rain check

For a couple of years now, I have been increasingly fearful of driving my car in what I tend to refer to as “weather.” Meaning, of course, rain or snow of any sort of noticeable intensity.

So much so, in fact, that a few months back I missed a chance to have lunch with a friend in Boston — really just because the forecast was for rain. Heavy, torrential rain.

So I called and canceled, even though I had been looking forward to it for weeks.

Then a few days ago, I replaced the windshield wipers on my car. And today, I drove to Boston in a heavy, torrential downpour. No sweat.

Why? Apparently, the only reason I hated driving in the rain was because of the diminished visibility. I thought that the lousy vision I had through my windshield was what everybody was burdened with — and I couldn’t understand why everybody wasn’t as freaked out as I was in nasty weather.

As I made my way home through the heavy rain, hands pleasantly unclenched, heart beating at a normal rate, I though about how such a simple piece of technology — inexpensive, and something I was able to install myself — made such an enormous difference in my perception and my experience.

Let’s leave aside for the moment the fact that I should have figured out sooner that it was my wiper blades, not my bravery, that was the real issue here.

To me, it’s a reminder that simple, everyday technologies can have a significant impact on our lives for the better. The addition of one simple thing can lead to a disproportionate increase in things that are not so simple, like freedom, confidence, independence.

It’s also reminding me how one minor success can lead to a disproportionate willingness to risk more, and to gain more.

Like, when I first learned how to change a tire, it suddenly made me feel like Hey, I know a thing or two about cars! Even if that wasn’t technically true, it was my attitude that allowed me to feel confidence when dealing with the automotive shop guys, the people I eventually sold my car to, and the people I bought successive cars from.

Because I took that small step years ago to learn one basic thing about my car — how to change my own tire — I benefitted from a serious ripple effect for years after.

I see the same thing with the adoption of online skills, especially in my work with relative novices, mostly artists, teaching them about the online tools that might help them be more successful.

While there might be resistance at first — and in some it is, in fact, never overcome — in some, all it takes is one small success, one tiny experience of well, I can do THAT to open up a world of possibilities, to plant the idea in someone’s head, sure, I know a thing or two about computers/blogging/podcasting/whatever

Rachel Happe was talking about the importance of getting to the AHA Moment not long ago, and I think this might be a variation on that theme.

And, since she was the friend I stood up a few months ago, before I knew a thing or two about wiper blades, I hope I can celebrate this AHA moment with her, by rescheduling our postponed lunch from a few months back.

Have you had an AHA moment — in any area of life? How did it change things for you?

podcasting under fire

Len Edgerly was my featured speaker last night in the class I’m presenting at work, What’s Your Story: Personal Branding, PR and New Media for Artists. (Check out the class blog here.)

Unfortunately, we ran into some logistical problems when, minutes before the class was to begin, we noticed smoke coming out of two outlets in the wall — one of which had Len’s MacBook Air plugged into it. Via a surge protector, thank god.

Because POP! SIZZLE! and suddenly we were scrambling on the floor, unplugging everything in sight, while the acrid smell of electric… things… burning wafted through the air.

We called the fire department and, while we were waiting for them to arrive (they were super prompt), we made arrangements to move the class across the street to Cape Cod Community College. MANY THANKS to our friends at the college — they really came through for us and hooked us up with a large auditorium and a technician (after hours!) to help us with the a/v.

Len was presenting on podcasting and video podcasting for artists, so the visual portion of his presentation was to consist largely of live internet demos of audio and video on the web. So there was a lot of a/v to be handled.

Len was a real pro and rolled with the punches, striding effortlessly into his presentation like we had planned this all along.

Of course, because he is a podcaster, he was recording all the while, and you can listen to the resulting podcast here. (To hear the whole talk, minus the firemen, go right over here.)

Thrill to the sounds of fire engines, several incredibly large and helpful firemen, and a room full of artists getting turned on to the joys of podcasting!

