Archives for August 2010

There Are Always Pickles

August 31, 2010 by Ian 1 Comment

Last weekend, Jaz and I went out for an anniversary/birthday date. We don’t get a lot of opportunity to do so, so it was nice – went to see Avatar in 3D, then to a restaurant we’ve known to be excellent for a long time – but they changed the menu recently, and took away everything that made them special. So I had a burger.

I order my burgers plain. No garnish, no lettuce – meat, cheese and bread. Without fail, however, there is always a pickle on the burger.

This is not unique to this restaurant. Every cafe I go to, every “real” food joint not billing itself as fast food includes a slice, slices, or a chunk of pickle in, on, or around my burger. Every single time.

Why is this a big deal?

It shows uniformity of assumption. In this instance it’s amusing – but I have to wonder how many other places this kind of behaviour happens – and I’m not just talking about where we eat.

How much packaging do you throw away when you buy something? How much inserted advertising do you get with your utility bills? How many times do we really have to hear the phrase “your call is important to us” on hold?

How many pickles, food or otherwise, are we handing each other?

Pickles, metaphorically speaking, don’t even serve a utility-oriented purpose any more. They’re garnish – an inclusion based on an assumption that people really don’t like things plain, even when they say so.

Stop giving me pickles. It’s not polite.

Photo by chefranden.

3 Reasons Being a “New Media Expert” is Silly

August 27, 2010 by Ian 3 Comments

Of all the buzzwords out there these days, the idea of New Media is perhaps one of the most ill-defined, nebulous concepts in the mix. At the same time, it’s one of the easiest words to use. For this reason among others (especially with the backlash against Social Media as a term recently), the profile of the New Media Expert remains fairly high.

But don’t call yourself one. Why? Because:

1) There is Too Much New Media!

How many more varieties of communication do we need to fit under one hat? Blogs, online video, podcasting, media production, even “old school” online activity like email marketing, forums and chats. The length of the list plays a big part in determining the amount of raw information an expert has to internalize before taking action on behalf of a client. When you bill yourself as a subject matter expert, part of your job – your basic value – relies on your ability to keep up with changes in trends, capabilities, and capacities regarding your subject area.

Without specificity in your designated area of expertise, your liability is massive – just try explaining to a client why you don’t know about something THEY perceive of as New Media, when you’ve already told them you know All Things New Media. Awkward!

Also;

2) There is No Measurable Qualification for Expertise in New Media!

You can get a degree in journalism. You can’t get a degree in blogging. You can get a degree in graphic design or web design, but not in new media. There are even degrees relating to information architecture, public relations and marketing – but not a usable certification for social marketing.

The lack of standardization is what provides the agility the new media sphere needs to continue being what it is. What this does is take away any reasonable explanation (without tremendous spin) for calling yourself a Guru or Expert or Overlord – without someone else calling you that first.

Pro tip: Even when someone else calls you a guru or expert, never use it in your job title.

3) There Are Too Many New Media Experts!

If you’re already billing yourself as a New Media Expert, consider getting more specialized! While some of us are lucky enough to be real polymaths, not everyone is – and even if you are, using your diverse skills as a backing for a specialty can become a kind of superpower over others with the same specialty!

Alright – so what do we do instead, then?

The most longed for job titles lately involve being experts, knowledge workers, or consultants. But what do you want to consult on?Defining your specialty can be just as helpful for your professional development as building a strong business plan can be for your adventures as an entrepreneur. Being specialized isn’t a drawback – it’s a strategy.

But what do we do about the “expert” part?

Before being called an expert, you need three things: knowledge, experience, and trust. If you think you’re going to become an in-demand consultant right out of high school, college, university, or wherever else you’re doing your training – good luck.

Knowledge you can get from schooling, or in the grit experience. Knowledge always comes before experience, though – even with on-the-task experience, what you do before your understanding of a job counts as education only.

The biggest difference between a 20-something natural and a 30- or 40-something expert is a long history of execution and decision making. Making decisions – and handling the mix of success and opportunity for improvement that comes from those decisions – is the bulk of what we call experience.

