Ian M Rountree

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Archives for September 2010

Your Products Are Not Free.

September 28, 2010 by Ian Leave a Comment

Dowager Shadow - Something I madeYour advice may be, but your products are not.

We often give advice to friends. What to say, where to eat – even how to grow their businesses. We don’t consider this advice an invoice-worthy exchange, because our friends are asking for opinions, not consultations. There’s a difference.

Some of us are lucky enough to be forced to draw a line in the sand, and reset the expectations of our friends and peers. “This far,” we say, “I am willing to do what you ask. Beyond, it’s on you to provide me with an acceptable exchange of value.”

This line doesn’t just change the value of the work we then do for pay. It changes the meaning of the work we do for free, because there’s a ceiling. Even our gifts become transactions, once we move the line of needs-exchange. We hope that those who, in the past benefited from work we did for free will appreciate that work more, but that’s almost uniformly not the case. More often, these beneficiaries will poo poo us for the new fees on what they once considered privilege.

Want an example? Examine the circumstances like those under which JC Hutchins found himself earlier this year are more common than we think. JC, for those unfamiliar, gave away the fruits of his labour for ages – until presented with the line of needs-exchange, by publishing his first novel.

JC had a community, and they paid for the book he published and were honoured to support him, but there was a definitive thud when he took all of his “free” things away, to be replaced with products. JC absolutely did the right thing – for himself, and ultimately for his community – because the line allows us to focus, and produce better work.

But how do we avoid the possibility of retroactively penalizing of our communities?

We need to set the line firmly, clearly, and early.

We need to not allow those who want to engage us the privilege of sucking up our early resources – and to limit the liabilities which will restrict our ability to provide benefit for them in the future. By carving out the line early – whether there’s anything behind it or not – we limit our liabilities, and create clear expectations of where we are available, for what kind of work.

For example:

  • My blog is free. So are the comments – any advise or insight I can provide there is public, benefits more than just one person, and thus is open.
  • My twitter feed is free, as are replies in it. Public, not focused (even when directed) thus free.

However:

  • Email is not free, because it’s directed and focused and limited in visibility. Email, for me, is consultation.
  • The same goes for instant messenger, unless you’re a special case like family, or legitimately a friend.
  • And most of Facebook, because I moderate my friends list there.
  • And phone calls.
  • Lunch, or scheduled meetings, are both considered product – they cost money.

And:

  • My writing is a product. Once the Dowager Shadow is finished – even just the first volume. I’ll be selling from day one, and the free preview on that site will be coming down.
  • Anything I tell you is a product, is a product. Whether it’s speaking, facilitating discussions, consultation, ebooks, or physical stuff – if it’s a product, I expect it to involve a transaction.

So:

  • If I don’t tell you we need to have a transaction for something – guess what? – no transaction.

Not difficult. I hope. You think?

Sensing a trend? What’s public and open is easy to call free. Expect limited time spent, controlled reaction, and considered value on my part. The onus is mine – and yours, if you work in the open – to create not only clear demarcation of free advise versus paid product… But also to create clear differences in value between the open and the closed.

These kinds of clear, precise markers will save us all a lot of hassle, if we only learn to use them well enough.

Am I making sense here?

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: clarity, dowager shadow, free, products, transactions, writing

Freemium and the Lure of Asynchronicity

September 28, 2010 by Ian 3 Comments

We love instant gratification… Don’t we?

We want things now, we want them cheap, and we want them to be perfect. We can sort of accept that we often have to pick two from the “Good, Fast, Cheap” selection and abandon hope for the third, but that still means instant decisions and instant benefits.

But we’re moving steadily away from the instant-for-instant transaction. How?

At first, we trade. We make transactions based on now value for now benefits.

We exchange things in the immediate – whether we’re trading goats for chickens or shaking hands, there’s an instantaneous exchange of finite value. It’s easy enough to measure the present – substantive thinking takes over and pushes out the clouds.

But then, we bank. We create situations where we can exchange a-while-ago work for now benefits.

We develop systems like money, as a means of amassing more potential for future gains. We delay our enjoyment of things just a bit – sometimes a lot. I can work today for some money, and not spend that money until five, ten, fifty years from now. The delay is future-facing only.

Then, we develop credit. We trade sometime-soon for now.

This is, almost uniformly, an accident. The idea of credit is so appealing because it feels like we’ve added some supplemental agility to our situation. And, in some very controlled cases, this is true – businesses who use credit smartly can access ranges of customers and suppliers otherwise not available. Credit, when marshaled as a resource and not treated as a lifeline, can be very helpful. But that’s a different story.

What next? Well, that’s the fear of a lot of businesses. That consumers will want to trade never for now.

That’s the fear behind detractors of the Fremium theory.

Let’s say I blog, as I do, and that what I write could be considered expert advice on a topic. The detractor’s theory goes; if I give my expertise away for free on a blog, why would anyone pay to engage me for work?