Watch an unsuspecting artist tell his story and have it be immediately posted to Flickr video, as an object lesson of the ease of posting video to the web!

Read all of Len’s helpful links on the delicious page he created for the class!

It was a great session — Len is a terrific speaker and is really effective at conveying his enthusiasm to others, all while keeping it at a friendly level for a group of technology novices. And he really keeps a cool head under fire.

Thank you, Len!

the model of a modern major fundraising letter

Jeff Brooks at Donor Power Blog got my attention this afternoon with this post on writing like a human being, especially when writing fundraising appeals. I’ve been thinking about this lately, too.

His main example is that of a typically written fundraising letter –which Jeff complains, quite fairly, that it sounds like it was written by a robot.

Here’s his plea:

When you write to donors — whether you’re asking for money, thanking them for a gift, telling them what their giving accomplished, or even taking care of details — keep it natural, warm, and human. Make sure you’re awake from the organizational stupor that can strike.

I have a book on my shelf at work that I inherited from a previous occupant of my office, that is packed to the gills with “model” fundraising letters like this.

Letters like you get in the mail from organizations you’ve never heard of, sometimes with stamps or pens enclosed, letters that have gut-wrenching envelope copy (”Won’t you help?”), letters that go on for two or four pages, all of which sound like they were written by that special phalanx of typewriting monkeys that crank out heartstring-tugging development copy.

It’s atrocious.

I actually consulted this book the other day when I was looking for a novel way to open a fundraising letter, thinking, How bad could it be? …and I was so appalled at the suggestions (” ‘Please save my baby!’ were the last words she cried…” was one notable example) that I rammed it back onto the shelf next to the Idiot’s Guide to HTML 4.0 — that was also left behind by the previous occupant.

Honestly, is there ever any call to write like that anymore?

Doesn’t it all reek of outdated sales tactics, desperate salesmen, and endless late-night commercials featuring grimy third-world children with tears in their eyes?

Is that the business we’re in?

One of the reasons why it’s worth while to build relationships with current and potential donors, members, constituents, et al., by using social networking and two-way communication like blogs is so that we can dump these outdated, alienating, and only ever marginally effective methods once and for all.

Yes, of course we are still working for nonprofits, we still need to “make the ask” if we are going to get the money we need to get our jobs done, deliver our services, bestow our grants, or whatever it is we are charged to do with whatever resources we are able to gather.

But let’s take a step back from doing the same old thing when we ask for donations, just because that’s how we think those letters have to be written, or because some jerky book tells us that’s how we’ll get our lousy 2-4% return.

If all your other communications are honest, down-to-earth, and neighborly (as many are), why would you need to shift gears when it’s time to ask for money? Why would you shift from a friendly handshake to an unfriendly shakedown?

It’s jarring, that’s what it is. And seriously off-putting.

I think it’s because many nonprofit professionals are uncomfortable with asking for money, so we fall back on what the “experts” say we should do.

When really, it’s just like anything else. Ask yourself, How would I like to be asked? What would I find compelling?

And then tell your story — in your own voice, from your own throat. Not from some jerky book.

passing notes and twittering behind your back

I’m in the final two weeks of presenting What’s Your Story: Personal Branding, PR and New Media for Artists — an eight-week class for artists who are just getting started in online promotions and sales — and today I spent some time firming up a few technical details with my next speaker, Len Edgerly, podcaster and videocaster extraordinaire.

We sort of jokingly raised the question of how we would handle the Twitter back-channel, if there was one, during his session — jokingly because this class is only just getting wet in social media, and only a few of them are on Twitter at all, and certainly not, to my knowledge, at the level of saturation that we are (for better or worse).

I think our laughter was somewhat nervous laughter, because we live-Twitter events constantly, and it’s bound to be our turn to be live-Twittered ourselves one day.

In any case, what would I do if I were moderating a panel, or presenting a class (which I do often), and the Twitter channel lit up?

