"Steal This Book": Part II - Steal This Blog Post

A driving force behind the social revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, Abbie Hoffman inspired a generation to challenge the status quo. Meant as a practical guide for the aspiring hippie, Steal This Book (1970) captures Hoffman's puckish tone and became a cult classic with over 200,000 copies sold. Outrageously illustrated by R. Crumb, it nevertheless conveys a serious message to all would-be revolutionaries: You don't have to take it anymore. "All Power to the Imagination was his credo. Abbie was the best." 
— Studs Terkel. 

Fast forward 41 years and everyone wants you to steal their book or CD or idea. They want that because then you will distribute it and in turn, they will sell more whatever. A few years ago the band Radiohead released their album, In Rainbows, on the Internet with a 'Pay what you like' format that allowed you to either pay, or download the album for free. 1.2 millions copies were downloaded the first day and although the record company has never released sales numbers, it was a PR coup. Permitted, encouraged  stealing has now become a distribution method. After all, if nobody wants to steal your stuff, then it can't be any good, can it?

Seth Godin recently considered selling a DVD of his latest speaking series and then opted for an 'honor system' method that allows you to watch it on Vimeo - then he gives you the password. Free. This way he gets attention, and then sells DVD boxed sets. And this has become the Internet business model of choice: Give something away for free, use that to gain attention, and then sell a hard copy of whatever it is you have to make money. Hugh MacLeod has used this method for years to distribute his cartoons and ideas - now he will happily sell you a framed print from his online gallery or a book. Hugh is doing very well.

This blog is free but I do it to gain attention and then sell consulting services.What can you give away, or let people steal that will then endear them to you enough to buy whatever is is you have to sell? Steal this blog post please. 

D a v i d E v e r i t t - C a r l s o n

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Find me on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn. Read my previous blog: The Wild Wild East Dailies.

The Revolution Will Not be Televised - But It Will be Here

There's a revolution underway - and it's happening on multiple fronts. Zeitgeist calls for it in questioning our society's financial motivations and political machinations. Seth Godin calls it in marketing and communications. "At the same time that our economic engines are faltering, something else is happening. Like all revolutions, it happens in fits and starts, without perfection, but it's clearly happening."

And my email calls for it in the raft of mails I get from friends who are unhappy with the way things in America are going. So there are three things one can do: Lead, follow, or get out of the way. Not since the Vietnam war I have seen America so disenchanted - and that was arguably before my time. I am the first year of Americans not to have been drafted. Now Vietnam enjoys the benefits of a youthful population, plenty of foreign investment and bountiful growth. The generation in America who protested the war in Vietnam was eventually placated by Reagan, Wall Street and a trickle-down re-education camp theory that hasn't quite played out. So how will the Baby Boomers play it this time? Differently we hope - for their children, or grandchildren. The revolution will not be televised, but it will be here.

Squandering the Peace Dividend on War: The American Way

From Seth Godin today again, a post about squandering our national resources. You can read the original by clicking on the coloured type but I'm going to repurpose his writing a bit and make a few comments.

The internet means that many time-consuming forms of white-collar drudgery have disappeared, or at least been offloaded to cheaper people who aren't you, permitting you to spend more time on things that are actually productive and highly leveraged.

I recall any great number of people loosing their jobs when the computer age finally kicked in to corporate America in the early 90s. I felt sorry for them. At Leo Burnett in Chicago during a large layoff of 250 or so (15% of the staff I recall) a number of soon-to-be ex-employees were structuring a class action suit claiming the company was remiss in not retraining them properly. I'm not sure that ever got off the ground but they were not incorrect. All along they had been doing what they were told, doing what they had been trained to do, following the old company manual. And things turned out poorly for them. I recall crossing one of the bridges across the Chicago River at lunch one day and seeing the men in the fireboat fishing a body wrapped in plastic out of the water. "Must be one of ours", a fellow Burnetter remarked walking by. Signs of those times.

It's a little like the bump we got after the Cold War ended. The peace dividend was there, just waiting for us to repurpose our military, our military budget and our military research. We didn't. We squandered the window, wasted the money and didn't rush to fill it with the sort of top-down industrial projects (like high speed rail and efficient new forms of energy) that could have changed everything.

I spent nearly half of 2009 and half of last year in Europe. France, Germany and The Netherlands for a short bit. It was positively enlightening. High speed trains everywhere. A 12 Euro ticket for my public transportation every week. Metro, S-Bahn or a tram or bus anywhere I wanted to go in Munich. Fast and cheap. Bill Clinton left America a surplus in budget after his term. That seemed to go away fairly quickly. If I studied economics, politics and military science would I find that a state of perpetual war and code 'Red', 'Purple', 'Orange' fascist fear tactics in a nation  were essentially good for economic and political stability in the long term? I'd be interested in reader's thoughts on that.

