Ian M Rountree

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The Triangular Social Graph Problem

May 29, 2010 by Ian 1 Comment

The more time I spend networking – on and offline – the more I’m noticing a problem with the basic assumptions some people – including myself – make when looking to build connections. Beyond just who we connect with, there’s a part of the specifuc how that creates issues.

We’re getting worse at introductions, especially self-introduction.

The sheer density of instances where we run into new people online has overtaken realtime introduction so thoroughly that the skills we use are changing in all arenas. When you meet someone new, the practice has been to either be introduced, or to introduce yourself with a 30-second personal sales pitch. Anything to explain who you are, why it’s important you make a connection, and what benefit it might be to the person you’re connecting with.

Now, however, we comment on others’ blogs, reply to them on Twitter, friend them on Facebook out of the blue, and call any reciprocation of these actions a success as an introduction. But we’re wrong in some cases, and unless we learn the cues, we’re going to make idiots of ourselves.

You’re my friend. He’s my friend. He’s not your friend.

It’s easy to forget that many of the most vocal people in a space know each other already. If we miss the key references that tell us that two bloggers – in or out of the same industry – are from the same town, or grew up together, we’re missing out when we see them respond to each other in certain ways on Twitter or in comments. Because of this, even if you know one of these two people, missing the link between your friend and their friends can cause a lot of awkwardness if you approach this third-lever connection from the same angle you approach your own friends.

This, along with a failed introduction practice, can make us come off like idiots.

But now often do we notice, and what affect does our reaction have on our audience when we’re in any of these three positions?

How can we tell when we’re being idiots? Better yet, how can we tell our friends they’re being idiots?

Want an example? Let’s break this down.

We’ll call position one Bill. He’s the popular guy. We’ll call him a marketer. He’s used to audiences.

Position two is Doug. He’s Bill’s friend, perhaps he’s an author. He’s known, for different reasons than Bill is, and is still growing his audience. Hasn’t hit critical mass yet.

Then there’s Steve. He’s the late comer. He’s a marketer like Bill, and has made a connection – maybe a strong one – with Bill. Steve’s a fan of Doug’s work.

Steve makes a joke at Doug’s expense, on the assumption it will go over well, because Bill’s made a similar joke before.

Doug gets pissed. He rants. In public. On Twitter.

Steve’s no longer going to buy Doug’s book. Bill is confused with Doug. Doug is pissed with Bill for not defending him.

Who’s in the right? Is there a right? How can we fix this?

Important questions. I’m glad I’ve never been on any of these three sides – at least not that anyone’s alerted me to. But that can be part of the problem, can’t it? If no one tells anyone they’ve missed a step in the thorough social connection process, those connections can’t be treated like real friendships can.

They remain part of a graph. Inanimate, data-driven, and short lived.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: commentary, connections, idiots, internet, learning, social graphs

The Very Near Future

May 22, 2010 by Ian 2 Comments

FictionPress WordPress ThemeIn the very near future, this site will be changing.

I’m about three-quarters of the way through developing a new wordpress theme for my site – it’s been a long process mostly because I haven’t been able to nail down what I need out of a theme’s functions. I’ve been wanting to do more than just blog for a while now, and with the impending release of WordPress 3.0, there are some features I’ll take advantage of to add a lot of functionality to my site.

I’m going to be posting some fiction.

I’ve been writing fiction in a rather fragmented manner for over fifteen years. In February, I started sharing one of the more fully formed stories at Dowager Shadow – which I’ll get back to in a big way in the coming weeks. However, there are a few hundred pages (actually, my last count was roughly 1500 pages) of short story, plot fragment and world building I’m going to begin sharing here, in a new Fiction section – everything from fantasy to science fiction, and a few other interesting tidbits.

I’m also going to start posting non-fiction, non-blog material.

I’m not one of those ebook guys, but I have written a number of long-form essays and what may be called white papers in the last few years. None of this has made it to my blog because I couldn’t translate it into a blog-able format. This changes with the new function developments for my new site – I’ll be contributing more than just my thoughts. Regular readers know I’m a bit of a research geek – now I get to express that in a very digestable way.

FictionPress 1.0 Preview 2The blog will become a little more interesting, too.

As I’ve been getting down into doing the work of online marketing with Modern Earth for the last few months, I’ve learned a lot about myself, people in general, and the struggles people can face when first entering a new business (like I have, going from retail to marketing). I’ll try to keep it interesting, but sadly I can’t guarantee a schedule.

What I can say is that I have a number of series planned – continuing the Apostolic Shift exploration, and some comparative theory for social economics. I’ll also be dissecting a lot of common practice in a comparative manner as I did with my last post about Fight Club and Presence Media.

I’ll also be continuing to contribute elsewhere.

I’ve been trying to make more time to write for Mark Dykeman‘s Thoughtwrestling blog – the ka-tet is phenomenal, everyone’s so involved, and I want to make sure I can help as well. This is part of why my own posting schedule will be remaining at not-once-per-day.
I’m also starting a new collaborative blog with someone else – more detail to come as that matures.