As David Berkowitz wrote the other day, “… At a minimum, a speaker or mod(erator) should monitor the back channel, but keep the focus on those on stage.”

Monitoring the back channel, if it exists, is just as important as taking the emotional temperature of the room — both as a speaker and a moderator — and adjusting accordingly. Watching faces, listening to restless rustles, checking for questions or contributions — and watching what notes people are passing to each other — are all parts of being a good and attentive host.

I know I’ll be monitoring twitter at the concerts and public events coming up on my organization’s calendar, probably using Summize or Tweetscan.

Not just to listen in on what people have to say, but to meet the folks in my community who are using Twitter to communicate and navigate the world. If they are at my event, and Twittering, they are people that I want to know!

I’m interested to see how the use of Twitter evolves at large cultural events, like concerts and festivals. More people are discovering Twitter every day, and events like these lend themselves very well to communicating –both peer-to-peer and management-to-crowd, via cell phone.

I’ve seen people try to introduce Twitter to groups at events, which doesn’t really work. There are people who Twitter, and some of them might be at your event. Watch them. Figure out how to interact best with them — what works for them – while there are still only a few. Their numbers will grow, and when they do, we’ll know how to deal with them.

How do you use Twitter at your own events? How might you, if you did?

louis vuitton wants you to stop talking about them

Jeremiah Owyang woke me up this morning (on Twitter) to a fascinating, instructive tale of a major brand getting drawn in to a major international crisis, against their will and to their detriment, and responding to it in a predictable, though shortsighted way.  Somewhere, a PR department is having a very bad Sunday.

Yes, I check Twitter before I get out of bed.

So what happened?

An artist created a T-shirt to raise awareness of the genocide in Durfur, and to vent some frustration at a media culture that gives more face-time to Paris Hilton than the victims of conflicts such as this one.

The T-shirt shows a victim of Darfur holding a Louis Vuitton-style luxury handbag in one arm, and a Paris Hilton-style toy dog in the other.  Jeremiah has a great recap of the whole story here.

So what happened next?

On a smaller scale, I woke up thinking who the heck is LV? and now, an hour later, I know exactly who LV is, and I know they’re knee-deep in a mess that wrong-foots them on an international issue on which practically everyone agrees, one that sets them up as a litigious Goliath, one that makes them appear anti-artist and anti-free-speech.

The plus side?

I am thinking about Louis Vuitton, and so are lots of other people.  I am NEVER thinking about Louis Vuitton.

That’s why the company’s reaction is so wrong here: sending the artist a Cease-and-Desist letter, and trying to make the issue go away through brute force.

Instead, they should take advantage of this rare opportunity — hundreds and thousands of people who on a daily basis couldn’t give a fig about your brand suddenly — briefly – do.

They have a very small window of opportunity to use this momentum to their own benefit, to the benefit of the victims in Darfur, to the benefit of the artist that started it all, and to the benefit of the artists in general.

Louis Vuitton can set an example, can be a brand who gets it right, by realizing that the spotlight is on them right now, whether they like it or not, and that they have the power to turn this into a PR opportunity, not a PR nightmare.

As I said in response to Jeremiah’s post:

…it makes me crazy when brands do this sort of thing. Here they have an opportunity: suddenly this Sunday morning hundreds/thousands of people who hadn’t given their brand a second thought are talking and typing and wondering how to spell “Vuitton,” and all they can say is “Stop talking about us?”

This is exactly the moment when they need to use the momentum to advance their brand, not cause further damage.

They can’t cram the genie back into the bottle, but they might still get three wishes, if they try really hard.

Think this has nothing to do with nonprofits?

Don’t think that your nonprofit doesn’t have a brand, because it certainly does, and don’t fool yourself that a PR nightmare like this wouldn’t happen to that brand, because it certainly could.

Nonprofits need to think about brand management just like for-profit corporations do.  Perhaps even more so, because charities are often held to a higher standard, and ethical blemishes can be even harder for nonprofits to rinse out.

