Arthur Nelson is one of the most influential people in my life. I’ve actually mentioned him in previous posts such as The Fog of Social Media or 50+ Years Later: Buglabs Arrives. He’s a very successful entrepreneur who has played the great game of business for over 60 years. During his career, he’s started more than 20 companies–some are businesses and others are nonprofits.

As someone forty years my senior, Arthur has forgotten the solutions to more business problems than I’ve ever learned. Therefore, no matter how difficult the business problem, there is nothing that I struggle with today that he hasn’t dealt with at least twice yesterday.

Arthur doesn’t use Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube. He doesn’t read blogs, participate in user forums, and wouldn’t know the difference between a feed reader and a bird feeder.  But whenever I feel overwhelmed at the breakneck speeds of today’s business, whenever I start to believe my own press and think that I know it all, I call Arthur, who always does one of two things:

1. Gives me a different perspective
2. or smacks me upside the head.

Who is your Arthur Nelson?

I was in a foul mood last Thursday morning. I had just read a series of blog posts from a former client who was using the ideas I taught his company to build its social media business. Normally, I’d be ecstatic about such an event, but the fact that the company owes me a considerable sum of money tempered my enthusiasm. I felt as if someone had stolen from me.

My first testosterone-fueled-caveman-impulse was to write about it, to expose the company’s business practices to the online world. But that’s when a more sane idea emerged. What would my social network say about the situation? So, I posted the following question to Twitter:

“If a former client was using your work to expand their business, yet they’ve owed you money for six months, when would you blog about it?”

Within 11 minutes, five people who I really respect (and their collective 35,000 followers respect them too) offered their advice.

My mood changed instantly upon reading these rapid responses. I loved how each person cared about one of two things: 1) me and my reputation and 2) the poor soul who may fall prey to the company in the future.

In eleven minutes, I had a totally different perspective on the problem. Had I taken the caveman route, I may have done something stupid that limited my options. Instead, subsequent conversations have yielded plenty of them to choose from. Presently, I’m weighing those options.

I am so grateful to my social network board of advisors who care enough about me to offer such good and timely advice. Thank you Kirsten, Shel, Eric, C.C., and Adrianne.

So, who’s on your board of advisors?

A few years later, I read a book by Paul Zane Pilzer that not only disagreed with my college professor, but its concepts helped shape every career decision that I’ve made since.  The book, Unlimited Wealth: The Theory and Practice of Economic Alchemy, helped me understand that the pursuit of controlling scarce resources was futile because the technology-of-the-day defines what a resource is.

For example, oil was an annoyance until someone figured out that it was a rich source of energy. In an agrarian society, land was considered a scarce resource, until we developed new methods for significantly increasing the harvest per square acre. And if the laws of supply and demand proved correctly, sand, the most plentiful material on earth, should have no value at all–that is until someone discoverd its semiconductive properties and built an entire valley in Northern California based on the discovery.

The concept that yesterday’s scarce resources can become abundant today creates huge challenges to those who’ve built their businesses on the obsoleted resource. If technology determines what a resource is, and the rate of technological change is accelerating, then anyone in the business of controlling resources faces real-time financial ruin the moment someone invents a technology that transforms that scarce resource into an abundant one.

Fast forward to 2009, with a book that picks up where Unlimited Wealth left off: Chris Anderson‘s Free: The Future of a Radical Price.  Twenty years ago, there was no Google, WordPress, iTunes, Youtube, Facebook or Twitter–all technologies that transformed publishing from a scarce resource (printing presses and transmission towers) into an abundant one. Anderson takes a look at the ramifications that online technologies have had on driving the marginal cost of information delivery so low as to make it too small to measure.

While many businesses morn what has been lost through the cost marginalization of information delivery, Free focuses precicely on the abundance of opportunities that businesses have to choose from. The question (which I have posted in this blog on many occasions) is:  do business leaders have the intestinal fortitude required to reap the benefits of those opportunities? Anderson sums up the sentiment on page 233:

Free is not a magic bullet. Giving away what you do will not make you rich by itself. You have to think creatively about how to convert the reputation and attention you can get from Free into cash. Every person and every project will require a different answer to that challenge, and sometimes it won’t work at all. This is just like everything else in life–the only mystery is why people blame Free for their own poverty of imagination and intolerance for possible failure.

Every now and then, a book comes along that needs to be read multiple times to completely absorb its concepts. Not only have I’ve read Unlimited Wealth at least a half-dozen times, but I’ve purchased it at least that many times, as my copy always seems to be on someone else’s bookshelf.  More than likely I’ll be dong the same thing with Free.

During the next few weeks, I’ll be discussing specific things that companies must do (or avoid!) to benefit form the disruptive power of abundance vs. scarcity-based business thinking. Stay tuned.

Tags: Free Chris Anderson Paul Zane Pilzer Ron Ploof Abundance Scarcity New Media Evangelist Business

Your New Media Evangelist has nothing against the word by itself, but when placed before the word “video,” both my systolic and diastolic blood pressure measurements increase significantly.

