Burnin'

Simon Dumenco, writing for Ad Age, taps a nerve when discussing the rise of social gaming and what it means for our culture.

In FarmVille, of course, you “work” your own plot of land, while FrontierVille stokes nostalgia for Manifest Destiny. (“Howdy, Pardner! Come join us on the frontier, where you’ll carve out a home in the wilderness and raise a family.”) Cafe World makes you a small-business owner/operator.

If only.

Think about all this for a moment: An American gaming company is captivating millions around the world by getting them to obsess about fake food, fake business and fake real estate. How America-right-now is that? The country that gave the world the housing bubble and the KFC Double Down (according to figures recently released by the World Health Organization, 67% of Americans are overweight) is betting big on pixelated playgrounds filled with sprawling plots of land, farm-fresh produce and fantasies of “cooking, slicing, chopping, sautéing and baking your way to the top of the culinary world!” in Cafe World’s words.

FarmVille has become the most popular game application on Facebook, with over 61.6 million active users and over 24.1 million Facebook application fans in June 2010. If you spend any time on Facebook at all, a portion of your friends will spam you with Farmville requests. Dumenco asks, “How America-right-now is that?” I might simplify his rhetorical question to “How American is that?” Day-dreamy ambition is indeed an American trait. F. Scott Fitzgerald spent his entire career addressing the topic, and he’s one of our most literate 20th century voices.

Dumenco admits to being depressed by the rise of social media gaming. I know what he means but it’s important to make room for the imagination. There are more imaginative things to do than play games, online or off, but on the grand scale of attention robbing activities, Farmville and its lot are relatively innocent. First person shooter games are another story. Giving kids toy guns is bad enough, but now we provide the whole killing experience via the click of a mouse. Now that’s depressing. It’s also sick and wrong.

Fred Wilson is a managing partner at Union Square Ventures, a venture capital firm. He writes the popular “A VC” blog (“musing of a VC in NYC”), and has invested in numerous game-changing tech companies, including Twitter, del.icio.us, Etsy, and FeedBurner.

I’ve been reading his blog off and on for years, but have never seen him speak. Thanks to The 99 Percent, part of the Behance Network, we can now hear his thoughts on the all the various ways to run your own show.

Wilson describes various types of organizations that entrepreneurs run.

• the sole proprietorship
• the partnership
• marriage partners as business partners
• the boutique
• the federation
• the project
• the tour bus
• the startup
• the breakout
• the company

I feel like my new company, Bonehook LLC, borrows freely from several of the examples above, namely the sole proprietorship, the partnership, the boutique, the federation and the project. I’m the sole owner of Bonehook, but I have a partner in AdPulp. In the creative services arena, small firms are often called boutiques, and I have no problem with that. The federation model that Wilson describes is perfectly resonant, as the work Bonehook does is totally dependent on my network of collaborators who step forward on a project basis to help solve client’s marcom problems.

I also like the examples Wilson gives for each model: Matt Drudge; Openshop Studios; DailyLit; Union Square Ventures; Allen & Co; Avatar; Hype Machine; Red Stamp; Foursquare; and Twitter.

Cathy’s Book is a transmedia storytelling experience written and produced by Sean Stewart and Jordan Weisman (with illustrations by Cathy Brigg). First published in 2006, the book includes an evidence packet filled with letters, phone numbers, pictures, and birth certificates, as well as doodles and notes written by Cathy in the page margins.

Cathy’s Book is a huge success and now two more books, Cathy’s Key and Cathy’s Ring round out the trilogy. All three are presented in print and online in a complimentary and overlapping fashion.

One of the author’s, Sean Stewart of Fourth Wall Studios, spoke to ARGNet about building “interactive arcs” into the stories, so that a reader might send an email and go through a 3 or 4-step investigation to arrive at a satisfying endpoint.

Online or off, the magic here is the series of interactions taking place between readers/followers/fans and the storytellers. Stewart explains:

MA: What was your favorite out-of-book element in the trilogy?

SS: Actually, I think my favorite thing we did was to build a gallery for readers to post their art…and then put some of those pictures in the printed books. There is something very beautiful to me about closing that circle: the books invite you into Cathy’s life beyond the page, and then, eventually, circle around until your life is part of her printed world. That for me is a lovely version of The Dance – that cooperative give-and-take between artist and audience that is seems so clearly to be part of what the next evolution of art will be.

