Neighborhoodnow Chronicles

Linda Postenrieder and Donna Hinshaw, Owners of the Pelican Art Gallery in Petaluma, California and active members of the Petaluma business community, have asked me to present another Social Media Seminar at their Gallery, specifically for those who were unable to attend the ones I’ve held recently during the day.

So mark your calendars for Thursday February 11th, 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm at the Pelican Art Gallery in Petaluma. We’ve already had a number of confirmations for the event, so please RSVP as soon as you can to info@neighborhoodnow.com or call 707.338.8900 to confirm your seat.

I’ll be speaking about what Social Media is and what it is not, the impact it’s having on the marketing and business world, and why it matters to you. We’ll also take a look at a few of the most popular tools on the market today, including Blogs, Facebook and Twitter – and how you can use them for your business.

You can also check out some of my other blog posts on Social Media: Social Media: Is it Hype or Here To Stay, To Choose or Not To Choose…, Some Rules are Meant to be Broken, Don’t Tell Me What To Do, and I don’t tweet and I don’t care.

It’s natural that when a new phenomenon comes into being, and especially if it upends the normal order of things, that there would be a backlash. And so it is with Social Media – there are a number of people who insist that Social Media is nothing but ‘hype’, another fad or passing technology that will come and go just like many others.

If we think of some of the other technologies that have come into fashion and then had dips in popularity, including MySpace (though at over 400 million users, I’m not so sure that MySpace has gone ‘out of fashion’ just yet), Yahoo! – displaced by Google’s simplicity and powerful search engine algorithms, and Netscape’s original browser (the Navigator is but a distant memory at this point)  – we can see that it’s definitely true that in the world of technology, products come and products go.

But Social Media is not a product. It’s not even a service. It’s an evolution of the internet and it’s potential to allow people to communicate with each other. When Jack Dorsey invented Twitter (only 3 years ago), his idea was founded on the principle of communication – or multi-text messaging simultaneously, essentially. Twitter’s popularity, along with Facebook and a multitude of other social networks, is due to that ability to communicate with other people in a two-way conversation. And so Social Media is challenging the very nature of how we have traditionally done business in one-way communication: telling our customers about our products and then waiting for them to buy. It takes a lot more work, a lot more investing of ourselves, and a lot more effort to actually engage in a relationship with our customers. It means we have to listen, we have to hear what is being said about us, and we have to be willing to address customer issues. 

But the idea of people having conversations within communities and listening to their peers and expressing their opinions is nothing new. What makes Social Media powerful is the capability of the internet to allow these conversations to happen across channels, to a select few or millions, to my personal community or to my business community – and to have that conversation with whatever cross-section of an audience I choose.

Any new technology naturally has a tendency to be over-hyped initially – in fact, there’s a very interesting model developed by Gartner Research that expresses this normal pattern of trigger/peak/trough followed by a ‘Slope of Enlightenment’ and then a ‘Plateau of Productivity’.  The ‘Hype Cycle’ shows that when a new technology is introduced, there’s a natural progression through the adoption of that technology from it’s initial use and promotion, then a backlash of ‘disillusionment’ until it reaches some stability in it’s next iteration.

So if the concept is strong, useful and powerful, the new technology will settle down and gain a foothold in our lives, in one form or another. Whether it’s the printing press, refrigeration, turbine engines, biofuels, the Internet or Social Media, if a technology has the power to transform the way we live or work or play, it will adapt to our needs and become a part of our lives, evolving and changing along with us.

The Book of Eli is interesting, for  a number of reasons. Saw it on Friday night with S., and we both came away feeling as if we’d been walking through the desert for 31 years. Not that Denzel Washington isn’t a great actor, but this movie is so sepia-toned, so weary, so slow and so predictable (except for one small twist near the end) that you wonder if it’s ever going to get to the point.

The Book of Eli is a story about a traveler in a post-apocalyptic world, Eli, played by Denzel Washington and his journey to protect ‘The Book’. Now for a lot of people (billions, that is), The Book in the movie may not necessarily be the same Book – so if you can remember that this is a metaphor and not a literal, then it’s a little easier to take.

Eli’s journey ’west’ involves protecting The Book, and keeping ‘The Book’ safe means killing a LOT of people, and ignoring others who need help – so I hope that the Hughes brothers intended the movie to be filled with irony, because it is. Eli has to protect the book since it’s the only one left of its kind, because all the other ones were burned because of the war that was started over the book in the first place. As you can see, irony layered over irony fills this movie, and the end result is you feel somewhat cheated because you really want to root for Eli, but he keeps doing things that are just so wrong.