Do you still think Red Cross = Fiscal Mismanagement?

What about Smithsonian = Complete Chaos in Management?

Finally, remember that crises like the LV brandjacking above represents an opportunity for more than just the injured brand to do good — do you know a nonprofit organization that does work in Darfur?  Wouldn’t this be a good time to reach out to Louis Vuitton and see how you might be able to work together?

why I am a blogger

I’m off to the Simmons Leadership Conference tomorrow, and I’m excited to meet some of the faculty in the Simmons MBA program, which hosts this annual conference. I’m particularly hoping that new faculty member Jill Avery will be around, since her teaching and research interests sound eerily similar to mine.

But before diving into bed to get some decent sleep before my 4:30 am wake-up call and 2-hour drive to Boston, I wanted to take a quick stab at answering Chris Brogan’s questions about my first steps in social media.

What were your first steps into social media?

Who were your early people you admired and followed?

How did you get started?

I started blogging in 2003, because I was working exclusively from home as a freelance book editor and had limited if any human contact on a daily basis.

I was lonely and desperately craved interaction.

I was reading the blogs of a few excellent people I had known in grad school, and those blogs led me to other blogs, and eventually I was reading and complaining to myself that those bloggers just weren’t posting nearly often enough, and I found myself writing long responses to their posts in the comments and one day somebody said why don’t you write your own posts and stop writing novels in my comments and I said OK.

Then one or two people found MY blog, and they started commenting, and became loyal readers, and this encouraged me tremendously. I kept writing, and reading, and commenting, and my circle grew ever wider.

I stopped editing books, and started helping others — especially artists and cultural organizations — learn how to get involved online, through blogs and social networks and other online forums. It’s work that I find more rewarding every single day. It’s a little embarrassing, almost, how much I love what I do.

I’m going to have to put off responding to the last two questions for tomorrow, after the conference, if I have any juice left, or Sunday, if I don’t.

Here are the questions:

If you were going to give advice to someone starting out, what would you tell them?

What will you do in the next few months with social media?

Of course I answer that question frequently on this blog, as that’s really the main question I am concerned with, how the beginner can get started, depending on their goals, needs, objectives, personality, time, skills, hair color, etc.

But what will I do in the next few months with social media?

THAT is a very interesting question indeed.

why I am a strategist

I’m brushing up my quantitative skills in preparation for my first semester of MBA classes this fall, and it’s led me to one of the best and most encouraging AHA! moments I’ve had in a very long time.

Despite what my undergraduate degree says (I majored in Geology), I have never been as in love with the quantitative side of things as I have with the qualitative side. I’m really more of a languages-and-writing kind of person — when I fell in love with paleontology in an intro class I took to fulfill a requirement, I had most recently been contemplating majoring in Greek.

So when I went to take the GMATs last year, I had some serious review to do. I did it, and I learned (or remembered) a lot that I didn’t know (or had forgot), and I actually did rather well on the test.

Now I’m getting ready for the first-year “quant” courses by taking an online course in statistics, finance, economics, and accounting, called MBAmath, and I’m really enjoying it so far.

in fact, I’d even say I had a little breakthrough last night.

The first section of the class focuses on using Excel to get things done, and although I consider myself a pretty old hand with the whole spreadsheet-and-formula deal, I decided to take the “beginner” class demo, because you can always learn something new on things like Excel.

Not surprisingly, I learned one or two keystroke shortcuts that instantly made it worth my while, but I found most of demo to be reassuringly familiar.

But then we started using Excel to calculate complex formulas, and AHA! was the result.

Let’s call a spade a spade: I tend to avoid math. Despite my better-than-decent grades and test scores in the subject, I continue to have little confidence in my abilities to add large figures in my head, or figure percentages, or anything else that involves calculation without mechanical backup.

But I am excellent at spatial relations, geometry, algebra, problem solving — especially problem solving: I am fantastic at figuring out what needs to get done to answer a problem.

