Umair: ha. what is it that you want from me, exactly?

Jelefant:…Ok, let me start with this…

I agree with your slogans, I’m a believer in ethical capitalism. The problem I run into is how to act like the theories we believe in, even if incrementally. From your writing I gain insight into ways to convey to top-down orgs how they can begin the transformation process. Thanks for that. What’s incongruous to me is the rapid-fire leaflet dropping many of us then utilize to share our vision (status updates, posts, comments). These don’t seem to match the how we can start following our own slogans.

One ongoing missing piece is the foundation on which communities can test out these theories. Where is the capital going to come from that supports this movement?

Thanks,

-Jason

The Renaissance is the steamroller of western art. It continues to smash and wreck new spores of ideas under its gigantic steel wheel. Craft, boldness, literal, digestible, all continue to rule the realm. Picasso’s 2-d plane-breaking yearn for seeing different hasn’t survived the steamroller, nor has the Abstract Expressionists’ cry for freedom from the obvious. Look at the work being made by the folks in the “Work of Art” studio, almost all of it could call the Renaissance it’s daddy. If we visited a studio in the 19th century we’d expect to see much of the same stuff.

What’s missing? The most important historical art-battle of the past 50 years that art HAS won against the “Steamroller” is  “INCLUSION,” though you wouldn’t know that by listening to the judges on this show. Inclusive art enjoyment and critique is simply this:

I do not look at art through MY subjective eyes; I look at art through NEW and OPEN objective eyes…

… I work hard, knowing the artist has worked even harder to show me something special from their unique vantage point. I don’t have to like it; it’s not about my preference. The onus is on me to learn, to study and engage, not for the artist to make it easy for me to understand.

If the artist calls the piece a portrait, and it doesn’t have a face, then I better get thinking deeply about what is going on here, NOT to dismiss it as a non-portrait.

This is what we westerners keep learning from un-guided travel, cooking and eating, open-source technology, the Internet and social media, reading and research, HURRAH for inclusive thinking! If BP had considered inclusive thinking versus doing it the way they’ve always been, maybe that disaster could have been averted! But for some reason, Art, which is supposed to be leading the way forward has been rolled back 200 years for a TV show. Ugh.

It should not be lost on anyone that the woman who chose to work in pattern and abstraction was the loser and not that dude who did the clown fiasco. She got Renaissance-steam-rolled! Her portrait might have captured the assignment the best! Who said a portrait had to be a face? Man, if I handed in a portrait that was a plain old face when I was in art school, nearly 15 years ago, I’d get an F!

It’s also a bummer they gave Nao Bustamante a hard time. The judges were perturbed they had to engage her art in an un-literal 3-D space. Um, it’s a pretty standard art-school homework assignment to do un-literal work in 3-D space. What would they say about Eva Hesse, Ann Hamilton,  Andrew Goldsworthy, or even for the love of all things 3-D, Christo and Jean-Claude!?!

Ok, ok, maybe it makes for good TV? Maybe it will bring art to a wider audience? All I know is the Renaissance is still king, queen and the kitchen sink. Its kicking ass and taking names, and continues to crush all the new ideas that lie in its way. “Work of Art” is no exception.

We are now entering the Lace Economy (exiting the Web + Bubble Economy).

The Lace Economy is both a fine-tuning of our networks and relationships, and a demand for services and products that are well crafted, genuine, and trend towards supporting the local and regional.

Fine Tuning:
New networks are being amassed through a mix of web-based tools (Facebooks, LinkedIn) and traditional channels (networking, associations). These form into a tangled, limitless, and underproductive web. Though there is an intoxicating excitement in the chaos of tangled relationships, the ever-increasing girth of networks makes these connections fragile and meaningless. In the Lace Economy, networks will be filtered, gathered and sewn into manageable, identifiable, and productive patterns.

Genuine:
Branding, advertising and communications will continue on a shift away from “attraction” towards “resonation.” Bright, shiny, and flashy objects might gain immediate attention, but a real resonation through matching specific ideas, services and products to the desires and needs of a market will lead to sustainable and genuine relationships. Opportunity will arrive through resonation.