With the rise of digital culture, writers are now required to think beyond their manuscript. And while the writer remains the architect of the story, as the larger experience of the story unfolds, others with a deep interest in the story emerge to help bring finishing touches and/or new ideas to the table. This could be somewhat off-putting to the storyteller, put in needn’t be. When you tell a story in the ancient tradition–around a campfire!–the people gathered there clearly impact the pace of the story, the details left in or taken out, the ending, etc. Thanks to the interactive abilities of today’s always-on mediums, we’re getting back to that more familiar model.

Read more about transmedia storytelling on AdPulp: Brand Narratives Will Benefit from Transmedia Storytelling

Digital ninja, Faris Yakob–who I had the pleasure of meeting at a conference in Cambridge, MA a few years ago–made a guest post on Gaping Void that resonates.

Here’s the heart of Yakob’s argument:

Once you begin to extend yourself via media, you become aware that by broadcasting your life through media fragments, you are creating an idea of who you are that is distinct from, but inextricably linked to, who you are.

And that brand is a highly defensible asset.

Naturally, Yakob is referencing the ideas in “The Brand Called You,” a 1997 article by Tom Peters in Fast Company. I bought in to this line of thinking pretty much since it emerged and I’ve been actively “extending myself via media” since 1999, when I launched my first site.

Given the investments I’ve made in my brand, particularly at AdPulp, I ought to have a “highly defensible asset” that can be used to land clients, speaking engagements, job offers and the like. Yet, the reality on the ground isn’t nearly as grand as all that. I’ve spent many a long night tossing and turning on why that is.

One problem is I’ve established myself as an ad critic while continuing to work in the business, which may lead to some unintentional confusion. For instance, when you meet me, are you meeting David Burn the ad guy, or David Burn the guy who rips on and/or compliments other ad guys? Personally, I’ve never had a hard time unifying the two. To make quality communications, one needs to be acutely aware of the rest of the field in order to instinctively react to it, build upon it or utterly reject it. For that reason, AdPulp ought to be the ultimate portfolio piece. But unless the job in question calls for the creation of an online media property, it’s often perceived to be an apples-to-oranges situation.

Here’s the thing though, I’m not really concerned about the brand called me problem I just outlined. As Shakespeare said, “to thine own self be true.” I’m doing what I like to do, and what I’m good at. I don’t need a bunch of people to recognize how to best employ my talents for their own benefit, I just need a handful of people to do so. That’s why I started Bonehook and that’s why it’s a content development firm, versus an “ad agency.” I’m making it as obvious as I can that my success with AdPulp is directly transferable to any number of my client’s marketing problems.

Serial entrepreneur, MarkAndreessen, thinks print media companies need to take a page from the Spanish Empire’s playbook and make real their commitment to digital.

Here’s Tech Crunch’s take on Andreessen’s POV:

Legend has it that when Cortes landed in Mexico in the 1500s, he ordered his men to burn the ships that had brought them there to remove the possibility of doing anything other than going forward into the unknown. Marc Andreessen has the same advice for old media companies: “Burn the boats.”

In particular, he was talking about print media such as newspapers and magazines, and his longstanding recommendation that they should shut down their print editions and embrace the Web wholeheartedly. “You gotta burn the boats,” he told me, “you gotta commit.” His point is that if traditional media companies don’t burn their own boats, somebody else will.

I like the imagery Andreessen’s using, but instead of burning the boats, it might be smart to keep all oars in the water, as it were. It’s not like there won’t be printed newspapers and magazines in the future. There will be. They might become rather expensive–as they are expensive to produce and distribute–but they’ll be available.

On a related note, here’s Grace Potter and Joe Satriani covering “Cortez the Killer” by Neil Young.

Good Magazine is sharing a particularly good idea here.

Having lived in San Francisco, I know what a pain it is to park there. Sometimes you go round and around for half an hour to an hour just to find an empty spot, which is insanity, but that doesn’t stop it from happening.

Dynamic parking meter pricing and availability is technology that’s solving an actual need. Thank you Streetline. So many of the tech developments that grab the media’s attention are inconsequential in the grand scheme. For instance any news about Facebook is completely wasted on me.

