168 5th graders, 30 minutes to speak and me with a mic. What could possibly go wrong?
Source: mssnglnk
Spam your friends, win a prize
What if, rather than buy lots of chocolate bars in the hopes of a Golden Ticket; Charlie had to spam several hundred of his friends for two weeks? Does this sound familiar? If so, you might be on a social network where right now someone you know is trying to win something.
If you’re a good friend, you’re probably trying to help. Maybe you enlist others to join the cause as well and before you know it, you’ve got a small army attempting to help someone get something cool, nice or perhaps support a good cause along the way.
As social media continues to invade the mainstream, brands and whoever else want our attention seek ways to capture the eyeballs of a mass that don’t have time for them. Tugging at the heartstrings of personal relationships seems to be a good way to develop brand awareness, if you lack it. But at what cost? And is there long term value in this strategy? Without hard data, I won’t begin to speculate.
Just looking at it, I think people are going to gradually wear from these types of contests. Right now, they favor folks who have a lot of social connections and can leverage those to their benefit. It can level playing field sometimes and result in the best team wins. In other instances, it just harnesses the power of the “American Idol” effect and while it might provide an uptick for the sponsor; it’s questionable whether small brands with little impact see an increased buzz to their aims by running contests in this way.
I’m not sure if running contests that are just opportunities for the web savvy to demonstrate their prowess really benefits brands. I’d think hard before plunging into an ocean head-first with an upstart or little-known brand in tow, in an effort to spam people into noticing what we’re doing.
It might work, but I’m not convinced (yet) that it’s worth the potential harm.
Texting and e-mail and posting let us present the self we want to be. This means we can edit. And if we wish to, we can delete. Or retouch: the voice, the flesh, the face, the body. Not too much, not too little — just right.
Human relationships are rich; they’re messy and demanding. We have learned the habit of cleaning them up with technology. And the move from conversation to connection is part of this. But it’s a process in which we shortchange ourselves. Worse, it seems that over time we stop caring, we forget that there is a difference.
We are tempted to think that our little “sips” of online connection add up to a big gulp of real conversation. But they don’t. E-mail, Twitter, Facebook, all of these have their places — in politics, commerce, romance and friendship. But no matter how valuable, they do not substitute for conversation.
The Flight From Conversation (via NYT)
Technology when you’re isolated can be such a boon. But it’s not a panacea to real human interaction. It’s finding out how to bridge that gap in a way that’s intellectually honest that confounds me.
Source: The New York Times
Justin Vernon (with Eau Claire Memorial HS Jazz I & Mike Noyce) - Since I Fell For You
This is just such a good cover, especially when you consider it’s high school kids backing him up. For the unfamiliar, this is Justin Vernon (Bon Iver) back playing with his old high school jazz band and jazz teacher. It’s super solid.
Source: Spotify!
You might be good, but you’re still a spare part
There’s a common adage that implores us to remember that no one is irreplaceable. While that might be true in theory, in practice, there are legions of us who go to work everyday believing that we’re the cogs that make the wheels turn in our respective organizations. Heck, our leadership might be banking on the fact that we’re as good as we believe we are to make sure things move forward and get going.
You can provide all of the unique value in the world and might think when you’re replaced that someone else can’t provide that same intangible. When you reflect on it, time and time again it ends up not mattering all that much. Which is a weird feeling when you think about it. If you’re the kind of person who goes beyond the call of duty, who is earnest and leaves it all “out on the field” in respects to what needs to be done in a particular role, it can be sobering to realize that when the clocks tops none of that matters.
Or better stated, it matters but not in the ways you’d think. The memory might persist, but timing doesn’t. You’re only as good as your last hit and I think the real key to making sure you’re more than just a spare part is to translate your value into the bottom line.
More often than not, this isn’t possible in a situation where someone else controls it. For a lot of people, I think the fuel behind their startups are a sustained feeling of worth and being able to provide the value they might have felt was ignored working under someone else’s thumb.
What’s funny about this post is that it’s not fueled by any kind of day-to-day work environment thinking, but rather, the kind of work we do in non-traditional situations such as non-profit, volunteer or the kinds of work that’s not measured by hours by through the passion we have for the activity.
Leaving a legacy is less important than what you’re able to accomplish during the time you get a chance. Realizing that paying it forward doesn’t always mean that you’ll get to see what you did, that there will be any recognition for that beyond what you got while you were doing it and in the end, it doesn’t matter.
You have to believe in the cause and what you’re giving while you’re giving and realize that when time is up, that it’s a chance to see where else you’re needed and to pursue that with the same heart and passion that you’re accustomed to giving.
