Charles de Gaulle Airport

As I’ve often written here, I’ve been fortunate as an independent consultant.  I have been kept both busy and challenged throughout the “interesting times,” in the Chinese sense, of the last two years.

Along the way, I made the decision that I wanted to remain independent  — alone.  I don’t want to build another marketing services firm; I’m happy the way things are.

And I am beginning to figure out why I like it this way.

First, all of my client time is spent doing actual work.  I don’t have to spend time distributing and delegating.  I don’t have to spend (much) time on business development or marketing.  Time spent translates directly into durable deliverables which help clients drive business forward.  Whether it’s a white paper for content syndication, or the agenda, venue and content for a three-day sales meeting in two languages, I get to leave fingerprints all over the place.

Second, I can move into and become part of my clients’ teams much more easily this way.  Agency teams (to this day) roll up in multiples of four; they are counting and tracking time to the six-minute block across multiple hourly rates; the whole experience tends to reek of overhead.  A loner can be where he or she needs to be.  Get out quickly if that’s wise.  Far easier to demonstrate value for the client.

Oddly, it’s by being a lone wolf that I can quickly become embedded within the client organization and team.  I do a lot of work as part-time CMO. My effectiveness is defined by moving in, getting to know the business, the team and their skills, and getting a detailed action plan in place — ASAP.  But as a contract consultant, who can be sacrificed swiftly should business conditions require, I’ve got to remain agile.  It’s a strange balance to learn, but it’s extremely energizing.

How do you keep your balance?

Merry Christmas.  Whatever your celebration at this time of year may be — may each of you enjoy a warm and restful holiday break.  I most certainly intend to!

2009 has been one of those “Best of Times, Worst of Times” years.

In what ways was it “Best?”

• My consulting business not only survived, but thrived.  I added several new accounts, including Acquia, GolfTripGenius, and Rosen Law Offices.
• My most significant piece of marketing advisory business, RSD, remains a strong account for me.
• I added Presence Engineering, or interactive website design and delivery to our offerings, launching several small business sites including Olde Thyme Home, Dana Landscaping, and Todd Michel Construction.
• I added photography services, bridging my lifelong hobby with my business, via my ‘affiliate’ Synopshots.

In what ways was it worst?

• Many friends and former colleagues experienced varying degrees or financial or professional hardship.
• The markets are seeing signs of recovery, but somehow no one believes we are in a dynamic recovery just yet.
• Our domestic political atmosphere is as partisan and replete with hypocrisy as I have ever observed.

So looking forward to 2010, here’s a few things I foresee:

1. Glacially, buyers will be authorized and funded to invest… and well-positioned businesses will begin winning and growing once again.
2. The businesses that are in position to win have the following characteristics:
   1. Rather than reinventing themselves under the stress of the last 18 months of economic uncertainty, they further refined and in many cases narrowed their “addressable market” scope.  Did you?
   2. They pulled back, perhaps both in overall spend and in staff levels, but are poised to reinvest in calendar Q1 as the number of indicators of recovery, however soft, begin to build.   Are you?
   3. They have built strategic reinvestment strategies and tactical plans, which are not radical in their love embrace of social media, but aware of the need to earn a loyal prospect / buyer community.  Is yours?
3. Small and growing businesses (most of the companies I work with) will clearly see that in the online world, they can stretch their brand to have every bit of the presence, authority, and reputation that far larger businesses possess.  And because they can act with more agility, they can disrupt those larger competitors with decisive strikes and aggressive tactical actions.  In other words — it’s going to get fun again!

And that’s what I miss most… the fun.  Let’s raise a virtual glass to seeing the fun return to our business lives in 2010!

I work with executives and entrepreneurs in businesses large and small.

Most are technology firms.  They are trying to innovate — to create a solution which never existed before to a problem which is plain to see but perceived to be difficult or impossible to solve.