In addition to blogging, I’m going to be using other media more often.

I discovered Mack Collier’s #blogchat a few weeks ago, and I’m hooked. So I’m on that as often as possible – and I’ll try to begin posting recaps here, what I take away from each event.
I’m also going to be podcasting as part of the secret project, and trying to support some other podcasts as well.

So trust me – I’m not going anywhere. But what you’ve come to expect from this blog and my involvement in every community I’m in so far will begin to mature very swiftly as I get a better idea of what is a sustainable method for me to be involved. Stay tuned!

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: #blogchat, blogs, commentary, dowager shadow, progress, social-networks, twitter

Book Review – Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

January 28, 2010 by Ian 11 Comments

Outliers on FlickrI picked up Gladwell’s Outliers: The Story of Success during the Christmas season from the HMV that’s next door to my store in the mall. It happened to be on sale, and I’d heard some decent reviews – I didn’t know what I was getting into, though. It’s not an overstatement to say that Outliers has changed something fundamental in how I do my work, what I see as my advantages, and where the idea of success has totally fallen down around my ears.

Let me explain.

The book is glibly subtitled “The Story of Success” but it’s really not. It’s the story of people who have taken opportunity where they saw it, and identified more accurately their strengths and interests, compared to the rest of us. I have to assume that this is either Gladwell’s summation of what success is, or that the latter simply didn’t fit on a cover as well. Either way, by about fifty pages in, my head had been blown clean off my shoulders about four times.

The first noggin knocker came with the formula the book would follow; identify a seemingly privileged set of people, or an individual, and examine the individual’s roots. Find out what it was that put this group or person where they are, and totally remove the shiny pedestal from their feet. This has helped me see celebrities in a new light, one that thankfully makes them more human.

The second came from Gladwell’s style. He’s a journalist, and it shows, but he’s also a phenomenal storyteller. As a writer myself, I’m always really interested in how authors compose their ideas, and draw the reader through the story as if by way of treasure map. By the time I had figured out where the X was on Malcolm’s map, I was only twenty pages in – but still, the book didn’t get boring, and that’s all about presentation.

The third brain buster was the shear weight of information. From the beginning of the first chapter, where Gladwell dissects the birthdays of hockey players, right up to the last few pages where he tells the story of a Jamaican woman who moved to Britain for love of knowledge (arguably the best story in the book), the statistical density is high. It speaks to the power of Gladwell’s writing, as well, that this barely becomes overwhelming, and that it’s so understandable.

The one that really baked my noodle, however, and that’s changed my life approach in certain respects, was one really simple idea, the one that takes a page to explain, but requires Gladwell to make universally accessible: Your personal history, everything from the beginning of the universe until now that went into the making of the You that you are, provides you with the infinite capacity for wealth, success, the realization of all your dreams, and total, utter fulfilment in whatever flavour you can conjure. It requires only that you identify where you need to be for your highest good, and that you act on that highest good without hesitation, without compromise, and without any thought to how much work you’ll need to do.

There really is no such thing as an overnight success, but you can become one, if you find your highest good and work yourself to every bone you’ve got to get there. Because once you’re there, you can change the world – not just for yourself, but if you do it right and well, for everyone after you.

The people, places and organizations Gladwell has studied in this book: Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Eric Schmidt, Chris Langan, Joe Flom, the city of Harlan, Kentucky, Korean Air, rice paddy farmers in China, and these are just a sample. These people, places and organizations build on each other toward that inevitable truth. Your hard work is not enough to make you an outlier. But your hard work at something your entire chronology an ecology have uniquely prepared you for can shift the very earth you walk on and turn your touch to a golden blessing – if you do it right.

By the time Gladwell tells the story of Daisy Nation and her twin daughters in the final chapter, he has taught an entirely new world view, one that prepares the reader to receive the story, which he relates in a very flat, biographical way for portions, with the light of the Outlier on it, and make unwritten connections proving the concept in a beautiful manner.

I would buy this book again. I’d buy it for friends. I’d buy it for you, if you haven’t read it (if I had the cash to spare) – or I’ll lend you mine if you’re in town and can convince me it’ll make its way back to me in one piece. Or, if you want, you can also go buy yourself a copy here because this is definitely a book that’s worth having, and coming back to again whenever you’re feeling downtrodden on the road to success.

Photo by me!

Filed Under: Reviews Tagged With: book review, books, commentary, malcolm gladwell, outliers, overnight success

The Mental Disadvantage of Intentional Deviance

December 27, 2009 by Ian 5 Comments

Boxing day was a bust. We spent much of the day trying to figure out why, and we came up with a few answers. It’s come down to either: (a) everyone knows Boxing Day sales are incredible, but also doesn’t want to be part of the crush; or (b) everyone went to the big box stores; or (c) everyone shopped online.

