Toby's got a cool discussion going on about the ins and outs of sharing the personal on a professionally-geared blog, and vice versa. We're continuing it tomorrow at SoCon.

Questions -- Can you write 'personally' without sharing details from your personal life? Can a professional blog be personal and professional too and still be 'weighty' enough to matter?

What are the risks of integraing or separating your "selve(s)" online. And what about other social spaces--profiles on myspace, orkut, friendster, facebook; professional connections on linkedin, 'personalities' on second life; photos on flickr; videos, podcasts and everything else Media 2.0? Are we becoming more dissociated or more integrated?

How much of you are you willing to share, how personal are you willing to get, and at what cost?

And what about gender -- are women willing to go where guys fear to tread in the personal department? Is it true that male bloggers tend to separate their professional writing from their more personal posts (men who come to mind: mike arrington's "techcrunch" vs "crunchnotes"; stowe boyd's /message vs ambivalence; and scoble's -- oh wait, I guess scoble blogs like a girl).

:-0

eh? eh?

Jon Husband recently expanded on my Social Drama post with his thoughts, offering clarification on what I might have meant, which wasn't so clear to me then (and still fades in and out now). He says:

What I have inferred is that we will have much to learn, unlearn and relearn about what being social is all about, and we will never again do it without the always-just-available email or voicemail or blogging or MySpace page or LinkedIn profile and digital identity protection requirements and .. and .. and ...

Oh, of course some people will eschew the use of the the Web and its tools and services, refusing to be prisoners of a by-and-large reductive and tautological medium, and we will never transcend the sociality of life behind the doors of our home or the relationships with neighbours or work colleagues who become lifelong friends ... but presumably 'social drama " will be redefined in this new hyperlinked context.

Yes, precisely, Social Dramas are being played out on the Web, but are not possible without the merging of our online and offline selves.

In fact, they are the result of just that. They urge us to take on new personas -- outside of pre-constructed intravironments like Second Life, where identity rebirth is expected -- to explore who we are across the web, and even who we are not -- then play out those roles here and there and there and there, doing so through improvisational story lines connected through hyperlinks and a shared creative sense.

Social dramas happen online only in collaboration with others or the co-story-telling would be impossible.

They are always the inverse of punditry and postulating. They are not commentary, they are complementary.

They are what Kat Herding is doing, coming through with truths about what it means to be a PR executive, alive on the web, in the era of New Media, in a sea of confusion over what we should care about in the connected economy and what shade of blush looks best with lavender pumps. All the while, Kat is being Kat, but who is Kat? An identity mashup that elicits visceral reactions -- from compassion to outrage -- among fans and those who are not amused.

At least we are ALIVE within this drama. It is musical, you see?

Online social dramas are improvisational jazz, played with words, the story carried across and throughout venues -- sites -- sustained through the hyperlinking of chords and melody. The resulting piece is written over time, and is presented as it is written -- the listening ear piecing it together with delight at the end of every measure--or at least that's the goal. Auditory conception. Immaculate--no way.

What social drama is NOT, using the musical analogy, is Miles reincarnated as a red-sweatered avatar playing a concert within Second Life. Rather, it's Miles alright, playing every note he ever played everywhere at once for everyone ear and heart across a connected web.

That's the goal anyway. And admission's free.

Tags: social drama, jon husband, miles davis, internet, tech, blogging, "media 2.0" social media, web2.0, tech, PR, Advertising, Marketing, Second Life, Social Software, Social Networks, digital identity, digital identity crisis, jazz = Powered by Qumana

When asked if I would like to participate, I said as long as I can play young Dr. Kildare.

And (you won't believe it, but) they said yes!

So in my new role, I promise you, dear readers and friends and detractors, that I will try to use my power for good, not evil, and that means I will construct my meanderings using the broadest interpretation of what Media 2.0 means. Or doesn't mean.

We came here to tell stories, didn't we? Yes we did! Once upon a time, we were the wedia media pedia, weren't we? Yes, we were! And with the web 2.0 pony beaten just shy of the glue factory, I'm looking for new rides, higher slides, longer strides. So let's find some together! Are you with me?

Although my beat is PR, because my roots there are long and twisted, I plan to explore way more than what I already know about. What's your pleasure--social drama? network karma? big pharma? it's all good.