On the other hand, I also work with small businesses, like a couple who just opened a gift shop where they want to offer quality crafts,  gifts and decor at an attractive price.  Far more straight forward.

Both, however, need to build a brand — create a memorable impression for potential customers about who they are, what value they offer.

Larger, more sophisticated businesses seem to have a far harder time remaining steady and consistent in expressing their essence to the community.  Smaller firms in niches, in general, do a better job “sticking to their knitting,” than larger companies hoping to serve many segments or industries.

“Who am I?”

Here, I am a writer and from time to time the provider of advice and services related to marketing and communication.  I may be other things to my family, loved ones, and even to my enemies.  But here, I am an advisor to businesses seeking to grow — not only to survive but to thrive.

In that role, I try to inspire my customers / partners to imagine and to stretch — but I also try to help them avoid making mistakes — including some which I have made myself.

Have you ever rolled down your car window so that you can honk the horn, make a gesture, and holler all at the same time after getting cut off in a downtown intersection?

When I was younger, I used to do that a lot.  I do it far less frequently since a friend offered me this timeless piece of advice: “Breathe.  Once in the morning is not enough.”

Well I stopped breathing yesterday.  I was riled up after a very busy (if productive) day.  I was packing up at night and feeling energized about my final day on my current business trip — and excited about getting home again.

I “checked the traps,” which is my term for catching up on email and other networks, reading some news, and so forth.  Someone sent me a link to a funny YouTube video which got me clicking through several related links of very funny and irreverant celebrity impressions.  I have no idea what he was singing, but I was laughing myself silly at a Korean band where the lead singer was doing an impression of a pop duet — both the male and the female parts.  Switching gears, I checked out some the blogs I regularly read.

Then someone must have cut me off in the proverbial downtown intersection of cyberspace.  I decided to “rant,” which I think is to blogging what a “flameogram” used to be to email.

It felt great to get some of my deepest darkest feelings off my chest.  I swore in my blog post.  I was vitriolic and mean.  It felt great.  I got more comments within an hour than I’d received on my best-read posts in weeks.  By some blogosphere standards this was a good thing.

Another questions: have you ever wished you’d waited just a little longer before pressing the “send” button on an email?  I know I have.  And a trusted friend who has, too, called me up and provided me with some marketing advice: Unsend.  Hit the delete key.

What I had done was wrong.  And so I took advantage of my self-publishing power and I hit the delete key — a privilege one has in the blogosphere (which my rant had just viciously criticized).

Today I can’t wait to get home.  Today, I will breathe.  Once in the morning is not enough.

Have you made ever made a mistake?  It feels great to admit it, and to learn from it.

The view from Glion -- photo credit, flickr.com/photos/glion

I have been stressed out lately.  And I feel guilty about it.  This increases my stress.

Life has been tougher in the last 24 months than in the five years prior.  I made the decision to go out on my own as an independent consultant — which has been a fantastic experience — but not without its ups and downs.  At times I have been busier than I want to be, at others not quite busy enough.  After 20 years in the corporate environment of companies like Lotus and IBM, that is a big change.

Within large enterprises there is this vast safety net made of high-tech polymers that smooths out the swings and narrows.

Then I realize just how fortunate I really am.  When I take the time and prioritize the activities which give me a higher-altitude perspective (like getting exercise and proper rest, balancing the energy put in the never-ending list of to-dos with a reserve aimed at other personal hobbies and interests), I realize I’m sitting at a place like the Hotel Victoria in Glion (pictured above), looking down upon a beautiful city built into steep, pre-Alpine hills (Montreux), the freakishly deep blue water of Lac Léman, and a “beautiful river in the valley ahead” (who can name that tune?).

Down below is the foundation — the city in which dwell the people whose skills and efforts drive the engine of the local economic community.

When I work with companies I find a significant portion of the engagement must be spent ensuring that the skills on staff are the skills required to meet their three-year objectives.

