Open (White)house

As we tucked into fish and chips on the beach in Aldeburgh, Suffolk, UK, a good friend of mine told me excitedly about what had recently happened to his 11-year-old niece. We'll call her Bea.

His sister had moved to the US more than a decade earlier. Which is why, like thousands of other American school children, Bea had received a letter from the President of the United States; Barack Obama. (image courtesy)

That letter included what may have been construed as a bit of a throwaway line: Something to the effect of 'if you're ever in Washington, do drop by to say Hi at the Whitehouse'.

Well Bea's mum and dad thought they'd chance their arm. They don't live sooo far from DC.

And they rocked up at The Whitehouse, handed over the letter and were ushered into a room. Just them. Not a crowd. No appointment. No allotted time.

And after a few minutes?

Barack Obama strode into the room. Chatted, relaxed and unhurried.

Signed autographs. Had his picture taken with Bea (steadfastly NOT with parents, this was all about Bea) and eventually, with no sign of rush, left them in a puff of awe.

Heartwarming?

Charming?

Oh yes. And, I'd hazard a guess, life changing too.

You see my first (self-obsessed?) reaction was to think 'I got invited to No10. Twice. Once by Blair. Second time by Brown.

But the invites weren't random with the seeming generosity of spirit of Obama's.

No, my invitations came because of who I was and the mass media influence-from-the-centre I apparently had at my disposal as a member of the British Society of Magazine Editors.

A broadcast approach to meet-the-people.

Obama's open door policy is different - but arguably more effective in a networked world.

Rather than heap privilege on yet another journalist or broadcaster, Obama has time in his diary to connect with people, any people.

In a networked world, in most parts of the US at least, all nodes are pretty much connected with all nodes. All people with all people.

Obama meets Bea: Not to win her vote (she'll only be 16 the only time he'd need it) but to win the votes of those their meeting will influence.

The Obama/Bea summit becomes a huge social object in Bea's life, and therefore in the lives of all those around her.

Bea will update Facebook (etc), she will share her story where-ever life takes her. Her parents will tell everyone they know and love.

Blown away by their enthusiasm for the story, their friends and family will tell their friends and family.

Some of them will share online, some offline. But share and share they will.
This story has already travelled from Washington to a beach on the easy coast of England.

From DC to DC :-)

And now it has reached you. I hope it still has value for you. The kind you'll want to pass on.

Imagine instead Obama had spent the same amount of time with yet another grumpy journalist. He'd have got some column inches. He'd have had his thoughts edited, packaged, span. And there wouldn't have been a lot of love going round.

No lives would have been changed.

This story puts me in the room with Obama in a way no media interview can touch.

Of course, the old guard will say Obama is wasting his time with 11-year-olds while the NYT is on hold.

But Obama knows, in a networked world, winning one heart beats stealing a million eyeballs.

Overheard: Everything

Listening always beats asking. Asking questions demands and shapes response.

And people, good, kind, back-scratching people, will often tell you what you want to hear.

Taken to extremes you get your LinkedIn recommendations. (Compare that to what your colleagues may say if you're out of the room...)

Less dramatically, ask people and you guide their thoughts.

Market Research companies are painfully aware of this skew. No question is entirely without motive. None comes without an agenda - an agenda proposed by the questioner.

But listening, passive listening, can teach you much.

Wise orgs and brands are doing more of this. It's often a bit of a revelation for them that they can do it relatively easily online.

But anything I publish on any open forum, blog, tweet, is recorded, is searchable, is discoverable. As is anything you say. Or your friends. And their friends ad infinitum.

Right now and for the mid-term (I'm assuming) we feel what we hear is pure, unsullied, honest, unskewed people saying what they really mean to their peers. With caveats around axe grinders and power relationships, of course.

But could it be we will begin to change what we say on the assumption that brands are listening? Will it lead to a layer of artifice?

I guess it's a little like CCTV surveillance. Britains 'know' they are the most filmed people on Earth. The emergence of hoodie culture - hiding your face from the prying eyes - is the most visible change to behaviour.

For the most part we act as if the cameras aren't there. (image courtesy)

But perhaps this is because the implications haven't sunk in yet?

And with the notion that brands and orgs can pick up on our every digital utterance still very new, who knows how this fact will end up modifying our online behaviour as we become more familiar with it.

Will we update our notions of privacy and private space as we embrace the digital?

Will we find greater value in expressing ourselves freely because that expression can connect us with others trying to solve the same problems we are (communities of purpose)?

Or will silos around our private lives remain strictly maintained?

Will we feel the need for them in a world in which you can be overheard by anyone else.