What made me say "Sure, if I can play Dr. Kildare" in the first place was the chance to join this cast of characters who are also part of the workgroup:

Ben Metcalfe (Ex BBC)
Publishing 2.0 (Scott Karp)
Stowe Boyd (/message)
Are you Paying Attention? (Touchstone)
Daniela Barbosa (Factiva/Dow Jones)
Jeremiah Owyang (PodTech)
Jeff Pulver (PulverMedia)
Suw & Kevin (Strange Attractor)
Frank Gruber (AOL)
Ian Forrester (BBC)
Brian Solis (PR2.0)
Marianne Richmond (Resonance Ptnrship)
Jeneane Sessum (Oh, duh, that's me)

Heavy company indeed.

For a more formal description on what this whole thing is about, see the announcement on touchstone.

Since initially posting on the Media 2.0 Workgroup, nominations for others to the workgroup have been opened up. I'm not sure how many slots there are, but if you know of someone who is a good candidate to offer some new thinking on the new media, please add them to the nomination wiki, or stop by and ad an asterisk to someone already nominated.

Too often these exercises become same-old, same-old, with the same participants using a new technorati tag to spread their girth across an aready crowded social web. I'm determined to add NEW voices to this group, diverse voices, so that we have the best chance of doing something useful.

You can subscribe to the aggregated feed, or get the OPML, for Media 2.0 Workgroup on the workgroup page.

Tags: Media 2.0, Internet, Blogging, Social Media, Media 2.0 Workgroup, Tech, PR, Marketing, Advertising, Business, Wedia =
Jeneane also blogs at ALLIED, where excerpts of this post first appeared.

The problem is the dual role of consumer (or user) and producer (or co-creator) that we find ourselves in, thanks to the Internet. Wait, it's not a problem at all. At least outside of BigPR--which has quickly become OldPR.

The traditional press release serves a purpose and always will. For public companies it is more an IR tool than anything else. Public companies are required to release information--and whether they do it through more human sounding language, through some PDF or HTML file with horizontal rules and links to podcasts, OR the usual way, they're not bothering anyone.

The call for a social media press release is a straw man. It is easier to fix formatting and links in an OldPR tool than it is to figure out how to bring an old-world discipline into new territory.

We are not an audience. You should not be broadcasting. Hello, it's time to take delivery.

On the social Internet, people are always looking for help getting done what they need or want to get done. THAT is the role of PR. THAT is how NewPR people are helping their clients. Finding ways to help people participating online do the things they want to do. Helping them discover new things to do. It's bottom up in the most radical way. The People are the new CEO. And the new CEO is a person.

In my opinion, the women of PR often "get this" right off the bat. Maybe because women held roles for so long as "helpers" in business: the idea of helping "people" get things done is not so foreign to us. The difference now is that we are taking a lead role, not a pleeb role, in enabling and connecting people in order to get things done.

Tara Hunt gives her opinion of the recent hubub around "Social Press Releases" in Stowe's comments, highlighted in this recap post. She says: "..Even the term 'social media' makes me want to cry. WTF is social media? People are social and we aren't just idly waiting here to have really impersonal, crappy PR messages stuffed down our throats."

Yes, people are social. No press release format or email format or HTML code can make us less so or more so. The only thing we need is all we've ever needed -- mediums for connecting and creating.

Time to stop caring about press releases over people.

Time to get things done.
Tags: stowe boyd, new media, social media, press release, blogging, Internet, PR, Marketing, business, advertising = Powered by Qumana

In 2002, David Weinberger wrote a defining statement about what early blog settlers were doing:

The importance of the weblog phenomenon isn't so much that it enables people to publish their breakfast menus or even their genuine insights. It's that we now know what our "avatars" on the Net are going to be: not graphical cartoon representations but our body of writing. You are what you write. On the Web we are writing ourselves into existence. This introduces into the self the same issues of control, inspiration, invention, deception and play as have always been present in the relationship of authors to what they write."

When we came upon that line by David back then, most of us went, "Yes! That's it! We are writing ourselves real."

It may sound kind of corny now, as millions have come here in the mean time with new ideas and skilled debating skills. But David's early description of what our online journaling meant was right on: we really were writing ourselves into existence -- and just as important, we were reading one another into existence.

CREATING THE ONLINE YOU--WHAT'S IT MEAN TO THE OFFLINE YOU?

With my own online presence having grown from a single Google search result on "Jeneane Sessum" in 2000, to nearly half a million today, I am an example of someone who has been created in some parallel form online. And that has fascinated me.

When David first wrote those words, I jammed with him, adding my own thoughts on what the heck any of us were doing blogging:

As our fingers wind around the keyboard sketching our online selves--filling in the furrows, the wrinkles, the gleam, the raised eyebrow as we go--that avatar we create *recreates* us in the offline world. It is a circle of creation and recreation. That is the joy in it for me--not so much the voice, the self I have created through blogging, but how that unleashed voice is transforming me, the person, the flesh and the mind.