It’s perfectly possible Amazon and other e-tailers could have had awesome one-day-only deals. Even though there’s so much fuss over Cyber Monday, Boxing Day is a universally recognized deal-grab that any business dealing with the public would be stupid to not take advantage of.  This is altogether likely, and I don’t have the stats, but I don’t think I could be as frustrated with that; it’s not because online shopping is killing retail, it’s because ecommerce is an entirely different industry selling a similar product. It’s like comparing journalism to copywriting – same product, worlds apart.

Well, sure, lots of people go to big box stores for the great deals – doorcrashers have been a way of life for them for years, whereas my chain is only three years into the Great Door Crasher trend. But one of my colleagues figured that one box store has, maybe, 13 of a given TV which means a hundred people will go and 87% miss out. We, however, have four locations for each of their single monoliths, and if we have four TVs per location, it means there’s actually a much MUCH larger percentage chance you’ll get what you want from us. But if a TV goes Doorcrasher in a boutique, does it make a sale?

We ended up asking a couple of people, by the end of the day. And it turns out most people know – deeply believe – that boxing day in the malls will be idiotically busy, and try to avoid it unless absolutely necessary. One customer even called it Pugilist Day – needless to say, we lost our hats laughing.

But is this the case?

There’s a gap, where everyone avoids an action because “everyone else” will be doing it. People avoid entrepreneurship because it’s already done. Shoppers avoid the busy days, because they want to avoid the crowds more than they want to take advantage of the deals. As the actions and their consequences scale upwards, the result of this intentional deviance gets bigger, and eventually we see what we had yesterday: malls with no one in them on the biggest shopping day of the year.

I almost wish I was at the shop today to see if everyone who avoided coming in yesterday showed up today; that’s the other result. If everyone takes the road less travelled, you still end up in the middle of the pack. But of course, you can’t see this because the pack surrounds you, and for all you know the other road holds ten times the number of people.

Being different just like everyone else – isn’t always a good idea.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: boxing day, commentary, deconstruction, deviance, drawbacks, economics, market-forces, media, the-web, work

You're Not A Big Deal

December 21, 2009 by Ian 15 Comments

When we barely know someone and are first exposed to them, they seem like a big deal. This is the case whether it’s a friendly introduction or our first sighting of a new celebrity on the red carpet. But as we gain more and more information about them, they shrink.

This might sound a bit counter-intuitive; your friends and family, whom you know most about, are likely a pretty big deal in your life, so why is it that as we learn more about those on our social peripheries, their capabilities seem to diminish? Simple: there’s a threshold of acceptable mystery that we pass through. If I know nothing about you, I can neither accurately praise nor criticise you; all I can do is pay attention, gather information, and decide on a firmer course of action once I’ve done my recon. Once I have this information, I can do one of three things: dismiss you, cultivate you, or destroy you.

Dismissal is really simple, more so in the age of social media; If the process by which I’ve discovered you is your twitter account or your blog, the unfollow button is simple to find. It used to be harder to dismiss people, but when friendships can be lost in meatspace entirely because someone accidentally hit the unfriend button on Facebook – well, it shows how superficial we are with our outer-valence contacts, right?

Cultivation is the long process, it’ how we gain friends worth keeping for an appreciable amount of time. If you’re aiming to do this, you can’t just grab every piece of information about someone in hopes you find something useful. You also can’t be cultivating people and hope to use them for anything; if you’re hoping for a business transaction, whether you’re on the end that’s buying or selling, you’ve got to keep people in the zone of casual disinterest where the acceptable mystery lives, otherwise there are expectations. Sort of like being stuck as friend guy when you’re really rather date a girl – once you’ve passed the mysterious proximity barrier, it’s difficult getting back out to the distance needed to do good business, unless you build that expectation into your friendships by strongly separating your professional and personal lives.

Destruction is, deceptively, even harder to achieve than cultivation. Most of the time you’re stuck burning your bridges, having little real effect on those you’re trying to hurt. Why are you doing that, by the way? If you just don’t like them, dismiss them. If they did something do hurt you, dismiss them. Why go to all the extra effort? Because maybe they’re a threat. The trouble with this is that you first have to define threat. Socially? Commercially? Technologically? Internet aside, it’s a pretty big planet, and unless someone has you cornered, it’s not hard to divide up the world into your own little chunk. The trouble with this is that mutual connections rarely give a crap about petty squabbles, which is where destruction gets so messy; unless you can convince your peripheral friends there’s a real benefit to them in helping you out, someone will always try to fuel both you and the other party.

Why is any of this a big deal? Because recognizing the process can demystify a lot of things. Exposing yourself to people, especially those you initially conceive of as bigger than yourself, can either be enlightening or distressing. Being aware of what makes the lustre on celebrity eventually disappear can help get past the depression of realizing your heroes are just louder versions of yourself.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: blogs, commentary, social process, sociology

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