Off across the lake is a valley which leads up to the “White Teeth” (les Dents Blanches) and to Mont Blanc.  That destination is off in the future — and their are several paths which lead there.

I also spend a great deal of time working with companies to understand their strategic goals.  I challenge the executive team to define very clearly that target.  I challenge path choices between the here and now and that goal: Why choose to expand into that territory, why not partner?  Is there an opportunity for you to position your product adjacently to a growth category or trend?  Why not disrupt the status quo and the incumbents with a radically new vision?

When I am feeling stress, it is usually during these working phases.  Will the executive team accept my input and challenges?  Will they make the moves that are required in staffing and skills?  Will the clouds lift over that three-year destination — and will all agree to the path which leads there?

Then, if all goes well, I look up as I did yesterday and see a view like the picture at the top of this post.  The pieces of the puzzle fall into place, and suddenly the stress is lifted — the team is aligned — and focus shifts from discussion and debate about the goal, to execution.

Then I feel really lucky.

One of the fastest-growing categories of articles or posts I read in the blogosphere these days is “ego posts.”  I wrote about this once back in the early days of the swine flu… suggesting that the downfall of our nice little social media world may be “IM#1,” not H1N1.

I’ll figure out how to use semantic tools to rate blogs’ ego quotients some day.  The lowest of the low might get the “Bill O’Reilly” prize, which should probably be 30 days spent in O’Reilly’s company.  Those with ego in check might earn the “Barack Obama” medal.  OK — I’m kidding with that one.  I’m sure you’ll share even better ideas for the prizes.

But you know what I’m talking about: those posts which describe “how someone as famous and busy as I get through my fun- sun- fan- and follower-filled days;” the rants which essentially proclaim “hey, I’m out here — criticizing you and your business, and you haven’t even bothered to tweet me back or comment on my post.”  It’s a pet peeve of mine.

So here I am writing an ego post.  I hate these things, but this request forced me to reflect a bit, do some writing that isn’t in support of some commercial enterprise, and so I’m going to go ahead and share it here.

I’m hurtling toward my 30th college reunion next spring, and some of the fine folks organizing the event asked me to complete a “survey” to share with classmates during the run-up to the big party.  Whether this serves to encourage attendance or scare away I leave to them… but here’s a slightly edited version of the questions and my responses:

• What did you think you’d grow up to be when when you were age 5:
  • A singer with The Four Tops or The Temptations
• Your current life ambition:
  • To teach my children and other young people the hard-learned lessons from my own life
  • To teach small business people that they can have as great, or greater, an impact on their customer communities as bigger, better-funded brands
  • To capture more of life and the world in pictures
• First impression of  your freshman year:
  • “Ok, pinch me: I’m surrounded by beautiful women, I’m getting As, and I can have all the beer I can drink at a Speakeasy for $5.”
• Memorable experience at college:
  • Sunny fall afternoons spent with Florence and friends at Harkness Beach.
• Favorite professor and why:
  • Mel Woody (Philosophy).  He would take the title page of every paper written for him, roll it back-side into his typewriter, and provide an entire page (single-spaced) of comments on my exposition.  ‘Nuff said.
• Biggest misconception about life:
  • That the majority of people would work hard to achieve their life’s dreams.  Rather, I find one-third do, another third don’t care, and the final third are just plain entitled to them.
• What are you proud of?
  • I’m proud of the balance I have in life.  Though occasionally extremely stressful, I’ve been able to start a business which allows me to spend time working with growing companies in the States and in Europe; to be available to my children as they grow up into young men; to resume my love of photography; to help local small businesses get with the web marketing program; to continue the never-ending project which is my current (and fourth) significant home renovation.
• Words you live by:
  • “Show a little faith, there’s magic in the night”
  • “Few people have the wisdom to prefer the criticism that would do them good, to the praise that deceives them.”
• Guilty pleasure:
  • Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band concerts, in “the pit.”
• If you could be anywhere in the world right now I’d be . . .
  • On Block Island, at sunset after a day at the beach, relaxing with family and friends, cooking dinner.
• Your road not taken:
  • Boston University Law school, likely followed by law practice down on the Jersey Shore
• Biggest myth about you:
  • That I had cosmetic surgery to create this fine if somewhat pronounced proboscis
• How is college part of your life now:
  • On my Connecticut College chair, given by my mother, is a needlepoint pillow, made by my mother, featuring the Connecticut College camel.  Next to it, another needlepoint pillow, also my mother’s work, that reads: “Money may not be everything, but it sure keeps you in touch with your children.”
• My favorite song from college that I hope we dance to at Reunion:
  • Birdland, by Weather Report
• Who I am dying to see at Reunion:
  • Anyone who ever attended “Scotch Night” at the Park Housefellow Suite during our senior year.
• Why I am coming back after 30 years:
  • Fellowship.
• Other fun facts about me:
  • I spend about 100 days per year in Geneva, Switzerland
  • My photograph of Frank Lloyd Wright’s “Taliesin West” is on display at the Skysong Center at the University of Arizona
  • I hold the world speed record for reciting the alphabet backwards.
  • The night the ball went between his legs in the 1986 World Series, Bill Buckner slept in my bedroom.  I slept elsewhere.