It’s the execution of the calculation that gives me the sweaty palms.

GUESS WHAT

Excel rewards exactly my type of skill set.

Set up the problem right, design the formulas right, be patient and meticulous and thoughtful and logical and everything that gives me joy, and Excel will do the rest.

It’s one of the things that I truly love about technology — if it’s well designed, it can help you do those things you don’t want to do, don’t have time to do, or aren’t sure how to do, and it lets you concentrate on the things you ARE good at.

Me? I’m a strategist, an analyst, a synthesizer of ideas.

I’m also incredibly detail-obsessed, logical, and consistent.

Some of the best career advice I ever got was to play to your strengths, not your weaknesses. Which sounds simplistic, but many, MANY of us make more, THINK more, of our weaknesses than we do our strengths.

How do you play to your strengths? Do you really know what your strengths are?

for the neighborhood

Nonprofit blogger and Twitter friend Social Butterfly was kind enough to do a quick profile of me on her blog, fly4change, after Beth Kanter nominated me after her profile.  Fun!

(Stay tuned to Social Butterfly’s ongoing series, Meet the Neighbors, to see who I nominated…)

This is part of a trend I’m noticing among the social media crowd I run with (that’s right), that is, making an effort to widen the circle and try to get to know each other in more depth than can perhaps be conveyed in a 140-character tweet.

Chris Brogan issued a call yesterday to spend the day reading and commenting, rather than posting, for a change. I did my bit by reading some of the feeds in my reader that I’m usually too busy to get to, on the theory that, while I might have relegated them in my mind at some point in the past to having content that wasn’t perhaps central to my life or interests, who’s to say that’s still the case? Or that today wasn’t THE DAY that I just HAD to read THAT BLOG?

And then I commented on a few blogs that I had only ever lurked on. It’s good to keep in practice, sabe?

more blogs about buildings and food

Blahg Blahg Blahg

I gave a presentation on blogging — should you blog? why and how? — at Geek Girl Camp Cape Cod Thursday night. It was a first-time event, this Geek Girl Camp thing, and so it was hard to know quite what to expect.

I knew that it was sold out. There were 100 women and girls crammed into one conference room at the Heritage House Hotel in Hyannis.

Any event that succeeds in drawing over 100 women who are interested in technology, but consider themselves beginners, to an evening of speakers on a variety of wonky topics has to be deemed a success on some level.

The Digital Divide

Now, Cape Cod as a region is admittedly not the most technologically engaged.

As a region, the Cape is:

• Home to a disproportionate number of seniors and retirees, compared with other parts of the US
• Geographically cut off from the mainland, which is often more of a psychological barrier than a physical one
• Composed of many diffuse neighborhoods, and few centralized downtowns
• Dependent on a heavily seasonal economy, with a large population living at or near the poverty line

So the digital divide here runs wide and deep.

I do a lot of work with local artists in my line of work, helping them use technology, the internet, online communities, etc., to market themselves and their work, to make a greater portion of their income from their art, and to connect with and get support from other artists.

So I’m used to speaking about these issues to individuals and groups who are at least hesitant about technology, if not downright resistant.

That’s why it’s so useful to be tugged in the right direction on a regular basis by folks like Chris Brogan, who once again sounds the call in his newsletter to avoid talking about the technology in favor of talking about what it can do for people:

If you lead into the talk with words like “wiki” and “RSS” and “Twitter,” you might as well turn around and walk out. Business is about doing business, not learning new and amazing things.

It’s your job as the cool hunter to sift through it all, find the stuff that’s a good fit, and talk about how it applies to the way things are being done now.

Free and Easy

Talks about starting a blog (including mine) tend to include a song and dance about how it’s “free” and “easy.”

When of course it’s really neither.

Blogs take time, and your time is worth a lot. We only have a certain amount of hours in a day. If you spend a few hours blogging, that’s a few hours you didn’t spend on other parts of your job, or on your family, or on feeding the hungry, or sleeping or dancing or holding hands.