How has the Internet changed the way you think? That’s a huge question for our time and it’s the question Edge.org put in front on 167 world-class scientists, artists, and creative thinkers. Their range of answers is a deep well that one can dip into time and again, like a book of Shakespeare’s sonnets.

To get a taste for some of the thinking, please sample these small bits…

From Howard Rheingold:

Crap detection — Hemingway’s name for what digital librarians call credibility assessment — is another essential literacy. If all schoolchildren could learn one skill before they go online for the first time, I think it should be the ability to find the answer to any question and the skills necessary to determine whether the answer is accurate or not.

From Douglas Rushkoff:

The Internet pushes us all toward the immediate. The now. Every inquiry is to be answered right away, and every fact or idea is only as fresh as the time it takes to refresh a page.

And as a result, speaking for myself, the Internet makes me mean. Resentful. Short-fused. Reactionary.

From Kevin Kelly:

In fact the propensity of the Internet to diminish our attention is overrated. I do find that smaller and smaller bits of information can command the full attention of my over-educated mind.

From George Dyson:

We used to be kayak builders, collecting all available fragments of information to assemble the framework that kept us afloat. Now, we have to learn to become dugout-canoe builders, discarding unneccessary information to reveal the shape of knowledge hidden within.

From Paul Kedrosky:

If we know anything about knowledge, about innovation, and therefore about coming up with big deep thoughts, it is that it is cumulative, an accretive process of happening upon, connecting, and assembling, like an infinite erector set, not just a few pretty I-beams strewn about on a concrete floor.

From Paul Saffo:

Back in the mid-1700s, Samuel Johnson observed that there were two kinds of knowledge: that which you know, and that which you know where to get. The Internet has changed our thinking, but if it is to be a change for the better, we must add a third kind of knowledge to Johnson’s list — the knowledge of what matters. Knowing what matters is more than mere relevance. It is the skill of asking questions that have purpose, that lead to larger understandings.

From Clay Shirky:

This shock of inclusion, where professional media gives way to participation by two billion amateurs (a threshold we will cross this year) means that average quality of public thought has collapsed; when anyone can say anything any time, how could it not? If all that happens from this influx of amateurs is the destruction of existing models for producing high-quality material, we would be at the beginning of another Dark Ages.

So it falls to us to make sure that isn’t all that happens.

Of course, we all have our own essays to write.

I started using a computer to type up my college papers in 1983. But it wasn’t until 1995 that I started using email and even then, I used it sparingly. For me, 1997 was the year when the information revolution swept me up in its fast moving tide. Which means I’ve only been thinking inside this particular framework of networked machines for 13 years. Fundamentally, has it altered the way my brain works? I don’t know, but I do know my habits have changed radically. While I read fewer books now, my overall volume of reading and writing (and thinking) has increased dramatically. I now spend many hours almost every day reading, writing and thinking. I’d like to think that’s a good thing, although I’m keenly aware of the need for balance.

I’m fascinated by Jonathan Harris and his sketchbooks.

When we use manual instruments to write and draw, I think there’s more feeling in the work, similar to how there’s more sound in a vinyl record than there is in a compact disc.

Harris is obviously a master with pen and paper, but he’s also a technologist. As he considers next steps in the evolution of storytelling, he imagines that it will play out online (which is more than a little likely).

Here’s a passage from the video above that’s worth studying closely:

Anything can be the hub. Anything can be the center. I really believe that’s the future of information presentation. The metaphor of the page as an organizing principal is dead. It’s archaic. It doesn’t work anymore. A better approach is to portray a world of connectivity. A world of connections. A huge connected graph where any node in the graph can be the first order node and everything else is expressed in relation to that node.

For sure, the page has always been a lonely place. Maybe that’s why I find comfort in it. The reality is both modalities are in play today—the lonely page (physical or digital) and the rushing river of real time “conversation.” Both have immense value. But the roar of the river can be deafening, especially in the rainy season. A notebook is a quiet place to think, a refuge from modernity. I need to spend more time in mine.

Alan D. Mutter writes Reflections of a Newsosaur, where, for the reader’s benefit, he combines his experience in Silicon Valley with that of his time spent at newspapers. As such, he’s a good person to consider how publishers can make money online, or if they can.