A quiet weekend of solitude is a very rare occurrence for me.  I can’t remember when I last had the luxury.  As I faced the prospect of this time away from home I was anxiously planning activities out of fear I would lose my mind from the cabin fever.

Wrong again, Batman.

I am in Geneva, Switzerland — which is a lovely city of pleasant, human scale.  The Genevois have a certain style: confident and cool.  The people are progressive in many ways (green, public services) and centuries-old traditional in others (private banking, watchmaking).  I’m here often, and have nearly burned through the sensor on my DSLR wandering the streets.

Strolling about the village of Carouge during the weekly Farmer’s Market, I passed this repair shop for bicycles (cycles) and motorcycles (motos).  I’ve passed the place many times, struck as I was (and not sure why) by the weathered and ancient building, the bright and new graffiti, the contrast of chaos and confusion with elegance and simplicity.

What does this have to do with the transformation the web and new media are putting businesses through today?

Bear with me.

1. Durable innovations recapitulate ancient human instincts and behaviors.  I totally agree with and admire how Chris Brogan has begun to evolve his focus.  A true leader among the social networking set, he just published a new book along with co-author Julien Smith: Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust.  Chris seems to me (not a long-term watcher, mind you) to be refining his focus and interest — moving as we all have from (IMHO) a long period of hot romance with the new tools and new channels of social networking — to a focus on what is genuinely human about the new media world.  He astutely observes that social technologies are recreating, online, human interaction models that have been crucial to western civilization for a long, long time.  Word of mouth, spreading so freely at the Farmer’s Market among neighbors yesterday in Carouge, spreads via Facebook or Twitter today.  Special interest groups are today’s guilds, they merely convene online and asynchronously thanks to new technologies.
2. In any market disruption, there will be chaos and confusion. Gartner’s notion of the “hype cycle” provides solace in this atmosphere of hyperchange in the media.  It reminds us that although the proliferation of tools and utilities, applications, devices and wizards, and the squillions of tips and guides out there continues unabated, market forces will eventually come to bear.  Crowded categories will thin, understandable segmentation will set in.  Some graffiti becomes accepted as art, the rest gets painted over.  And if tenet #1 is true, standards of conduct (call it “netiquette” if you must) will take hold, and drive out the fringe behaviors by consensus of the community at large.  I’m among those who believe that the level of civility within a community will have a higher impact on the long term success of that community than sheer numbers (Twitter, Facebook included).
3. Durable innovations conform to Einstein’s definition of elegance: they must be “as simple as possible, and no simpler.”  Already, the problem of online identity portability is being addressed.  Many web sites and services today allow you to “connect via Facebook,” using those credentials to establish your identity and authenticity with additional web sites.  Soon I’ll be able to digitally shred the encrypted office file I keep with the dozens of user IDs and passwords I once needed to navigate the web.  On the other hand, it will take longer for us to answer the broader questions relating to online identity: how do I manage the very natural separation I want between personal and professional spheres?
4. Market disruptions will accelerate the retirement of one generation of leaders, making room for a new one. Just as the novice cyclist glides across the frame in the image at the top of this post, so too will the generation behind us live and learn in a technology and interaction ethos only subconsciously aware of the pain and confusion which today’s transformation is causing.  The next generation’s leaders will not simply pass “through the frame,” however.  They will stop to study and learn from the past, and exploit that insight to fuel innovation based on those experiences, not in blissful ignorance of them.  I work with organizations every day that are caught between these two worlds.  Men and women of good will and trust want to understand the new communication media and channels — but aren’t quite sure how they need to drive behavioral change in their wake.  Organization response: the eternal challenge of the business leader, isn’t it?