Enter Gary Oldman as Carnegie, the crazed religious saloon-owner who has ambitions to obtain the Book at any cost, Mila Kunis as Solara (whose hair is gorgeous despite the fact that shampoo hasn’t been available for over 30 years?) with acting skills that pale in comparison to Denzel, and  Jennifer Beals as the blind woman who manages to add a touch of class to some otherwise very gritty scenes.

Throw in some cannibalism, bandits, lots of big guns and armored tanks (they can find gasoline, guns, bullets and water but they can’t find or make soap or shampoo?) and you have the makings of a very bleak, frustrating and predictable though cinematically beautiful movie.

Cast and Crew

• Director: Albert Hughes, Allen Hughes
• Producer: Broderick Johnson, Andrew A. Kosove, Joel Silver, David Valdes, Denzel Washington
• Screenwriter: Gary Whitta
• Stars: Denzel Washington, Gary Oldman, Mila Kunis
• MPAA Rating: R

So I am now the proud owner of an Amazon Kindle, a gift from a good friend. This is an amazing little gadget – it’s an e-Reader, which means that I can store entire books, newspapers and magazines on this device, and read them on the go. As an avid reader, I’m really excited about the prospect of having 1000’s of books at my beck and call, 24/7. So here’s my very personal review on this newest addition to my techie gadget world…

Size does matter…
The Kindle I have is about 6″ wide and 9 inches long, with a reading screen of about 4″ by 5″. I know there’s a larger model, about 9″ wide, but I haven’t seen that one, and I wanted the smaller version because it’s about the size of a paperback. It’s also very slim, maybe just about 1/4″.  It also only weighs about 10 ounces, so between the size and weight, it’s very portable and convenient to carry, just like a small book, but slimmer.

The screen allows you to read about 2 to 3 paragraphs at a time of a standard book, so perhaps half a regular page – so I find that I’m flipping pretty quickly to the next page, but that seems to work fine, and doesn’t interrupt my normal reading pace. You can also change the size of the text very easily so you see more on a page.

You can’t judge a book by its cover…
This Kindle (I think this is the second version from Amazon) comes in white only for now, no colors or stainless or customization available yet on the look, though I’m certain that will change with future models. I think the idea was to mimic the “feel” of the inside of a normal book - simple and clean, nothing distracting.

Form follows Function…
Well, here we get into some really interesting points. The Kindle is obviously still a Work-In-Progress, there are a few things I’ve noticed already that could be better. Let’s start with that screen – no backlight!!! So if there isn’t enough ambient light, you’re out of luck – you need to keep the lights on or be in daylight to read easily. There’s also a small – and I mean tiny – keyboard at the bottom of the Kindle, below the screen, with tiny round buttons for a keypad, very difficult to see and read so typing isn’t particularly easy.

Reading text and pages itself is great – it’s very easy to navigate between pages with previous and next buttons easily within reach. The two other buttons I use the most are the Menu and Home buttons. The Menu gives different options depending on the screen I’m on, and the Home button takes me back to my downloaded list of books, my Account and other Settings. The only button I’m really surprised by is the little boxy navigation button, to move the cursor up, down, to the side or also act as the “Enter” key. It’s a bit awkward to use, and takes a little getting used to – like driving a stick-shift. I got the hang of it eventually but couldn’t they have come up with a better way of moving the cursor around the screen?  (Touch screen, anyone?)

I really like the fact that the brilliant minds at Amazon built in a browser with its own WiFi – so it’s simple to go online and download a book anywhere – you don’t have to be in a wireless network area. You do have to have an Amazon account though. You can also subscribe to various magazines and newspapers, and even upload PDF files, but the browser functionality is very limited – don’t expect to be able to surf online with this Kindle.

Content is King…
Remember that to be able to download a book, it has to be in digital format first – so not every book is available to download onto the Kindle. There is a huge effort underway to convert millions of books into an eReadable format however, and with more than 400,000 titles available for download, and more being added everyday, there are enough books to keep me happy for now.

Final thoughts…
I have to admit I’m an early-adopter type and didn’t want to wait for the next version…but all in all, I really like my Kindle. It’s small, pretty easy to use, and I really like having access to so many books wherever I go.

What’s with the name, though? Isn’t Kindle firewood…?