And what happens when those doing the surveillance speak back - in real time. I recall the experiment in which CCTV operators added a speaker to their cameras and started berating people they spotted dropping litter. Out loud and in public. That shocked.

So if a representative of a brand responds to your complaint in real time on Twitter (for example) are you shocked? Angered? Or pleased?

I'm guessing pleased? You aren't being told off. You are being helped at just the point at which you expressed the need for help.

Generally we are so starved of human contact with large orgs that we're left beaming by an encounter that takes us beyond the corporate artifice to the humans inside.

Does knowing they are there (lurking/ready to help depending on your pov) make a difference? Do we change if they start openly responding?

Are we thinking outloud to impress the infinite unknown audience?

What I publish is not only shared right now with those who directly choose to receive it, it is here for all time, for all people. Ever.

Dr Mike Wesch talks about the moment of context collapse we face when staring into a webcam to share on the web - that we know not to whom we are speaking.

The same must be true of any kind of utterance which can for ever be discoverable.

When you realise just how long and loud your voice may echo through the ages does it make you want to shout a little louder. Or clam up?

The dilemma is one that has always faced publishers. We're all publishers now - with greater reach than ever before - it faces us all.

It has the potential to change the meaning and value of everything we share online.

Care less what the 15 year old intern does: Ask what his mum is doing.

I've really enjoyed the righteous abandon with which some sections of the traditional media have crowed about one 15-year-olds insight that his friends don't use Twitter.

Among the other details of his note for Morgen Stanley are that online advertising is 'pointless' (I'm pretty sure he means interruptive traditional style advertising of the kind that sustains traditional media) and that no kids are reading newspapers.

That teenagers aren't using Twitter (much) comes as no surprise to anyone whose been watching the regular stats that role out of Nielsen, Comscore and the like. That it took an 'intern' to tell Morgen Stanley is perhaps the greater surprise - but that's by the by.

What is of more concern to me is the considerable amount of barking going on up wrong trees around this.

First, why does it take one intern's paper to get media owners jumping up and down? Kids are available to speak to every day of the week everywhere. Take them seriously and they will speak to you. Ask Ruby Pseudo. Same message goes to Morgen Stanley. Publishing the bleeding obvious as 'insight' doesn't do you many favours.

Second. Please, please, please don't think that the behaviour (particularly what they say they do compared with what they actually do) of teenagers is an indicator for how the world is changing and a guide to how you should respond.

As Clay Shirky put it if you want to know what technologies will succeed don't ask what teenage boys are doing - ask what their mums are doing.

Mums are busy. And if the tech doesn't make a material difference to their lives they don't use it.
How many mums are on Facebook, how many on Twitter? How many using email? Text?

You can be sure there are many. They are organising their lives and the things they care about with these tools.

They are showing these tools matter for very many, now. Enough to change the world? Not yet. When we stop using terms like social media and just get on with organising ourselves - then we'll know the world has changed because enough of us find it everyday ordinary enough.

Follow the teenage boys if you wish - I'll be watching the mums.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Clay Shirky: How cellphones, Twitter, Facebook can make history (ted.com)
• What if the business model for news ain't broke? (blogs.journalism.co.uk)
• A balanced argument on the future on newspapers (financegeek.com)
• Social Media Marketing Spend to Hit $3.1 Billion by 2014 (mashable.com)

Who needs a fourth plinth when we have the internet?

The fourth plinth project on London's Trafalgar Square offers everyone (well, one an hour for 100 days) the chance to occupy the empty plinth and express themselves to the world.

You have to wonder where those who came up with the idea have been these last 20 years.

The Internet is the fourth plinth. The place where anyone (with none of the physical one-at-time restrictions of the plinth) can express as much of their meta data as they wish for as long as they wish.

And they can connect with other people - not just broadcast at them.

The 4th plinth seems little more than the X Factor outdoors.

If they must have a statue, make it of Sir Tim Berners-Lee. But better still, just make it a free Internet connection available 24/7.

Hat-tip to Ivan Pope.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Antony Gormley's Trafalgar Square Fourth Plinth (telegraph.co.uk)
• Housewife first on Fourth Plinth (news.bbc.co.uk)
• Living statues chosen for Trafalgar Square's Fourth Plinth (telegraph.co.uk)
• What would you do if they put you on a plinth? (telegraph.co.uk)

Work with me at Brando Social?

If you like the look of the place where I work (BrandoSocial.com) you might like to know we have another vacancy.

Thanks to an ever-expanding client base we now need a senior account manager to start well, you know, pretty much soon as :-)

We're based minutes from the tube in Camden Town, London, and are really quite nice people.

If you're interested drop me an email, attach all the relevant experience/cv type stuff and off we go.