As always, please leave any reactions or comments.  Thanks for reading.

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America's Newspaper

I keep very busy professionally as a result of rapid change in the world of inbound marketing.  Because buyers, consumers and users are spending so much time communicating and gathering information on their many devices and networks, I have the opportunity to help businesses transform their marketing frame of reference to capitalize on this change.

But the change is not without consequence.  And sometimes the consequences are a bit troubling.  Most parents I know certainly worry about the generational behavior change that is well under way amongst constantly-texting youngsters who can barely keep their attention focused on a conversation through a cup of coffee, never mind a full-blown meal.

In USA Today about four weeks ago, the Olivia Barker wrote of these changes, expanding the lexicon of the brave new world of text messaging, Twitter and  Facebook.

Kenneth Gergen, Swarthmore College professor, uses the term “an absent presence.”  It’s a two-way concept — friends are present via text message or Twitter or Facebook update, if not physically there with you.  On the other hand, my son is definitely only vaguely “there” when he is constantly checking his Blackberry screen to respond to the twice-a-minute messages relating to his evening plans.

We are moving into a “post-human” era, where life becomes more about the abstract world that we have created than about the biological, physical realm we inhabit.  I have certainly been called “sub-human,” and probably deserved it.  But I haven’t spent enough time in church to get very excited about “post-human” life.

Barker writes vividly of “technology’s tether.”  After all of this progress on human and civil rights, now we’re slaves to computers.  Lyndon Johnson is turning over in his grave.

What’s the connection with healthcare reform?  Well, I for one and a proponent of aggressive new TWD statutes.  We all know how thousands are tragically killed each year for DWI — driving while influenced, more and more innocent lives are being lost thanks to texting while driving.  On the occasional four-plus our car trips I take to visit clients and family, I see TWD statute violations at least twice-a-time.  No doubt, IMHO, that TWD drives up healthcare costs.

But the real connection with healthcare is that, with all of these social network-driven interruptions,  I’m going to have to live a lot longer to be able to have all of the conversations I want to have with my children.

Horizontal Surface Glut

Do you ever feel as though your work life has reached or exceeded your capacity?  How do you manage it?

I tend to be “a nice guy.”  That means I say “yes” a few more times than I should in a given situation.  I over commit.  I admit it.

As a result, I occasionally get this building stress as I try to keep everyone (clients, family, friends) happy.  At times I can’t give the undivided attention each deserves.

Over the weekend, after what can only be described as a frustrating work week, I took part in a semi-annual ritual but should probably be upgraded to monthly.

I think of the process as work and hobby hygiene.  After months accumulating material on every horizontal surface in sight, I dutifully distribute the contents into logical heaps; mercilessly execute the wheat / chaff algorithm.  I scratch out a list (yes!  on paper!) of priority activities which need to compete with the urgency of the upcoming week.  Included was the commitment to get back at the growing backlog of photographs I haven’t yet processed from the summer (and spring, I fear).  And to pay more attention to my own inbound marketing efforts — which have given way to clients’ over the past few busy months.

