All projects: Gel, Good Todo, Games, Uncle Mark, Bit Literacy
Archives / August 2011
From New Zealand, a Gel video gets lip-synced
At Gel 2011 earlier this year our friend Charlie Todd and his Improv Everywhere crew staged an on-stage prank called Gotta Share.
Now some elementary school kids in Auckland, New Zealand have created their own lipsync of the song. Nice job, class! Of all the Gel videos we've posted over the years, this is the first ever to be lip-synced:
(Thanks to Charlie for pointing it out.)
Are you the user or the used?
Jaron Lanier on the social media business model:
You think you're the user, but you're the used, or you're the product, and then you end up doing all this stuff to control your online presence, and your online reputation, and people become obsessed with that. But the real representation of you is the one you can't access, which is the one that's used to sell access to you to third parties. ...When [users] contribute to services like Google+, or Facebook, or other social networks, what's happening is they're working for the benefit of someone else's fortune by creating data that can be used to grant or deny access based on pay to these third parties, the tawdry third parties...
Excerpt from this interview.
Why you won't be getting a free steak on Twitter
Here's a customer experience story that's popping this week. Sitting on a plane while hungry, social media consultant Peter Shankman posted a request on Twitter for a porterhouse steak from his favorite steakhouse chain. After landing a couple of hours later at Newark airport, Shankman was handed a porterhouse steak, gratis, delivered by the restaurant. (Here's his recap.)
I can appreciate the effort and agility it took for the steakhouse to make the delivery - kudos to them. And I'm happy for Peter. I know him a little - we're both longtime veterans of the New York City Internet community, and I've linked to his site before (I identified with his column on being a nice guy who doesn't like being underestimated).
Still, I have to note that Peter's Twitter account has over 100,000 followers. If Peter - good, talented guy that he is - had asked for the porterhouse but had only had a few hundred followers, what would have happened? Would the steakhouse - good, agile team that it is - have made the delivery? If so, there are thousands of Twitter users who would be happy to post their request for a free steak.
The drawback of the steak story is that it's not applicable to most users. Whatever conclusions we might draw about the power of social media must be viewed in the strict context of an extraordinarily well-connected user. Yes, social media created an efficient, surprising, good customer experience - for someone who could transmit the story to 100,000 followers. The company saw value in the reach that Shankman would have, and so they invested in achieving that reach. Come to think of it, it's not much different from - brace yourself - advertising. Exactly the thing that social media was supposed to replace.
Twitter and other social media services are creating some new experiences and new opportunities. But many of them are only for celebrities and other users in the top tenth of one percent. I'm happy that good guys like Peter are among them. But when it comes to drawing conclusions about social media and what it can do for the world, I'm more interested in seeing what's available to the other 99.9% of users.
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P.S. For what it's worth, here's my Twitter account. Not quite 5,000 followers - maybe I could get a bag of chips :)
Stanford AI course, thanks to Khan Academy
In this NYT piece we learn that 58,000 students have signed up for a free online Stanford course on artificial intelligence.
As for where the idea came from:
The two scientists said they had been inspired by the recent work of Salman Khan, an M.I.T.-educated electrical engineer who in 2006 established a nonprofit organization to provide video tutorials to students around the world on a variety of subjects via YouTube."The vision is: change the world by bringing education to places that can't be reached today," said Dr. Thrun.
The rapid increase in the availability of high-bandwidth Internet service, coupled with a wide array of interactive software, has touched off a new wave of experimentation in education.
For example, the Khan Academy, which focuses on high school and middle school, intentionally turns the relationship of the classroom and homework upside down. Students watch lectures at home, then work on problem sets in class, where the teacher can assist them one on one.
Sal Khan gave his first major conference presentation about Khan Academy at Gel 2010 - here's the video.
NYT on social media overload
The NYT reports that "digital fatigue" is afflicting people with too many social media accounts. The story - like others before it - focuses more on defining (and decrying) the problem than on pointing out a solution, though it presents some minor fixes such as software to post to multiple accounts at once.