Local & Regional:
The first wave of this Fine Tuning and Genuine is appearing within local and regional movements, primarily through food and craft. The slow-food, farmer’s market, and quality handmade trends point to an audience making purchases of well-made, well-crafted, nourishing, and sound products and services. Restaurants, as well as consumers, are seeking local produce to influence and boost their menus. Farmers in turn are supplying diverse regional specialties in opposition to the cookie-cutter flavors found in national chain restaurants and blanket-marketed by national brands. “You can only get it here,” will increase.

Important Points:
-    The Lace Economy will reward and invite ventures that foster uniqueness and offer quality
-    Individuals will no longer be caught in a web; they will spin their own tightly knit lace of relationships, both real and virtual
-    There will be a deeper reliance on strong partnerships and trusted collaboration
-    Shift from blanket “wide net” approach to specificity in messaging and markets
-    Markets will seek well-made, well-crafted, nourishing, and sound products and services
-    The immediate shift is a turn towards the local and regional

The Lace Economy has arrived. The grass roots are strong, and national brands, such as Starbucks (locally branded shops), and media outlets such as AOL and Yahoo (local news sites) and the New York Times (local neighborhood blogs), have already begun to interpret and act on the data. This shift is not an about-face from where we’ve been, it’s a fine-tuning of what we have into something genuine with a greater value.

I am thankful for the hidden brilliances in our daily lives, things we can all share, but are unfortunately more difficult to come by within the “developing world.” I’m thankful for these things, which I take for granted each day: roads, heat & hot water, food, clothes, shelter, infrastructure, plumbing, drinking water, time to do things beyond work, materials to create things beyond necessity, safety, medicine, and more. I am thankful for all these things as they are inspirational, are born from unbounded innovations to make all of our lives better, more comfortable, for us to be well and healthy and to survive (and thrive within) the many trials and hurdles of life. These seemingly simple things lay the foundation upon which I can be thankful for all else.

Many of my fellow Hoosiers have written #Tweetsgiving 2009 posts. Below is a short list:

Sara McGuyer

Scott Wise

Nicki Laycoax

Trends swing like a pendulum, creating waves of fashion, art, culture, business, you name it…there is a cycle to trends (if not everything). In order to find, uncover and act on burgeoning innovations I visualize this cycle (as the following slides will display) and play with this visualization as a “game.” You can use almost any trend, idea, history, business for this game and see what you uncover. Let’s set-up the game-board:

Imagine a pendulum that has an ink-pen at its tip. As it swings, as seen from a frontal-view, the pendulum draws a line on the ground.

This pendulum doesn’t swing in a vacuum. It’s path is pulled by two very strong and opposite forces: the past and the future.

The past pulls on the pendulum, informing trends with all that has happened before, seeking to bring us back to the way things were. The future, which has a stronger pull towards innovation, drives us forward into the new, the cool, the hip, and the what’s next.

The magnet of the future therefore grinds forward into the future. The past, planted like a stone, digs in, but over time loses its hold and influence on the future.

When the pendulum reaches the outer reach of its swing, its speed slows down, to a near “stall” before it begins its return. These stalls are the weakest part of the swing, where the pendulum is most sensitive to the tug of the past. The fastest part, in the direct middle, is where the pendulum speeds up, frees itself from the past, and is attracted to the pull of the future.

This causes the shape of both magnets to be modified in relation to the pendulum swing. The past becomes a “C” shape, reaching for the stalls within the pendulum swing. The future begomes an oblong “egg” shape as it pulls more strongly on the middle of the pendulum swing.

This unique magnetic field pulls the pendulum swing out of a straight-line trajectory (where it would seem to be drawing a line over and over again in the same place) and forces it to “wave.”

This model displays trends as having two past-influenced “edges” where the swing stalls, with a forward-tugged “middle” when the swing is most free from the past. When I use this model I label the top edge as “neo” and the bottom edge as “retro.”

Neo = a reconsidering of a past idea brought to life in a new and current way. Retro = a revival of a past trend, staying close to the original. This is my game board where I try out trends, seeing if I can place them as either Neo or Retro and find their partners on the edges of the waves, and by doing so see if I can predict new trends. BUT, even more important than the edges, is the forward-pulled middle as this is where the innovation is taking place.

Because the stalls of the pendulum-swing last longer than the speedy middle of the swing, our collective cultural attention is typically focussed on them. These trends are easier to define because we have more time to consider them. BUT that doesn’t mean it’s where all the “good stuff” lives. In my mind the good stuff lives in the harder to pin-down, but innovative middle. When analyzing trends I try to find what was happening in the middle-period.