I emerged with a commitment to keep my life simpler (stupid!).  To say no more frequently and with conviction.  And to enjoy the sensation that comes with feeling a balance between commitment and capacity.

Wish me luck.

The Arrogance of Power

I had the great honor to work with Irving Wladawsky-Berger while I was at IBM about 12 years ago.  He is one of the clearest thinkers I have had the good fortune to know.  Thus, no surprise, he was at the heart of many strategic initiatives, arguably projects which saved IBM from near-ruin back in the ’80s and ’90s.  To name two: the RISC chip; the Internet Division.

He does not, however, have an eponymous entry on Wikipedia, and I love him for that.

He wrote recently about power and responsibility in the wake of the credit crisis which drove the current economic downturn: “How Can ‘The Best and Brightest’ Get it So Wrong?“  It is a compelling reminder of the cyclical cultural phenomena which occur around the accumulation of success, wealth and influence.

Soon, pride rears its ugly head, and arrogance taints clear vision and decision making.

Power clusters tend toward homogeneity — the human desire to prefer “like” people, ideas and things to “unlike” people, ideas and things.  The concrete begins to harden.  The alert, flexible and agile entity that initiated the cycle can no longer respond to changes in the surrounding environment.  A new cycle must begin again.

Irving references how arrogance led to an indefensible policy in Vietnam in the early 60′s.  The big ideas from Harvard overpowered the career State and Defense Department thinkers.

I lived through the arrogance of the Internet era, when an infinitesimally small coterie of venture capitalists infused small technology companies with massive amounts of cash in order to create vast but artificial valuations for initial public stock offerings.  I’ll never forget the photo of a dot com chairman and CEO, wearing sombreros and mounted on horses, addressing employees on the beach at a resort in Cabo San Lucas.  Not a bad place for a company meeting.  The company was called “Agillion,” an amount only slightly higher than what was spent on the off-site extravaganza.

And now it’s the banking and finance sector, the creation of highly complex derivative financial products, sub-prime… you get the picture.

Bloom off the Web 2.0 Rose?

We are seeing another power-arrogance-collapse in the magical land of Web 2.0 (or is it 3.0?): the new communication environment created at the intersection of the worldwide web and some innovative “social” technology: blog tools, online video services like YouTube, social networks like Facebook and Flickr, and Twitter.

Starship Enterprise

In the world of news media, communication, and culture, the rate of change is incredibly high.  I’m reminded of Scotty from Start Trek, the Scots chief engineer, warning James T. Kirk as he presses the spaceship’s engines harder and faster: “She’s breaking up, Captain.”  Somehow Kirk, the symbol of leadership and responsibility, guides the Enterprise through the threat to a new state of greater intergalactic safety and security in the end.

Newspapers are losing readers and suspending print operations, going entirely online.  Advertising agencies have had to completely reinvent themselves in order to continue to deliver value to customers: there’s no “15% of the media buy” left to pad the bottom line.  Public relations firms have to help companies find influencers not within a community of hundreds of print publications, but amongst millions of self-publishers (bloggers).  It makes your hair hurt.  And it is creating panic as brand stewards try to figure out what decisions to take under high stress.

This is due to the growing amount of that fixed-asset, time, individuals are shifting from old media, like print publications, radio and broadcast or cable television to new online communities and media: blogs, podcasts, streaming videos.

A million blog posts are published every day.  News stories are spreading instantaneously not through free online news sights like Yahoo! News, but through individuals posting micro-messages on Twitter.  200,000 new videos are posted to YouTube daily.  Microsoft, once the symbol of personal productivity, is now investing nearly $2 billion annually to brand its “Bing” “decision engine,” the company’s nth effort to respond to Google’s remarkable success in the extraction of cash from web search.