And writing isn’t “easy” for the majority of the population, either. It happens to be something I’m pretty happy doing, but that’s far from true for everybody.

I know that if someone went around talking about how solving simultaneous equations was free and easy, I’d want to smack them, hard.

So it’s really relative. And to people who remain skeptical, it is anything but self-evident that any of this is worth their time and the grief it might take them to learn it.

But at least ten of those women and girls assembled on Thursday night told me on their way out the door that their minds had been changed about the usefulness of blogs, and that they were going to start blogs that very night.

So we must be doing something right.

And maybe ten other people in that room heard my talk, and decided that nope, writing a blog right now wasn’t right for them.

And that’s a good result, too.

I’m less of an evangelist these days than an educator. Here’s what this thing is, here’s how it might help, and here’s why it might not.

Act accordingly.

What about you? Do you evangelize? Or do you do something else?

the organizational social media policy

More organizations are making the move into social media, either by starting a CEO blog, a customer Facebook group, or just by allowing employees to blog openly about their work lives.

As a result, more organizations are finding it necessary to draft a social media policy, or at least a set of principles, meant to guide employees’ behavior online.

Beth Kanter recently put out a call for examples of social media guidelines from nonprofits, starting with the example of the Easter Seals’ blogging policy.

A few readers chimed in with some good examples from the enterprise sector (for instance, IBM, Opera, and Sun all have blogging policies, which were linked to via Twitter by Christine Kreutz).

In a follow-up post, Beth relates an anonymous tale of a corporate social media policy:

In truth, the policy… is quite vague. It goes on for a while but really just says, “Use common sense and please don’t say stupid stuff. In fact, we’d love it if you told your personal institutional story in a constructive way.

I think that’s what most blogging/social media policies really boil down to.

It seems like executives (and nonprofit boards) are primarily concerned about three things:

1. Employees will say bad things about the organization (sponsors, vendors, customers, etc.);
2. Customers/constituents will say bad things about the organization (sponsors, staff, vendors, etc.);
3. Employees will tell secrets.

It’s been said that companies would do well to remember that they have to trust their employees on these issues every day already — every time they talk to a customer, deal with a member, gab with a vendor, or work with a sponsor, you are trusting them to represent you and your brand responsibly, with discretion and integrity.

If you haven’t hired people you can trust to behave like responsible adults, then there is a deeper problem.

Of course, by “secrets” we can also be talking about “knowledge” — especially if your primary product is ideas and analysis. How much should smart, responsible bloggers share of their smart, responsible (and valuable) thinking?

This line of thought reminded me of this recent post from David Deal of Avenue A|Razorfish, a reaction to George Colony’s recent talk on corporate blogging.

Colony seems concerned, understandably, about the wisdom of giving away too much of his company’s bread-and-butter, which is insight, analysis, and forecasting. Do bloggers like Jeremiah Owyang give away the farm by blogging so prolifically on his topics of expertise?

Not hardly, David says:

I think the blogger-as-superstar-brand is good for any company — but especially Forrester, JupiterResearch, Gartner, IDC, and other organizations that rely on ideas as currency. Your employees already are your brand whether you realize it or not.

The problem with this fear of giving away the farm, this anxiety that every bit of our product needs to be paid for, is that it ignores the way that social media works. Social media works around relationships (believe it or not), not transactions.

Yes, most marketers think they have “relationships” with their customers, but they don’t, not really. They are really going right for the sale, and they aren’t really listening at all.

As Brian Oberkirk said today:

They go right for the transaction. It’s like: Hi, there, I’m…hey, is that your hand in my pocket?

I think I speak for a lot of us when I say “Please get your hands out of our pockets. We’ll call you when we need you.”

The economy in most social networks is just different from the more typical, everyday, transactional business model. Online, in social media, you give a little (sometimes a lot) to get more. Sometimes a lot more.

Ignore this at your peril.