As an example, let’s take two music trends. The Neo-Soul of Maxwell and Erykah Badu in the mid 90’s and the mid 00’s Retro-Soul popularity of Amy Winehouse and Sharon Jones + The Dap Kings. Both looked back in time to a past (and reoccurring) trend, “Soul.” BUT what was going on in Soul music in between these “edges?”

Another example are the Air Jordans (sneakers). The design moved radically from the original style towards a futuristic idealization of a sneaker. BUT over time the demand for the original model grew and the design veered back towards some of the initial elements. I can play this game all day.

Try this game out yourself. Use popluar trends and see how you can make them fit the model, or try your skill-set, business, favorite foods. Map it out on the waves and then consider what was happening inbetween the Neo and Retro edges. Even if fleeting, the great innovations are happening there, and are probably more forward-advancing than the trends we see most apparently.

I was chatting with blogger Francine McKenna on social media messaging/communications and its relationship to ROI and I had a revelation! Social media is playing out (with virtual currency i.e. “social capital”) many of the business strategies of the last four decades in response to the “breakdown of the Bretton Woods agreements” (1). Basically, people with money shifted focus from the local to the global, investing anywhere they could turn a quick and mucho-lucrative profit. Slow growth? Pshaw! Capital wants to double itself. This path was hugely adopted over this current decade, which I call the McBiz Era.

In social media, however, since there is less “real” money in play (time and effort vs. $dollars in investment) being “spent” within an immense amount of uncharted waters, delusions are freely adopted (mermaids!) and invisible corruptions (like undertows) are pulling folks all over the ocean. There IS great value in social media, I’m a firm believer and have data to support my beliefs (innovation, connection, and yes, new business), still, there are many layers to this onion, and some pointed symptoms that poke dangerously against the membrane, but yet without the force to pop the whole bubble.

In the financial sector this change has taken forty years to develop (and with the current recession, possibly fail). Twenty years ago a business could allow itself 5-10 years to make money relying on the “patient” capital of investors and bankers. Now most have two quarters to one year to produce or fail. This spawns business models aimed at immediately serving (conquering) the world, a McBiz i.e. Google, Twitter, Facebook (act local, think global). They follow in the dinosaur footprints of TimeWarner, Disney and McDonalds on a global path. The former pushes a PR agenda to keep an appearance of lean and mean: all it takes is 3 people, an idea, and an internet connection to start a McBiz (YouTube formed at a barbeque?, Twitter on a napkin?). This fuels more delusional business models while catering to impatient capital which seeks more McBiz.

Within the social media arena (echo-chamber) impatient capital is manifesting itself as a “behavior” (need results now!) instead of “returns” (show me the money). Without a strong business (too big to fail) already in place (i.e. Best Buy or Zappos who are now using social media), revenues (Google made money from the get-go, right?), or good backing (oh Twitter!) its a long haul, and a potentially devastating path to take. Some entrepreneurs are leveraged to the hilt.

The social media delusion of the McBiz era manifests itself via personal branding: individuals seek to have ever-expanding “influence” (investment) by growing huge contact/friend/follower lists (returns) on social networks. The social media space enables virtual growth in place of revenue growth (social capital) with a belief that the ROI will be shared influence (scratching backs?). But the %’s are low (inactive accounts, visibility, resonation) so the social media player needs more more more. This envelops the users, infesting many great ideas with scalability pangs; I want my message re-tweeted, I want my idea to go global NOW, I want more friends.

Some players see the the bubble bursting and seek to stake a claim and cash in their social capital chips for hard currency. The current models I see being adopted for social media monetization are based on driving those lists of friends to old-school cash-registers:

1. Sell tickets to an event or a conference
2. Sell a book
3. Sell consulting
4. Sell ads to match my content
5. Sell subscriptions to premium content

Soon we will all be doing one of the above (if not already, I’m obviously a consultant), yet it’s the purveyors of the products (Amazon?) who will reap the bigger rewards (I’m using my Mac, Wordpress and Twitter to develop and distribute this message).

As an example, the veritable Social Media Club (of which I’m a co-founder of the local chapter here in Indy) is now monetizing the chapters via “boot camps.” I have no issue with these folks trying to find sustaining support for their efforts, who doesn’t want that! BUT is the pay-out worth the investment to date? How many hours has the SMC put into building chapters? Do they make that value back? How do you define this value?