What have we lost, in finding what we’ve found?

What the old media world provided, whether we want to admit it or not, was a structure for the flow of information.  The media community had a hierarchy.  Leaders had names like “The New York Times” and “The Wall Street Journal,” Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow.  There were giants with enormous power, and smaller niche players with less influence, but a role to play.

In the new media world, we have no such structure.  There are no barriers to entry.  Anyone can become a publisher, a director / producer / leading actor, a self-styled pundit.

But that doesn’t mean to new media world isn’t subject to exactly the same cutural, cyclical patterns which have shaped the human experience for centuries.

IM#1, not N1H1, is the new threat.

I have observed over the past couple of years that an important cultural side-effect of the zero-barrier-to-entry new media world is the rise of an alarming number of super-egos.

Cable news started the process with the creation of on-camera experts — that cast of characters who don’t actually have a vocation in, say, politics, they just serve as on-camera expert on politics for the cable news discussion of a real news event in the political realm.  I don’t think they own trousers or skirts to match their suitcoats and jackets either.  But I digress.

The blogosphere is clogosphered with similar experts.  And what concerns me is not that a new generation of “Rock Stars” has been created — it is the basis upon which they have been created and the durability of that foundation.

The basis of relevance in the new media world is, quite simply, the numbers.  How many subscribers and visitors to your blog?  How many followers on Twitter?  How many views of your YouTube video?  Old school publishers like bloggers with lots of online readers.  Looking for a soundbite from an expert?  Take the one with the most awareness.  Nothing new here.

But what we need to ensure, to protect the richness and texture of our culture, is quality.  We need to be able to discriminate the original from the knock-off, the sage from the lunatic.

There are thousands of technology tricks that can be put to use in order to inflate your on-line metrics.  Sign up for Twitter if you haven’t already and you will receive a thousand suggestions a day within a few weeks.

Search engine specialists are extracting thousands of dollars per month from unwitting business people in order to drive web site traffic which is numerous but completely irrelevant.  There are tools which will grow your Twitter followers by tens of thousands.

And all of this “relevance” is bogus.  With it, however, we do get the unattractive aspects of arrogance and greed.  Web 2.0 snake oil available from thousands of spammers who have made on-line millions.  “The Four-Hour Work Week.”  And worst: bloggers who from behind the avatar’s shield, and who, bearing absolutely no responsibility for the outcome, cast their judgment on others mostly for the purpose of attracting attention to themselves.

I wrote recently about the Susan Boyle phenomenon.  Don’t remember?  That’s because she didn’t win the “Britain’s Got Talent” show, her audition for which generated 70,000,000 views of her performance of “I Dreamed a Dream” from Les Miserables. I didn’t track the show closely, but it was clear from the snippets I heard that Ms. Boyle’s 15 minutes of fame occurred during that audition.  She just never rose to the same level of performance again.  She may have gotten the YouTube views, but she didn’t get the votes.

On a local media note

WTKK talk show host Jay Severin built an enormous ego for himself on the basis of success in the ratings book.  He also managed to wangle a contract believed to be in seven figures annually.

Then one day the ratings methodology changed.  Instead of a listener maintained written log, ratings were based on an electronic system which records listener activity electronically — no opportunity for human intervention between the listening and the logging.  Severin’s ratings dropped like a stone, and suddenly advertiser and management tolerance for his outrageous statements tanked as well.  After a particularly strong statement with racially unsavory overtones, he was suspended for a month — and presumably a contract renegotiation.

What do we do in the meantime?

How will we sort out the junk from the quality in such a media environment?  We will figure it out — and I’m certain there will be further innovation in technology that helps us apply the uniquely human constructs of judgement and hierarchy to this “flat world” and open communication platform that is the worldwide web.

The smart companies, however, will stick to their values as we sort things out — and avoid the temptation of pride and arrogance which success and power often brings.