The phrase creates a distortion field that inhibits a communicator’s ability to focus, frequently putting them into a delusional state of believing that they’re the next Steven Spielberg, Quentin Tarantino, or Tim Street.

I’m begging you. For the love of all that’s holy, please eliminate the phrase “viral video” from your pre-production vocabulary. Trust me, the phrase will drain all of your budget and leave you with moving pictures that your kids will call “lame.”

Instead of trying to manufacture million of downloads, try creating useful videos that tell good stories. If millions of people just happen to forward that video to all of their friends, then I’ll consider lifting my embargo. But not before.

A video’s virality can only be determined AFTER it is released.

Tags: viral video viral embargo eliminate ronamok ronploof New Media Evangelist

Here’s what we talked about:

Click here to go to the original video.

Tags: Ragan Communications Mark Ragan Ron Ploof New Media Evangelist ronamok online video interview

Think about how we interact with computer devices today. We’re constantly updating our statuses, letting others know what we are doing, seeing, and feeling. Our GPS-enabled portable media devices know both our physical locations and our calendars, thus have the information necessary to get us from point A to point B. Add wireless connectivity to vast networks of information and these devices can route us around traffic congestion while also helping us to decide whether or not we should  carry an umbrella when we get there. The study of Informatics will add decision-making capabilities to these devices, making them Super Personal Digital Assistants.

For example, it’s almost noon on a cold and rainy Tuesday in the not-so-distant future. You haven’t eaten breakfast, are physically thirty minutes away from your 1:00 p.m. appointment and need to grab lunch. Your Super PDA takes all of this into account and recommends a restaurant less than a mile away.

But the choice isn’t arbitrary. After culling through a list of local restaurants that can get you in and out in less than thirty minutes, it suggests the one that just happens to have your favorite soup on its “Specials Menu.” Had it been 85 degrees Fahrenheit and sunny, it would have suggested a local deli that is adjacent to your favorite frozen yogurt shop.

We in Social Media need to pay close attention to places like the Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences and its study of Informatics. As the Social Web expands, adding millions of people with billions of more messages, opportunities will arise for us to help our clients make contextual-based marketing connections with their customers.

Ah, to be 18 again.

Photo Credit: Kevin Coles

Tags: Bren UCI University of California Irvine Informatics New Media Evangelist

In the case study, The Ranger Station Fire, I made an observation that the retweet is one of the most powerful communications devices in the social media world today. It’s a personal endorsement that says, “This content is so important that I’m willing to pass it along with my seal of approval.” Can you think of anything better to happen to your online content? A retweet it the propellant that rockets your content through the Twitter channel.

Although we don’t have the luxury of a channel-specific word like retweet in other online venues, we still make endorsements. We repost messages in blogs, we refer clients in business, and we repeat our favorite bits of knowledge in conversation.

As you create online content for your business, it’s important to think about how that message will propagate throughout the ether. What makes your content so compelling  that others want to carry it forward for you?

What’s your “Re” factor?

Photo Credit: jehangreco

Tags: Re factor content channels New Media New Media Evangelist ronamok twitter retweet

In his 1996 book, Being Digital, Nicholas Negroponte discusses the  concept of atoms and bits. Since the economics of the past were based on the manufacturing and distribution of atoms, the content that we consumed came in the form of paper, film, vinyl, or magnetic tape. Yet as we began digitizing our content and putting it online, the need to manufacture and transport atoms became obsolete in favor of distributing content as bits.

Bit-based publications have an economic advantage over their atom-based cousins simply because they don’t need paper, ink, trucks, or fuel to deliver their content. The ramifications of this economic reality have been chronicled in Paul Gillin’s Newspaper Death Watch and it was only a matter of time before atom-based publication losses trickled down into the distribution channels.

Out of Town News has been a fixture in the very center of Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts since 1955. As someone who grew up in the area, I can’t count the number of times I stopped by Out of Town News, either on my way to or fro the “T” Station to pickup a newspaper. The iconic newsstand recently decided not to renew its lease, and will be vacating its prime real estate — perhaps as soon as the end of the month.

Ironically, when bit-based publication Wicked Local.com asked about the closing, General Manager Kallol Barua said, “Nobody buys newspapers anymore. People are reading everything online mostly.”

The new Economics of Influence is rippling through atom-based information and entertainment industries, as those involved distribution (think the Music Industry) are squeezed in favor of those who distribute as bits. From a nostalgic perspective, it’s sad. Out of Town News occupies a soft spot in my heart. But from an opportunity perspective, we live in very exciting times. The entire way we as humans create, distribute and consume content is in flux. Old industries are dying while new industries are being born. Nobody knows exactly how its gonna shake out, but anyone who has studied history knows that changes like these have always made the society richer as opposed to poorer. You just need faith.

Do you have faith?

Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/afagen/

Tags: Out of Town News Economics of Influence Paul Gillin Being Digital Nicholas Negroponte atoms bits Newspaper Death Watch ronamok ronploof New Media Evangelist

And yes, those pins go all the way through the bones in my finger. Pretty cool eh?

Looks like they’ll be removed next Thursday at 11:15 a.m. Unfortunately, I’m gonna be AWAKE!