Does it matter? Did Best Buy gain new sales from Twitter or just from the PR they gained from using Twitter? Will Twitter ever make their investors money back, or will it take a sale to a larger company who knows how to monetize the old fashioned way, by earning it?

Or is it all intangible? Un-trackable? What are you gaining from social media, and is it worth the time/effort you’re putting into it?

Be wary of the mermaids, don’t get caught in the undertow.

——

endnote:

(1) Richard Sennett. The Culture of the New Capitalism, Yale University Press, 2006. Pgs 37-38. ]]> http://lunasphere.com/2009/06/18/social-media-delusions-of-the-mcbiz-era/feed/ 0 http://lunasphere.com/2009/06/18/the-youtube-tea-leaves-stock-imagery-as-a-business-is-not-sustainable/ http://lunasphere.com/2009/06/18/the-youtube-tea-leaves-stock-imagery-as-a-business-is-not-sustainable/#comments Thu, 18 Jun 2009 17:13:33 +0000 Jason http://lunasphere.com/?p=115

Analysis: The YouTube Tea Leaves: Stock Imagery, as a Business, is Not Sustainable

The recent analysis of YouTube’s earning potential by Credit Suisse (reported here and here) points to a big red blot of ink, YouTube is losing lots of money, remains totally subsidized by Google earnings, and might always be. In short only a handful of Google’s total pieces bring in much of the revenues. Here’s a short list. Credit Suisse analysts Spencer Wang and Kenneth Sena write of YouTube (which was purchased for $1.76 billion in stocks, money, whatever by Google which makes about $4.2 billion a year), “monetization remains challenging.”

What is found, similar to the rest of the entertainment market, is that well-produced and popular content brings in the money and is where all future growth lies. YouTube might have spent these past few years as a loss-leader to gain audience awareness by offering the video-sharing tools, but in truth they’re seeking to be a purveyor (like cable) of traditional content.

Todd Spangler of Multichannel News notes:

YouTube, which still derives most of its traffic from user-generated content, has been attempting to increase its lineup of professionally produced content. Earlier this week, for example, YouTube announced a deal with Disney-ABC Television Group and ESPN, which will provide content clips for dedicated channels on the video site.

So best-quality content IS the goal. And YouTube wants to be the distributor/vendor/purveyor of this top-quality content in competition with others such as Hulu or Tv.com.

What is learned? There is not enough money in crowd-sourced content to sustain a business, the revenues don’t cover the costs. They only way to sustain the model is to keep investments coming in OR shift gears and go all-pro.

What does this mean for Stock imagery? it means two things:

1. Structurally, the bottom will fall out of the crowd-sourced image model. There will be so many little pieces of revenues that cannot support substantive growth, which is what investors seek. The investors will cash in their chips (digital railroad?)

2. Culturally, the truth is coming out, professional, well-crafted content works to gain revenues, crowd-sourced stuff doesn’t.

Short consolidation time-line: The investment firm Hellman & Friedman purchased Getty. Getty then purchased Jupiter.  Hellman & Friedman own a piece of everything (including 15% of the Nasdaq market, Doubleclick, Digitas, more…) so, similar to the Google-YouTube relationship, they can subsidize the Getty business into the near horizon, or at least until they figure out what to do with it if not fold it into another of their businesses).

In the meantime artists keep lowering their prices to compete with stock, but stock has no bottom as it doesn’t need to keep itself afloat. Dangerous waters to swim in!

The answer: raise your prices and point to the truth, crowd-sourced imagery will never gain the client the same long-term results as professional imagery. Yes, you cost more, but as the YouTube model proves, showing the best stuff is where the money is.

The creative “value grade”

Everybody wants a piece of the creative arts (from Popes to moguls) some would pay for it, some would enslave for it. It has always been a path of passion to be creative, in some cases a decent living, but always with a mix of pitfalls, traps, and sheer-cliff career ending drop-offs.

Technology can be a friend to creatives, offering them tools to enrich their creative process. However technology is not a friend to the produce, which enables copy/paste virality by the millions. In order to compensate, Creatives need a shiftable “value grade” in their career which can be determined by this simple Q&A:

- do you expect a short-term return: job potential or traffic? (note: check your stats to prove traffic)
- does the potential theft of your work (or close copy) equal your gut-feeling of the value of the work?
- are you marketing your work other ways (print, email, other)?
- do you have a strong list of contacts in your market?
- are you currently working? at what level (kinda, a lot, too busy to talk)?