Trust – I can’t help you with. Trust is built on the transmission of success. What I can tell you is that without the ability to execute in reliable ways (experience) strategies and tactics that are meaningful (knowledge), trust has a very limited utility. My friends trust me. But that doesn’t mean they’d do business with me.

We can do this better. What does your designation look like now – and what would you rather it be, knowing why we need to shy away from nebulous over-expression?

Image credit – The US Army.

Notes From #blogchat – Sidebar Special!

August 22, 2010 by Ian Leave a Comment

Tonight’s #blogchat was set on managing and maximizing sidebars!

Personal note; no one’s appreciated my fun ajax-based sidebar at all – I may end up removing it after all.

Link of the Week – The 5 Types of Blogs – Which One Suits You Best? (Ink Rebels)

Mack Collier made a good point about sidebars: if we accept them as global metadata carriers, they need to reflect the motivation of the blog itself. Monetized blogs are expected to have ads, archival blogs are expected to have massive navigation capabilities. Think of who you’re writing for – friends? Business? Money? Information?

Mack also made another point – widgets from external services increase load times drastically. Consider this when adding your seventh or eighth “Fan This” box.

The general, immediate consensus was that having some very key information above the fold in your sidebars is a big deal. @amydpp and @tsudo, my apparent twin, mentioned the following which NEED to be in the beginning of every sidebar:

An RSS button
A search box
Email subscription box
Social networking icons

I agree – this if nothing else will be forcing me to change my current theme.

I asked about 2/3 column testing and left or right handed layouts. @JDEbberly suggested it would make a good topic – I may write about some wireframing things later. @jfavreau suggested hir use of 3-column layouts reduced usability.

Well-designed sidebars act as access points to the archive of the blog – proper cataloguing considerations need to be taken.

@WaynesBNP uses WP Greet Box to make sure the subscribe button is always visible to new visitors.

This led to the great Breath of Inspiration for the night – sidebars really must be global metadata. What you put there is a very good indicator of how you see the reader moving around your space.

This means that post- or page-specific metadata needs its own place, and that has to be respected as well. Author names, categorization, tagging, etc – even related posts, are very important for archival quality Information architecture is a bigger deal than most people give credit for. @erinloechner mentioned, to this point, that related posts in a post’s meta space are a good idea, and can do a far better job than tag clouds.

On that note, tag clouds are so 2008. Give them their own page, with your blogroll, or get rid of both entirely.

What do you think? Are you paying enough attention to the Table of Connections that is your sidebar?

Transcript for the night from WTHashtag, courtesy of Mack Collier.

Also – make sure you join the #blogchat Group on LinkedIn!

this week’s #Blogchat Participants’ List courtesy of Ksenia Coffman.

Image by solo, with others.

On Self-Censorship (Or Why We Need Diverse Stories)

August 22, 2010 by Ian 4 Comments

Many of us who work in media – whether as publishers, producers, marketers, or evangelists – create stories around the work that we do. It’s our job to create tales to interest people, to gather attention and, in most cases, sales or contracts.

As creating media becomes easier, businesses – and business owners and employees – are creating more of their own media. Many don’t have the background that professional media workers do, and as a result, are prone to mis-step.

We perceive these mis-steps most easily as inappropriate disclosure, poor personal judgment, or a lack of self-censorship.

But we also counsel businesses that talking only about themselves, about their business, and the benefits of their work is a bad idea. Why?

Watch this video. Award-winning novelist Chimamanda Adichie speaks about the danger of the single story.

The single story is dangerous from any angle. If your single story is a drunken photo on Facebook, you fail. If your single story is a mis-step with sensitive information, you fail.

If your drunken photo is one story of many – well, you still might want to rethink where you leave your camera. But people are a lot more likely to take the detail in stride at the value of what it is; a detail, not a whole picture.

It’s not just about how you tell your story. It’s about what stories (plural please) you’re telling, as well as how.

What stories are you telling? How are you telling them?

Video from TED Talks on YouTube. Hat tip Justin Kownacki for sharing the video.