the whole, a much more participatory vibe.  The conference was intimate such that over time, people began to feel more comfortable with each out as the event went on

Most of the conference has been covered extensively.  I'd like to point out some of the hidden items I noticed that may not have been covered:

- Pen and paper.
Strangely I thought lots of people used pen and paper to take notes. I haven't been to school in a long time but I figured hard copy notes were toast.  I'll have to think again.

- Lots of woman
In line with the demographics of social networks, my sense is that the crowd was probably 55-60% woman.  This is an on going trend within the digital space workforce.  At AO the editorial staff is increasingly female.  This is a good thing.  New views on life, more empathic in nature and open to sharing experiences, the social web was made of woman. 

- Not a lot of business talk
I understand it is sponsored by the journalism school and all, but there were no sessions on the business of news.  The business of news is under attack and I would have though some discussion on social media as a business for news would have been discussed.  Little suggestion - add C-level executives and lesss reporters.  Folks need to know what they are getting into.

- More on metrics of success
I know metrics are boring but you do folks a disservice to not offer a top line understanding of what makes a successful website in terms of metrics. Or what brands consider success on Facebook. We should all strive to know what our stories, comments, fans or likes are actually worth from a profit and loss perspective.

- Experience is short in supply
Lots of folks are very green. (In terms of actual time on platforms)  It seemed most social medians had two years or less experience.  In some cases those folks that were new to the game were already on panels.  There is still room to make a move,  the barrier to entry is very low and anyone can say "I do social media" Take away? Check peoples work, see if they understand higer concepts of the web but don't dismiss creativity of the new.

 

Additional Resources:
Social Media Weekend site

Sree's Social Media guide

#Smwknd chatter

Social Media Weekend Posterous

 

What did you think of Social Media Weekend?  I am off?  What did you think?

Don't forget about the actually WORK

"If someone says “I want to be more strategic” – that says that I don’t want to do anymore work. It means I’ve found that I don’t do work and want to just have big ideas."

- I love this quote.  I think the key for people who think strategically is that you ask yourself can you actually do this work, have you actually do the work?  Don't ask people to do things you wouldn't do yourself or know how to do.

Found the quote in this great post on Selling Content Strategy from the Barbarian Group Blog summing up a presentation by Karen McGrane

Don't forget about the actually WORK

"If someone says “I want to be more strategic” – that says that I don’t want to do anymore work. It means I’ve found that I don’t do work and want to just have big ideas."

- I love this quote.  I think the key for people who think strategically is that you ask yourself can you actually do this work, have you actually do the work?  Don't ask people to do things you wouldn't do yourself or know how to do.

Found the quote in this great post on Selling Content Strategy from the Barbarian Group Blog summing up a presentation by Karen McGrane

Yesterday's gone so forget about it.

I'm in a funk.  There is no two ways about it.  I am off my game and I don't feel like I have been creative in a month or so.  Yes,  I am still writing and getting things out there in the the world but the really big stuff has been lacking.  One of the reasons I getting mired and bogged down is that I keep on thinking about what I am not doing.  Yesterday is my worst enemy.  Everyday before I get home think about what I didn't do that day or didn't do during the week.  I'm my own worst enemy and I am making myself feel bad about myself.  Stinks.

We have to remind ourselves to be good to ourselves,  reflect on what we've done and not look to what hasn't been done.  Remember to keep looking forward and start things.  Not everything has to be completely formed when you start it.  Not all strategy or jobs can be done in day. Sometimes just getting one sentence down,  spending twenty-five minutes working or sitting in the quiet can get you going.  This is as much for you as it is for me.  

Keep pushing forward, keep pressing play and don't focus on yesterday.  Yesterday is gone and it's not coming back.  Yesterday's are the very definition of sunk cost.

Yesterday's gone so forget about it.

I'm in a funk.  There is no two ways about it.  I am off my game and I don't feel like I have been creative in a month or so.  Yes,  I am still writing and getting things out there in the the world but the really big stuff has been lacking.  One of the reasons I getting mired and bogged down is that I keep on thinking about what I am not doing.  Yesterday is my worst enemy.  Everyday before I get home think about what I didn't do that day or didn't do during the week.  I'm my own worst enemy and I am making myself feel bad about myself.  Stink.

We have to remind ourselves to be good to ourselves,  reflect on what we've done and not look to what hasn't been done.  Remember to keep looking forward and start things.  Not everything has to be completely formed when you start it.  Not all strategy or jobs can be done in day. Sometimes just getting one sentence down,  spending twenty-five minutes working or sitting in the quiet can get you going.  This is as much for you as it is for me.  

Keep pushing forward, keep pressing play and don't focus on yesterday.  Yesterday is gone and it's not coming back.  Yesterday's are the very definition of sunk cost.

Why Lady Gaga is getting into the games business with Zynga

For many people hearing that Lady Gaga is going into business with social games giant Zynga has got to have them scratching their heads.  After all, why would the coolest, most iconic pop star since Madonna want to be a part of the decidedly uncool, reviled by hipsters, makers of Farmville?  I've got a few ideas that when you hear will make sense:

Audience Size
Zynga commands a huge audience; bigger than most people realize.  Any way you slice it, by monthly active players or daily active players, Zynga is simply huge.  Reaching over 250 million players a month and approximately 50 million a day, Lady Gaga wouldn't be able to reach this many if people if she were on American Idol for a month.