There are no standard answers BUT the last few questions tend to be the crux, if you have strong contacts, and are working, the answer is more black/white and polar, some say yes, some say no, the rest fall somewhere in the grey area.

Because there are no universally shared practices across the profession there is anxiety and ongoing head-scratching. As an example if illustrators banded together to adapt/adopt creative commons licenses to their works online (I expect most would choose – Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives) maybe we’d see less anxiety AND begin to show the market in a universal language that they’re serious about the online/offline value of their works..

Overall I do not find Google a friend to artists. It’s their goal to cut thin slices of revenue from everything. Artist are paid for one-offs, diametrically opposed to the Google model. Unless artist shift entirely to the thin-slice model (seemingly impossible) their only current recourse is to go it alone and hope for the best.

At Wise Elephant it’s part of my job to listen to small businesses, sole proprietors, and creative professionals discuss their dreams, plans and goals. People are thinking forward, finding opportunities, making it happen. New businesses are forming, current businesses are working on new strategies, and new markets are opening. From where I sit the economy is picking up, it HAS picked up, stuff is moving. I’m excitedly impressed. I’m ridding myself of the cautious optimism I’ve carried for the past year, and turning up the moxie.

Then I turn on the tube, or listen to the radio, and I hear report after report of job losses, catastrophe, and closings. Yes, it’s true, it’s horrible, and I sympathize with all those people and families in trouble, but the repetition without solution is useless. There is no reporting of the solutions! I don’t hear them on CNN or FOX, or even NPR. Where are the pundits who point to the solutions, the successes, to the hard-working people who point the way out of this recession, are making strides, gaining new business, and plowing new paths.

Tell us these stories, let us galvanize our strengths, learn from each other, and get the greater economy working again. Until then, I’m turning off the mainstream news.

An Expansive Creative Economy (ECE) is a forward thinking creative cycle that rejuvenates neighborhoods and launches economies that grow.

It happens in many cities, a burst of creative energy that spawns a movement, invigorates neighborhoods, and propels the local into the national spotlight. Think of Seattle’s “Grunge” that both spawned a bevy of mainstream bands and put the coffee-cafe scene on the map. Would Starbucks be as successful without Grunge? I don’t think so.

The trick is to nurture an environment where these economies can blossom, the goal is to sustain them.

There are many ECEs at different stages all across the states as well as over the world. San Francisco has a matured ECE (The Castro) and a mid-life ECE (Mission District). NYC’s East Village is mid-life while Soho has matured. Mostly ECEs are founded by a small businesses (West London’s Rough Trade Records, NYCs CBGBs), a group of artist/creative individuals (Beat Poets in San Francisco, Musicians in Austin) and/or anchored by happenings (Charleston’s Spoleto Festival, New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival).

In general ECEs need two things to launch: Supportive Infrastructure and Inclusive Behavior.

Supportive Infrastructure:
- Cheap rent within mixed-use areas (apartments over shops, lofts that can be shared)
- Easy/Quick access to affordable food (small restaurants/cafes, corner markets)
- Flexible employment (full-time/part-time, causal/expressive dress, unorthodox hours)
- Close to transport hubs (near the freeway, bus stops, train stations)

Inclusive Behavior:
- Invite the current neighborhood to participate. (Rough Trade opened in a West Indian neighborhood, they created an Island/Reggae section in their store)
- Accept all who are interested (CBGBs was for Country/Blue-Grass not post-punk, but that’s what it became)
- Seek to be a magnet for national migration, invite people from all over to be part of the process

ECEs start small and build up over decades (Austin’s SXSW festival built-up over 20 years, Pittsburgh’s Mattress Factory for 30). Cities looking to grow their economies should strongly consider fostering environments where ECEs can blossom. I’ve seen cases where cities seek short-term gain and build Arts Districts at a mature levels (fancy shops, expensive housing) instead of the seed level, allowing them grow naturally, fostering a stronger foundation. For a much lower cost cities can support ECEs (zone areas for live/work, tax incentives for small creative shops/biz, not-foir-profits).

Patience is key, but the rewards are greater. We need more ECEs!

Coming soon: Part 2, stages of neighborhood growth.