He offers this quick checklist:

1. You cannot charge for such commoditized content as world, national, business, sports and entertainment news.

2. You might be able to charge for local coverage, if it is sufficiently intensive, comprehensive and exclusive to make to make it required reading for residents of the targeted community.

3. In the business-to-business realm, you probably can charge users for exclusive information that helps them make money, avoid losing money or, ideally, both at the same time.

4. You probably can charge consumers for two things: (a) exclusive entertainment content and (b) authoritative information that helps them hang on to more of their money.

I think this is a pretty tight look at the topic. Exclusive content, especially in an area that others rely on to do their own jobs or manage their own money, is worth paying for/subscribing to, now as before. But such content is not common. It’s rare.

The online monetization conundrum isn’t about electrons versus print at all. The issue is the same as it ever was–the publisher with the best, most relevant and entertaining content wins. And that victory won’t be delivered by paid subscribers alone, but through a mix of revenue streams that might include semi-annual fund drives, selling merchandise like books or t-shirts, wise use of search and display advertising and sponsored events or conferences.

Books are like babies. They take time to conceive, develop and eventually stand on their own.

According to The New York Times, a star of the print media business–now deep into her first big digital project–thinks she can speed the incubation process up considerably.

In a joint venture with Perseus Books Group, The Daily Beast is forming a new imprint, Beast Books, that will focus on publishing timely titles by Daily Beast writers — first as e-books, and then as paperbacks on a much shorter schedule than traditional books.

“There is a real window of interest when people want to know something,” Ms. Brown said. “And that window slams shut pretty quickly in the media cycle.”

Perseus is paying The Daily Beast a five-figure management advance to cover the costs of editing and designing the books, and Perseus will distribute the titles through its existing sales force. The writers will receive low five-figure advances from Perseus, then split profits from the sale of both the e-books and paperbacks with Perseus and The Daily Beast.

The imprint’s first book, scheduled to be published as an e-book in December and a paperback in January, is “Attack of the Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe Is Hijacking America,” by John P. Avlon.

It’s not often that I find something profound in the pages of The Wall Street Journal. But today I did.

…emailing at this frantic rate, is pleasing very few of us. It is encroaching on parts of our lives that should be separate or sacred, altering our minds and our ability to know our world, encouraging a further distancing from our bodies and our natures and our communities. We can change this; we have to change it. Of course email is good for many things; that has never been in dispute. But we need to learn to use it far more sparingly, with far less dependency, if we are to gain control of our lives.

In the past two decades, we have witnessed one of the greatest breakdowns of the barrier between our work and per­sonal lives since the notion of leisure time emerged in Victorian Britain as a result of the Industrial Age. It has put us under great physical and mental strain, altering our brain chemistry and daily needs. It has isolated us from the people with whom we live, siphoning us away from real-world places where we gather. It has encouraged flotillas of unnecessary jabbering, making it difficult to tell signal from noise. It has made it more difficult to read slowly and enjoy it, hastening the already declining rates of literacy. It has made it harder to listen and mean it, to be idle and not fidget.

This is not a sustainable way to live. This lifestyle of being constantly on causes emotional and physical burnout, work­place meltdowns, and unhappiness. How many of our most joyful memories have been created in front of a screen?

John Freeman, acting editor of Granta magazine fashioned his manifesto for slow communication from his forthcoming book, The Tyranny of E-Mail.

The passage above brings up a lot of things I’ve been dealing with for years. Electronic mail is but the tip of the iceberg. My professional identity is now tied (in part) to the Web, thanks to the success of AdPulp.com. Thus, I’m compelled to add content to the machine multiple times a day—an act which requires sifting through hundreds of Web pages and all the little bits therein fighting to be noticed. In short, I’m overexposed, and overexposure sadly is something I share with too many friends and colleagues.

Recently, I moderated an online debate between two old friends on the importance of Facebook. One friend argued for the social networking site while the other explained why he couldn’t be bothered. “Socializing on the Internet is not for me,” my reluctant friend said, noting what is for him: hiking Utah’s beautiful trails, riding his bike, reading books and writing books. This friend is a deep believer in slow communication. So much so he’s been traveling around the country this summer and intentionally choosing to leave his laptop at home (so he can enjoy his travels unencumbered). Email, he says, mostly upsets him, as it often comes, consciously or not, with a list of demands on his time.