A New Platform
Lady Gaga is the queen of being where he audience is.  She is one of the top celebrities on nearly every network that counts.  She has the most views on YouTube, the most Twitter followers and her Facebook fan page fan count is right up there.  The next logical step is for her to reach the game audience.  With Zynga, Lady Gaga has the opportunity to reach an entirely new audience of online game players and a new demographic, her fans mothers!

New Revenue
The forgotten success of Zynga is its mainstream introduction of micro transactions.  Zynga makes its money by selling very inexpensive virtual items that either helps a player go faster through one of their games, or as unique decorations.  For Gaga, having the opportunity to tap into the micro transactions market is invaluable.  If a Gaga brand game or Gaga goods can do well, she'll be able to access a whole new revenue stream untouched by any artist so far. I can see her little monsters scooping up ever piece of Gaga branded game art, can't you?

Consistent with her brand
Lady Gaga is an original (derivitive, but original).  She's an artist and thrives by taking risks and chances.  By being on the edge of a cultural phenomenon she's able to be out front of things and have first mover advantage.  Pairing up with Zynga is out on the edge and unusual for the music business.  Regular artists or controlled artists would never even think of being part of a game company’s portfolio.  Gaga's fans expect her to be on the edge of culture and Zynga represents that new frontier for her.

Amplification
All of Lady Gaga's success has been within the context of the web and the opportunities for her art to be amplified.  When she does something wild it reaches so many people so quickly because her fans are connected to each other online.  Lady Gaga has become a phenomenon the old fashion way, through art and outlandishness while Zynga is an expert in the science of virality.   The marriage of the two extends virality and gives both the opportunity to share knowledge it what is working.

 

So what do you think?  Good?  Bad or indifferent the Lady Gaga’s Zynga plans?  Let know what you think.

 

On managing failure: it is all about degrees

I asked for a topic today on Twitter and friend Christian suggested I post on managing failure.  I've been thinking about it and I think it comes down to degrees.  Failure relies on two things to determine magnatude: how much it costs to fail and how much time it takes to fail.  In managing failure the key is to define success and define the mini-successes if you fail to meet the overall goal. 

For instance,  if you make a social game and set the bar of success at a million daily active users (DAU, a that would be a smashing success). On the way to the release you: do it quickly & ahead of schedule,  learn about scaling servers to accommodate players.  The game comes out and after the perscribed time period you're only at 200,000 DAU - Did you fail?

One the one had yes, you didn't reach the initial goal.  But if you managed the process and mark all the successes of the journey (scheduling, scaling) there are huges win to point to.  Additionally, if you completed the project at half the budget would you consider it a success? Was the work done quickly ahead of schedule? Is that success?

One of the best things we can do to manage these systems is to create parameters within our work.  Avoid a rolling deadline - set it! We have two weeks.... that's it!  Or set budgets that will cost this much - not a dollar more, not a dollar less.  By setting rules we can manage expectations for our failures.  It's similar to when you go to a casino. We say to ourselves, I'm spending only $100, its spent.  We will not gamble with any additional funds.  Using this priciple for work, we control for the degree of failure.

The key in my view, is to make sure you measure your success in terms of degrees within the two dimensions of speed and cost.  If you can fail fast that's ok.  If you fail cheap, that's even better. The ultimate - fast and cheap! Be beware of slow and expensive! That will destroy you.

How do you manage failure or account for it?

Innovation happens at the edges and in simplicity

There is so much talk about "innovation" and "winning the future" in the technology and business world that those ideas are becoming cliche.  What is not talked about is HOW you innovate and what the process of creativity is.  
From my readings and observations there are a handful of things that spur change:

Working at the edges
- one of the great ways to find the new is to go to the edge of what is currently possible and step over that line.  To open the door of possibility to what's next.  Inventors and artists stand on the shoulders of what has come before in order to make new ideas stick. Radio could not have exisited without telegraph, television without radio and on and on.  Find the edge or possible and solve new problem.

Make the complex simple
- This is Apple's great method.  Through designing for simplicity they take existing ideas and make them simple.  Digital music players existed before the iPod, tablet PC's existed before the iPad and Apple worked at simplifying those products to bring them to the masses.  The best way to do this for your projects is to set parameters or rules and not break them.  If you are building a website set the parameter that there will be only 10 links per page, if you are designing a device, there will be only one switch or set a hard budget of only $500. Constraints force simplicity.

It takes hard, steady work to be creative
- in the excellent series on the brain that Charlie Rose hosted, Chuck Close, the portrait painter said there are no eureka or epiphany moments in his creative process.  All creative innovation in his view is from working, working hard every day to create.  This is born out in writing as well, the number one advice for writers is to write, every day in a structured manner.  This is true for creating great product and services. We have to work at innovating every day.  Read an extra book, find a new blog, write a new story.  Work at it and what appears to have been a eureka moment will really have taken hours and hours of work.

