Road to Authenticity – Part 1

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 In the several roles I have online (professional, educational, consultative, personal) I find that I have to cope with varying degrees of perceived authenticity.  I’ve been reading Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath, partly because I’m a storyteller and I appreciate being able to look at the way I formulate ideas and thoughts into stories in more a narrative arc, and partly because of the Web Strategies for Storytelling class I am taking this Fall at the University of Washington in conjunction with my Master of Communication in Digital Media (MCDM) program.

Anyway, the chapter I’m reading now is on the credibility of your story. Since credibility leads pretty much straight to authenticity, I started to think about how credible I am in each of these arenas and how that came about (and how it might change).  Not surprisingly, the online roles that are bolstered to some degree by personal, face-to-face contact carry a different quality of credibility.  This really points up the nature of the more human nature of social media (“I’ve met you, I know you a little better, and that helps me trust what you say.”).  It also points to the challenges of online roles that have little or no face-to-face components.

I watched an online video today on Jason Falls’ blog about four books he recommended reading.  Although I only came upon his blog (“met him”, if you will) today, he has attained greater credibility with me because of two things:

  1. His video book reviews.  He has personalized an experience that is important to me; I enjoy hearing about good books in my chats with friends and colleagues, and the video creates an openness that reached past what a simple blog post book review would have done.
  2. I already have two of the four books on my Kindle.  OK, so that’s serendipity, but it strengthens his other recommendations to me.  And it also made me bookmark his blog….

So these are all things that I want to get to. The kind of online credibility and authenticity that makes a first-time visitor go with your recommendations (or at least some of them) and want to come back for more.

Connectivity Wants to Be Free – Conversations and Expectations

/ Jeff Hora / 6 Comments

I have posted my SLIDESHARE version of my presentation:

My final posting may be found here.

Trends – More Discussion Questions

/ Jeff Hora / 1 Comment
  1. Why is it so difficult to find consistent correlations between Internet motivations and usage?
  2. What are the challenges of obtaining a true random sampling of users for an Internet-related research study?
  3. How can you arrive at a consistent ethical standard when applying the arguments found in The Tragedy of the Commons?

Who are we listening to?

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I am consistently drawn to the central point of the conversation as I read all of our assigned articles, books and collateral material. One of the standout articles that has brought a new perspective to my work and analysis of what I’m doing is the Christensen HBR article (Bower, Joseph L. & Christensen, Clayton M. (1995). “Disruptive Technologies: Catching the Wave” Harvard Business Review, January-February 1995). His analysis on how competent companies miss disruptive technologies by listening closely to their existing customers describes a business problem I am working with.

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Trends – Discussion Questions #2

/ Jeff Hora / 3 Comments
  1. Why were the innovators working on the telephone and the phonograph so hesitant to pronounce them as ‘break-away’ inventions from the telegraph?
  2. What other industries (beyond the Intel example) have a growing number of obviously overshot customers?  What industries might develop this problem soon?  What are some potential outcomes in addressing these challenges?
  3. When considering information discovery and filtering as when a user is doing research or following a whim, and then considering Google as an example of a service provided for this purpose, what is ‘the next thing” on this path? Why?

Book Review – “Tell Me Something Good”: Cluetrain and Conversations

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Review Citation:

Levine, R. (2000). The cluetrain manifesto: The end of business as usual. Cambridge, Mass: Perseus Books.

“The Cluetrain Manifesto” is a collective work written by Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls and David Weinberger and published in 2000. Its tagline is “the end of business as usual”. The specter of this book is the Suit. The Suit is the Executive VP, a “fat cat”, closed-minded person who sees markets and consumers as on the receiving end of whatever his company wants to say or sell. The “end of business as usual” is this person’s organizational demise, and the social effect of the Internet (and company intranets) is what causes his crumbling.

An overarching topic throughout this book is the conversation: between the members of communities of the marketplace, the members of communities within the workplace, and, best of all, among them all. When I think of what I am looking for from a conversation, the first phrase that comes to mind is “Tell Me Something Good”, hence the bit of collateral entertainment by Rufus and Chaka Khan!

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Reflection: Presentation Jazz

/ Jeff Hora / 2 Comments

My experience on Tuesday, presenting to my colleagues three consecutive times in forty-five minutes, felt very much like when I was a working musician. In most jazz groups I played with, we had a ‘chart’, so called because if provided enough melody and background riffs to play specifically, and then ‘chord hash’ that allowed an improviser to be able to play within the chord progressions (or not, depending on the player’s mood, sensibilities and abilities) while soloing.

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Discussion – Yin and Yang – Technology and People

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I read the article cited here:

Williams, F., Strover, S. and Grant, A. E. (1994). Social aspects of new media technologies. In J. Bryant J. & D. Zillmann (Eds.), Media effects: Advances in theory and research (pp. 463-482). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

I have substituted their phrase “new media” for “social media”.

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