I have always believed that what we do here changes who we are out there. I don't know anyone who blogged back in 2001/2002 who has not been changed by the act of writing, and having been read, in public.

Ask yourself: Have you been shaped and changed by the conversations you have had in pixels? I have met my best friends here; I have been adopted family I never knew I had. I have never been more loved.

I know when you are lying to me. I scream alongside you when you tear off another layer of skin to show me who you are underneath it all.

Not all of this 'writing ourselves into existence' has been great fun, you see. Pain, lost relationships, tremendous hurt are all a part of the process.

I remember the first time I read Halley Suitt--before I ever knew her, emailed her, talked to her on the phone or met her. BEFORE she existed at all in my universe. I read her into existence with her post on her father's death. And I have never forgotten her first line:

"When my dad wakes up today, the first thing he will notice is that he is dead."

IN PRAISE OF THE AMATEUR US

Posts like Halley's were what early blogging was about--and they are still what blogging should be about.

Before the conferences and the professionalization of the blogosphere, we were just people who hurt, celebrated, joked, goofed, wept, learned, and played. We did not intend to grow, but we grew. Some of us even grew up.

Beyond the 'journalism or not' debate. Above the mayhem of politics and academics. Aside from the technology and reviews. We were telling our stories to one another, and the stories mattered.

I'm not meaning to wax nostalgic here.

But I guess I am.

The point I set out to make -- I'm getting to it in a round about way -- is that David's notion of creating ourselves online -- something we are still doing at a frenetic pace -- is still important.

As a blogger, it's not necessarily what you write ABOUT that matters, but it is about where you write FROM. You can be a CEO in pain from the loss of a loved one and write from that pain and turn out the best writing you have ever done on growing your customer base. You can be a teacher overjoyed and in love and write the best post you have ever written about distance learning. Just go in, step down, and w-r-i-t-e.

That is how you begin to exist.

ABOVE ALL ELSE BE FREE

I believe in the multi-dimensional blog, where you can be CEO and be grieving your mother's death at the same time, where you can be soldier and poet, where you can mix AJAX with love, where you can fact check and sob, where you can be thicker than the words you type, where your substance is in your disparate parts, where your blog brings the pieces of you together.

As you continue to write yourself into existence, keep in mind how we wrote here before. How being real meant that a manager could write about how unmanageable loss is. Don't sacrifice the freedom you have to define yourself as MORE THAN you have been defined previously. Let your writing redefine who you are, write your way out, post your way through, because it's okay.

It's okay to not know the answer and write anyway; you are not less of a marketer. It's okay to walk on stage and fart outloud; you are not less of a mother. It's okay if you throw up--you are no less a technologist.

This is still the best chance you have for freedom.

Don't give up on love or lust for Alexa numbers. Don't silo for technorati. Don't sacrifice your heart for traffic.

Don't settle.

Tags: blogging, web2.0, writing, marketing, business, advertising, david weinberger, halley suitt, weblogging, technorati, PR = Powered by Qumana

Julie Pippert at the Ravin' Picture Maven points out an ad she saw on TV for Burger King, which is on YouTube. (Did they say the 'purest beef?)

Called "The Man Ad," the ad shoots for humor using stereotypes of men as beef eating lumberjacks and demolition enthusiasts to the tune of "I Am Woman."

Spoofing stereotypes can be effective in advertising and other types of business communication, but it's also tricky territory. To actually get laughs without driving away important segments of your audience, the "spoof" has to be exaggerated and the humor intellectual enough that the audience congratulates itself for 'getting it.' In this case the ad takes a shot not just at the Male Appetite, but at women as sprout eaters, dinner servers, and cheerleaders. Using the old "I Am Woman" anthem to boot.

From a marketing professional's perspective, I say the ad misses the mark, not because of its overall objective -- depict the double-wopper as man-eating goodness -- but because it's not funny. And using such stereotypical imagery, it HAD to be funny or miss the mark completely.

Man as caveman beef eater was funny when Fred Flinstone brought it to daytime TV. It can even be funny in a professional wrestling sense of the word. But when you tread into gender and food territory, and you attempt to spoof the issue to your product marketing advantage, using a song that was important in the era of at least part of the generation you're targeting, then you better do a good job at being FUNNY.

They might get away without offending folks, as lampoons are popular, the song is old, and The Man Show popularity has given rise to plenty of male-desire-fulfillment skits. Julie Pippert notes that her husband had never even heard Helen Reddy's song, so it was all news to him.