D a v i d E v e r i t t - C a r l s o n

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Find me on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn. Read my previous blog: The Wild Wild East Dailies.

In life, perception IS reality

From Seth Godin again today, the following illustration:

"Do you have an opinion about nuclear power? About the relative safety of one form of power over another? How did you come to this opinion? Here are the stats, and here's the image. A non-exaggerated but simple version of his data:

For every person killed by nuclear power generation, 4,000 die due to coal, adjusted for the same amount of power produced. You might very well have excellent reasons to argue for one form over another. Not the point of this post. The question is: did you know about this chart? 

This last week has seen a fair lambasting of the media over the nuclear non-meltdown in Japan. The sky was not falling - but it gave plenty of Americans cause to pound the stump for or against nuclear power. And how about Libya? America and France are now bombing against the regime. Do we really know what's going on? No, not at all. And don't expect the western media to go down there and start digging for the real story. Won't happen. Too many vested interests at stake. But we'll plunder away, at whatever our day jobs are. All that other stuff is far away. So we'll just continue making the reality we want to perceive, because we can. Reality is just terribly subjective. Perception is almost fact.

D a v i d E v e r i t t - C a r l s o n

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Find me on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn. Read my blog: The Wild Wild East Dailies and keep up on our efforts with aSaigon/CreativeMorning.

"Idea Tourism" - To visit and see yet learn nothing?

From Seth Godin today, the idea of 'Idea Tourism'.

"It's possible for a tourist to visit Times Square in New York City, see nothing new or unexpected, and leave the city unchanged. I don't think there's a lot of point in that. If you want to truly understand Darwin, then go to a lab and do some experiments. If you want to understand a gun lover, go to a shooting range for an afternoon. If you want to see how social networking will actually change the way ideas spread, go use it. Intensely, and with a purpose in mind."

I had a client recently who only wanted to buy 2/3rds of a project. The part they left out, they said they'd do themselves. It was a social media project.

"Only when we try the idea on for size and actually use it do we understand it. With more ideas offering visitation rights than ever before, learning how empathize with an idea is critical."

My particular client wanted to tour social media, take a photo, and then go back to business as usual. Sadly, little was learned and business is, sadly, back to usual..

Another project I'm involved in has that risk for some as well. Many will be familiar with the aSaigon/CreativeMorning initiative I work on with a small group of other like-minded creative business people. What we've seen in three sessions is a great deal of people who sign up, but never show up, and another group, who come only once - sort of missing the point entirely. Buts what's left is becoming a good core group of interested pioneers who really are beginning to use the sessions to foster ideas and friendships and like visions. I was asked recently if it was possible to 'teach' creativity, and my response was that I didn't think so. But if one practices enough, on a regular basis, they might learn something - more than all the tourists learn who have a photo of themselves in front of their favourite world monument.

D a v i d E v e r i t t - C a r l s o n

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Find me on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn. Read my blog: The Wild Wild East Dailies and keep up on our efforts with aSaigon/CreativeMorning.

On 'Declaring' Bankruptcy

I hated the post below, because it's true. "Perhaps it's time to stop fighting a losing fight and start creating value doing something else instead.", says Seth Godin. Many times he's right.

"Declaring Chapter 11"

"What a poetic phrase, starting with 'declaring'. Not sighing or announcing or admitting, but Declaring!

Chapter 11 refers to part of the bankruptcy code that covers reorganizations. In Chapter 11, you don't shut down your business. Instead, faced with failure, you suspend certain agreements and debts and negotiate in a way that permits you to continue. Chapter 7 is very different. It means "I give up." You shut down, it's over.

Metaphorically, we have the chance to declare either kind of bankruptcy whenever we work on a project or consider a habit, a social media addiction or even a job.Teetering on the edge of bankruptcy is painful. Declaring is often a relief. Acknowledging that you're stuck is the very first step in getting unstuck...

Perhaps it's time to stop fighting a losing fight and start creating value doing something else instead. Bankruptcy is never fun, but when you give up something that wasn't getting you where you needed to go, sometimes you discover a future better than you ever expected."

This week I face a choice like this. There are some options and there are some ways that the situation could alleviate itself, but if they don't happen, perhaps it's indeed time to stop loosing this particular fight. Let's see. I could be convinced to just file Chapter 11 and go into re-org. Let's see if the right angels show up at the right time...this time.