Go outside of your normal
- in order to push new ideas we need to have varied opinions.  If you always work with engineers, you'll get ideas and solutions that engineers think of or if you only ask business minded folks, you'll get ideas that business folks are likely to have.  When brain storming you should have as many varied ideas as possible. When you have your kick off meeting bring in everyone,  business people,  customer service people,  ad operations, designers or your mom! Everyone brings a unique perspective to the table,  Try and go outside of your own knowledge base.  Sure, you know everything there is to know about the mobile phones?  How about you spend the week learning about cooking stir-fry?  By changing what you normally do, you may stimulate your brain and have one of those Dr. House moments when it all comes together.

What do you do to find ideas,  where does your innovative inspiration come from?  For me it's reading, what about you?

 

Do better, more and important stuff. It's time.

There was a quote I saw the other day that went something to the effect of "Our greatest minds are spending their time trying to get us to click more ads". Not a good use of resources for the USA!  I shared this quote on twitter and an MBA candidate, Bukola Ekundayo, who follows me asked, isn't making the ads more relevant helping? 

That got me thinking and is the reason for this post.  All of us need to think about what we are doing and ask ourselves am I bettering my world?  Am I contributing to the changing of institutions in our country that are failing? (Namely, our banks, our government, our education and our healthcare)

It’s clear to me that there are people who care deeply about the world, their fellow humans and what happens to humans on Earth.  They want to do more.  Most of them are stuck in institutions that are so completely broken that no amount of passion, caring or drive can fix them on the individual level. 

The only way we can fix our damaged systems is if collectively we group together and pull the rope in the same direction at the same time. We cannot wait for things to change or think that pulling the lever for the person we think can do the hard work for us will do it.  We have to get active and start DOING STUFF!

Tweeting, sharing stories on Facebook isn't enough.  We need bodies on the ground. Start protests, stand for what you believe in, start a company that CAN be transformative.

Think about these things as places to start:

We think a bank has great customer service because it gives out pens and is actually open? What?!? Are we so beaten that we accept that?  Try and remake the Bailey Savings and Loan. Oh not the part about giving out bad loans, but lending from the heart. Lending locally, being a bank of and from the people.  How about making bank charters that force a bank to make a percentage of the loans be within 10 miles of the branch? (Hey, its an idea)

When you go the doctor’s office how much paper work and people using filing cabinets with paper are there?  Think about what you would do to make the doctor’s office, you know? MODERN! It’s as though they have completely missed the internet.

How about voting? Why do I need to use a giant mechanical machine and why is done on a state by state basis?  In who's interest is it to disenfranchise people?  Could it be the less people you need to defraud, the easier it is to get elected? 

Think about media and its importance as the 3rd estate? Is there a real way that we can fund important investigative reporting? Can real truth be ground sourced?  Ever wonder why Wikileaks was so universally, quickly and angrily demonized?  Maybe they upset the cart? Maybe we need more of that?  Can you build a real system for safe whistle-blowing on the government.  I think we can.

There are real things we can do. Overcome your fear and start kicking down doors.  You just might change the world.

 

Untapped businesses in games

Couple of quick ideas I thought of heading home on the train.  If you can create these you might be on to something.

Universal avatar system where you sell virtual goods,
- create an extendible personal avatar system for flash games that allows the player to earn new items for their avatar based on game play.

White label social games.
- allow brands to create their own Farmville.  Create an SDK (development kit) where companies or amateurs can create new worlds.  Think Minecraft/Lego meets Zynga.

AdSense for virtual goods,
- standardize virtual goods so that advertisers can upload into a system and allow players to buy or place in their own virtual worlds.  

That's three and none of them are easy.  They are just ideas that some company either has done I didn't see or will do soon.

On the capture of Osama Bin Laden - Great news, but keep pushing.

Barack Obmama will likely be at his peak of popularity in the next few days.  Americans like winning and our President will benefit from our joy. Our culture is based on winning and losing.  Like Vince Lombardi, the iconic coach of the Green Bay Packers said "Winning isn't everything, its the only thing!" This ethos is steeped in US culture and we live by it.

The capture and killing of Osama Bin Laden is considered winning. Americans get this.  Its zero-sum, black and white, we got our  man and "getin' Osama" fits with our heroic narritive. Like our love of cowboys, football and obsession of sports in general, the USA is on the board. We scored the big goal or touchdown and runs to seal our championship on the War on Terror.

But this is not the time to give up and rest on our laurels.  As citizens now is the time to ask and demand more.  In the glow of victory other items can be cast aside.  We need to keep the coals to the feet of our leaders to press for institutional change that can help the US GROW!  Job rates and job creation is still stagnent, oil companies are still subsidized and raking in profits,  the super rich still aren't paying their fair share and we have to find a real and sustainable immigration policy.

We should never give up on our country, we should demand more.  We deserve a functional, working and flexible government that can change and improve.  What capturing Bin Laden shows is that the know-how, skill and can do attitude of the US is alive and well.  Let's demand that focus on our governmental institutions and make victory happen at home too.

Be happy citizens, it is a moment of glory. But do not forget the work is only just beginning and the promise of hope and change needs to be acted on.