This is a virulent worry for freelancers, consultants and all manner of knowledge worker. We don’t want to give away our secrets, but in a world filled with asynchronicity, how can we avoid putting the social proof of our knowledge out front to be exploited?

Maybe if we stop worrying about having our trust in asynchronicity exploited, and start wielding it like the tool it can be, we’ll get more back from what we’ve paid forward.

Photo by xJasonRogersx.

Filed Under: Content Strategy Tagged With: buzz, cultural shift, freemium

Notes From #blogchat – Open Mic Night September

September 26, 2010 by Ian Leave a Comment

Every month, three hundred of the world’s best twitterites gather on TweetChat, their favorite twitter clients and other places, for the regularly scheduled insanity we call #blogchat Open Mic Night!

Here we go!

As always, Open Mic night is one of the best nights for newbies to get into #blogchat, mostly because the first ten to fifteen minutes are reliably about nothing other than best participation practices. It diminishes the discussion a bit, but it’s very useful to brush up on tips, and find new faces who otherwise get subsumed in the mass of topical mayhem on other nights.

So what made tonight’s Open Mic stand out?

We saw some talk about post length – from Godin to Kaushik, there’s no use sticking with a formula. Don’t worry about a specified length – worry about a specified aim with your posts.

Also saw some mentions of Editorial Calendars – a good in for bringing up the Editorial Calendar WordPress plugin which has been saving my sanity lately.

Had a great time catching up with @tinkhanson and commiserating over how busy the summer has been. It’s good to catch up with people.

We, among many others, agreed it’s time we all rededicate ourselves to our blogs.

SO BE IT!

I’m declaring October to be round two of Ian Posts More Month – a redux of last year’s November IanPoMoMo, where I dropped a post a day for thirty days consecutively. How about you? Feel like blogging on a schedule (not necessarily daily) for an entire month? Whatever you’re doing, step up by one notch. If you’re doing two posts weekly, do three. three posts, do four or five.

Me? I’m doing three, minimum. For all of October. Yell at me if I miss a day. And tell me if you’re participating.

Here’s a transcript thanks to Mack Collier – WTHashtag Transcript for #blogchat

Here’s a participants list from TweepML for #blogchat

Filed Under: Content Strategy Tagged With: #blogchat, ian posts more month, notes from, open mic, twitter

The Lesson of the Hare

September 22, 2010 by Ian Leave a Comment

You know the story of the tortoise and the hare?

The tortoise is slow, the hare is fast. They have a race – the hare gets far ahead and takes a break. Not realizing the time, the hare falls asleep while the tortoise not only catches up, but gets ahead, and eventually wins the race.

We often think the lesson from the story comes from the tortoise – that perseverance wins out. We also often miss the lesson from the other direction; momentum trumps speed.

How many important lessons do we miss because we’re tied to a perceptive angle?

Stop thinking about the hare’s weakness, and start praising – and mimicking – the tortoise’s strength.

Filed Under: Blog

A Thought About iTunes Ping

September 17, 2010 by Ian Leave a Comment

Recently, Apple announced the new version of iTunes – iTunes 10. It’s got a lot of upgrades from previous versions – a tweaked, cleaner UI, some nice small changes to layouts and organization – all of these things are good. Yes, even the new icon, which has gotten bashed a bit for being generic and dippy. Hey – I like blue gradients, I don’t have a right to bash the logo.

However, one of the new features iTunes incorporates is what feels like an ad hoc social network, called Ping. Ping allows you to follow people, or musicians – get updates on new albums, things the people you’ve connected with like. I’m all for that, but I have to wonder; is it sustainable?

Ping is a flash in the pan.

I’m not the only one criticizing this. Ping has already been bashed as an inside sales tactic. That’s not my concern (everything is a sales tactic). I’m not even concerned about the system being centralized in iTunes, or being limited in features to half-Twitter, half-Facebook (or maybe all Google Buzz) style features. I don’t even care that it won’t let me blog more effectively.

My concern is breaking the rockstar illusion. Immediately on getting Ping set up, I started following some musicians. U2, for example, who have turned out to be quite vocal, in a mostly positive way. However, after actively checking in on Ping for a few days, I realized something. I don’t really care about musicians.

Don’t get me wrong – I love music.

I just can’t connect with musicians. I sing – I was part of a community chorale for years, and I loved it. I work with musicians daily. However, like economists or farmers, my day to day life has very little to do with the process of promoting music as an art. And that’s really what Ping is for; it’s a social network aimed at promoting music. The kind I like, the kinds my friends like. Forget that I might prefer Satriani to Motorhead, or Grateful Dead to K$sha – taste is important, but one thing’s for sure – and I think this is being overlooked.

I’m probably not the only person in the world who prefers to follow music, not musicians.

Anyone – even my friends – foisting their favorite band in my direction is likely to get indifference before interest.

But then, I wasn’t into MySpace either. And that’s who Ping really goes after – not bloggers or Twitter enthusiasts. So maybe I’m just the wrong audience.

And audience is important for music to be appreciated. Am I right?

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: apple, flash in the pan, itunes, music, ping, social-networks

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