Bruce & The Band, Boston

One wintry Saturday in 1973, my sister Deirdre and I were at the Harvard Coop.  We often met in Cambridge in those days to have a burger at Bartley’s Burger Cottage and to buy a couple of records.

Back then, it was the premier record store in Boston.

Younger readers: this was before CDs.  Before Tower Records.  Never mind amazon.com.

Greetings from Asbury Park N.J.

In an end cap we were both surprised to see a new record with a reproduction postcard image across the front.

OK.  My family grew up on the Asbury Park boardwalk and beaches; but Dee had friends at a special place called “The Sunshine In.”  It had once been known as “Hullabaloo,” for those among us who are truly aged and yet still with firm recall.

One of those was this band leader and guitar player named Bruce Springsteen.  When my sister saw him hanging around these funny boardwalk clubs, it was with bands called “Steel Mill,” and “Dr. Zoom and the Sonic Boom.”

We bought two copies of his first record.

Thus began our family’s journey with the Boss and the Band.

I’ve seen the band play warm-up for Chicago in 1973 at Madison Square Garden.  Saw the Boss stand in with Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes at the Stone Pony.  The big reunion tour, and most of the album tours in between.  My brother David organized tickets for the Meadowlands for all five us (Claire, Dee, me, Kate).  Saw the Devils and Dust solo show with my sister Claire and it was one of my favorites.

But last night I got to go to the Boston show with my 18-year old son Sam.  I got “General Admission” tickets, and we got to the Garden in time for the lottery for a spot in “the pit.”  350 are chosen to be in an area close to the stage and the band.  As luck would have it, our numbers were part of that group and we got spots dead center.  Sam was right on the rail, I was just behind him.

After all of these years listening the the music, never fully understanding why it touched me the way it did, I was never organized enough to get tickets up close.  I thought I knew what I was talking about when I encouraged everyone who asked, whether or not they liked the music, to get to at least one live Springsteen show.  I did not know what I was talking about, because last night’s experience simply blew all the rest of the shows away.

Sam does like the music.  I didn’t beat him over the head with it, he just started to enjoy listening on his own about the time the 30th anniversary re-master of Born to Run came out back in 2005.  So I took him to a couple of shows — both pretty far from the action.  No matter — the first time you hear the band sing “tramps like us, baby,” it’s hard to deny it is a special experience.

When we found out we’d probably be pretty close last night, Sam was so excited he nearly jumped out of his skin.  When we realized we hadn’t brought any “stump the band” posters, he negotiated with another fan for her Sharpie pen and crafted a double request on his T-shirt: “Thundercrack” (on the back, of course), with a fabulous storm drawing, and “Trapped,” complete with prison bars, and ball and chain, on the front.

Bruce did take Sam’s shirt, but unfortunately chose a  nearby suggestion, ZZ-Top’s “I’m Bad, Baby and I’m Nationwide,” which was fantastic even if it was chosen from the wrong fan.

The band ended the main set with “Born to Run,” and during that long sustain (you know, just before “the highway’s jammed with broken heroes on a last chance power drive”) Bruce made about his tenth trip to the small thrust right in front of us.  From this day forward, my son Sam can truthfully say that he got to play Bruce Springsteen’s guitar during a live performance of his most famous song ever.  To say he was delighted would not come close to describing the look upon his face.

Sam's phone-cam photo of Bruce Springsteen

Some things change.  Growing up, my father was not around much.  Among other choices, he decided to put extremely high priority on the education of his six children.  For a guy from Rahway whose dad was a bricklayer, that was fairly ambitious, to say the least.  He worked alot, and I’m sad that we didn’t get to do more together.

But he lives on through my music collection. For him, I listen to Bossa Nova — Gilberto, Jobim, Getz, Byrd.

I’m pretty sure Sam will have some vivid memories for a long long time when he hears the band crank out “Born to Run.” At least I hope so.

Bruce Springsteen: Working on a Dream

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