The larger problem is that most people have no permanent solution to overload (or "fatigue") as it continues to grow year after year. Tactical improvements like the ones in the story may chip away at it here and there but will never deliver people the peace of mind they want in the digitally saturated world.
But of course there is a permanent solution - and it's free, simple to learn, and easy to practice. It all starts with changing one's standpoint: you are in charge, not the technology. But you do have to take responsibility. Read more in my book Bit Literacy - a free download on iPhones and iPads, and $0.99 on Kindles.
Master course in hospitality from Danny Meyer
From the New York Times yesterday, A Movable Feast: Danny Meyer on a Roll spotlights the noted restaurateur, founder of Union Square Cafe, Gramercy Tavern, Eleven Madison Park, Shake Shack, and other varied dining establishments with one thing in common: hospitality. The NYT profile offers a helpful look at Meyer's emphasis on people - getting the right people in his organization, and treating customers well.
Danny spoke at the Gel 2007 conference about hospitality:
Three years later, Randy Garutti - who works with Danny as chief operating officer of Shake Shack - spoke at Gel 2010 about hospitality in the burger business:
These themes are developed further in Meyer's book Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business - recommended reading on the topic.
I'd also recommend reading the Union Square Cafe newsletter in which Meyer dispels the gloom of the recession: "Hospitality = Hope, which is, of course, the antidote to fear."
Meyer's message of hospitality is so well aligned with my message in Good Experience and Gel that I've covered his work several other times in past years. Take a look.
How to convince someone that you're right
Can you change someone's mind about something? Really, this is important. To create almost anything significant, you've got to change someone's mind along the way. Convince the boss to sign off on a decision. Convince the team to adopt a new process. Convince the developer to implement a new design. And so on.
There are two ways of convincing someone of something:
The trump card: I have the bigger job title, longer list of degrees, or more prestigious background. Or I'm more famous, better connected, more influential. Or my team is red-hot and very cool at the same time. Or I'm just plain entertaining and, in a way, charming.
Translation: I'm bigger and better than you. So of course I'm right. It would just be easier if you'd get on board with what I say.
(Now let's evaluate this approach.)
Pros: Some people, believe it or not, relish being on the receiving end of this approach. It's so much easier to hand over responsibility to someone else - why not to the person who makes such a good show of being smarter?
Cons: For all their skills in selling themselves, people with the trump card may not actually be all that good at the job itself. More to the point, what they say may not be right. It can be dangerous to follow their lead.
Fortunately, there's another possibility.
The invitation: I know some stuff, you know some stuff, other people know some stuff. Let's figure this out together.
Translation: No translation needed. That's the nice thing about this approach - everything means just what it says.
Pros: As long as you invite the right people into the process, you're likely to get the right answer. And if everyone feels like a participant, they're more likely to believe in the outcome: the answer, the decision, the next steps. You're able to create the biggest impact, in the long run, because people are more enthusiastic to implement something they believe in.
Cons: This can be difficult to pull off, initially, especially with people who want to listen to whoever appears to be the smartest, most prestigious, and so on. Some people really want to see the trump card.
In nearly 15 years of customer experience consulting, I've learned - among other things - that I'm not very good at playing the trump card. It just feels a little tricky - and I have very little smoke, and not a single mirror, to support such an endeavor. The straightforward approach feels much more natural (and I'm guessing many people reading this will relate).
So in my own pitches, for Creative Good's customer experience consulting, I rely on the invitation: I know a little from past projects. You know a lot about your own environment, goals, and challenges. And most importantly, your customers know - or at least can demonstrate - what's working or not in the customer experience. If we work together, we can find out how to build a better experience.
This isn't for everyone. At Creative Good, my team and I have lost plenty of business along the way to some very impressive-looking trump cards. But we've also been called back, years later, from the same clients, saying they regretted the decision and were ready for a different approach.
But I think this is a useful tip for anyone who's trying to create a good experience. Whether you're inside an organization as a full-time employee, or rocking outside as a consultant or small agency, or a student not yet in the trenches, consider how you'll go about convincing people of your ideas. I'd suggest inviting them to take part, sit alongside you, and directly observe customers having a authentic, unfiltered experience. It's a start.