I admire my friend’s clarity on this issue and his wise decision to allocate his time to physical world activities. Sometimes I think about closing the laptop, storing it on a shelf and forcing myself to rejoin the analog world of book stores, telephone calls and physical work. There’s probably a way to achieve the balance I need without taking drastic measures, but the fact remains I think about the cold turkey approach regularly, which tells me I need to change my habits, one way or another.

Portland journalist Abraham Hyatt spent the last month organizing all the details that went into today’s Digital Journalism Camp, a free conference for journalists of all stripes. Given the state of newspapers and journalism in general, the price was certainly right.

One thing that wasn’t right was the no WiFi situation. Apparently, Sprint was going to provide WiFi but bailed at the last minute. There was one hot spot available but it was only good for eight connections. Some attendees plugged their machines to a physical port, some thanked their stars for a cell connection and others took notes the old fashioned way, by hand in a $1.29 notebook (can you imagine?).

Hyatt opened the day with remarks about re-imagining the work journalists do. He said journalists must find “nimble, pro-active and exciting ways of telling stories and describing the world we live in.”

The first panel of the day–on hyperlocal news sites–was led by business writer Michelle Rafter. She said if she had a million dollars she’d build and fund a hyperlocal news organization. Panelist Ken Aaron, Co-Founder of Neighborhood Notes, could relate. His site endeavors to break news on the neighborhood level in Portland. He described the transition Neighborhood Notes made from blog to news site and I was happy to hear they do, in fact, pay freelance writers for news stories assigned by the site’s editor(s). The rate is only $.10/word but it’s more than Huffington Post pays, or AdPulp for that matter.

During the morning’s second panel on SEO for journalists, I learned that I’m supposed to look at Google Trends for keywords and then place them in my titles, preferably surrounded by html header tags. I’m sure the experts are right, but that’s not how I roll. Writing creative headlines is a joy and not one I’m likely to give up any time soon.

I grabbed a free falafel for lunch and a bottle of water, courtesy of a conference sponsor. Over the lunch hour, I chatted with Steven Walling who writes for ReadWriteWeb and works for AboutUs. Alex Wilhelm, a.k.a @Alex, Co-Founder of Contenture told me about his new PayPal-like service for content producers (something I want to learn more about and perhaps put into play). Finally, Mike Rogoway, business writer for The Oregonian, entertained my questions about why OregonLive.com was down the street in a separate building. He reminded me that while both The Oregonian and OregonLive.com are owned by Advance, they are in fact two different companies. I know that, of course, but it’s something I can’t quite get my thick head around.

The one o’clock hour was Ginger Grant’s turn to entice the audience with the power of story and myth, in particular. By the way, this Grant is not a character on Gilligan’s Island. She’s a B.C.-based professor, speaker and consultant. Grant said when she looks at a company she doesn’t want to know job descriptions. Rather, she wants to know what people are good at and most passionate about. She said if we suck at something maybe we ought to stop doing it. Sounds logical.

Grant also suggested we each make a list with two columns. First, list “What You Love” and follow it with “What’s Not Working For You.” Then use what you love to fix what’s not working for you, she said. Interesting. With that math, I ought to be able to write my way out of financial instability. Hold it, I’ve done that (several times over). Yes, but it’s a challenge that never ends.

“The Raconteurs of Madison County” is a title I came up with one day, after encountering the Web site Name Your Tale.

Name Your Tale asks for a title and if they like it, one of the site’s writers creates “a very short story, in fact, exactly 100 words.” Jenny Nicholson, who lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and works in advertising by day, “while plotting world domination at night,” was kind enough to write to my title idea.

Name Your Tale was started by Nick Faber. Jeremy Griffin is also part of the project.

On other micro fiction fronts, we have Two Sentence Stories, Fifty Word Stories and Six Word Stories.

I just submitted three “six word stories” for consideration. They are:

• Will work for mansion in Wilmette.
• It takes beer to make wine.
• Before Twitter she did not type.

Maybe these bits will be digitally elevated on Six Word Stories. Or maybe I need to work harder to get away from bumper sticker copy. Either way, it’s a fun exercise and I appreciate the efforts of those involved.