Even so, she expresses my sentiments with her defense of what men aren't -- among which is the fast-food-bigger-burger-eating automatons the Burger King ad portrays (yeah--keep those heart attacks coming!):

Men aren't narrowly defined as one thing: MEN who are MEN. They aren't some allegedly comedic stereotype.

Men, like women, fall on a continuum. They carry a wide-range of personalities and traits that are highly dynamic.

It must be really confusing to see continuous mixed messages. It certainly is for me about myself as a woman, and what a woman is expected to be. Therefore, it must be just as confusing for men, too.

You have to find a way, in life, to fit in yourself, then to fit in with others, and ultimately to fit in a relationship. Plus you have to learn how to accept other people.

In all of this, you have to remember to think of each person as an individual.

Awfully hard to do when you are surrounded by messages of who and what each sex must be, many of which are mixed, most of which are idealistic, and all of which seem to involve some product you need to achieve these goals of self (as defined by someone else).

Amen. I'd love to know what the ad budget was for the I Am Man campaign. And I'd love to have my hands on it. ;-)

Tags: marketing, PR, tech, web2.0, gender, advertising, burger king, I am man ad, youtube = Powered by Qumana

Commercial break: BAM!

Then: The Save Darfur PSA, Voices from Darfur, where people on the street tell the juxtaposing story in the words of sufferers in the horrific genocide in Darfur, made all the more powerful against the backdrop of the NYC celebration.

I wish I could find the specific PSA on youtube, but I haven't been able to. If anyone tivo-ed the parade and puts up the segway from parade into the Darfur spot, pls let me know if you put it on youtube.

From a communication perspective alone, this placement was right on. Communication impact is often quadrupled by placing a message where it DOESN'T fit, rather than where it does. While standard thinking might place the Darfur PSA during the news, or a political show, or where people sensitive to the issue are likely to be watching, the stronger approach is to place it where people who aren't already fine-tuned for such a message are waiting.

There is no way those stories will leave my heart today.

UPDATE: The video of the ad campaign JUST went live on the Save Darfur site.

And on YouTube.

Tags:Tags: savedarfur.org, save darfur, america thanksgiving, darfur, genocide, voices from darfur = Powered by Qumana

I have enjoyed seeing Anne Zelenka jam with Sheila Lennon about why more decimals and numerals aren't what's changing on the net--what's changing are our needs and wants around making work and life easier to endure, and maybe even enjoy. Anne says:

What we want from the next generation of the web or even this generation of it is action. We need it to handle more of the tedious details of life. Sheila Lennon points out where this morning’s NY Times article got it wrong. It’s not about meaning. It’s about software agents who can do our bidding and remove some of the friction from managing our days.

Sheila gives an interpretation of what we can do, and why it matters, and then gets some input from those who live and breath software design on usefulness.... and slinkies.

When restaurants are online in realtime (yet to happen), my computer could display Providence restaurants serving cordon bleu tonight at what prices, ask me to choose one (around when?) then make a reservation, reserve a portion of chicken cordon bleu for me, and notify the restaurant's computer if I'm hung up in traffic. It will not think about chicken cordon bleu. Its mouth will not water.

And -- being my agent -- it will not suggest I've had enough calories already today and should have salad instead.

Bonus: The HAL transcripts.

Update: A couple of bloggers more tech-savvy than me address this post, and further it.

Programmer and tech author Shelley Powers, On Meaning:

What most people want (from the Semantic Web) is what Sheila is describing: systems that work together seamlessly; that integrate immediately; that help us do something we couldn't do before.

...I find it interesting, though, to see these writings about the web of meaning now, when I've finally reached a personal epiphany that as cool as this stuff is, it has about as much practical use as a Slinky.

While Nick Bradbury has decided the semantic web isn't ready for prime time, I think there are other questions to consider before deciding that Web 3.0 doesn't validate.

What I Think...

If the dot-com era was about commerce, and web 2.0 about conversation and innovation--an explosion of features, then web 3.0 is about combining those innovations with commerce. It's ALL about making many-to-many collaboration real. And I mean effortless, ubiquitous, simple Me-to-You (m2y) collaboration. I mean working together with people online through free platforms -- often people we've never met (or would have never met) offline -- to build businesses outside of business, the same way we built conversations outside of business.

How very fitting that a mega-company like Google is leading the charge--it is the only company that can, because it is the only company with nothing to lose by doing so, because it came from this space. Its business model is intrinsic to this space. That's why Adam Lashinsky of CNN Money is right when he says, It's all about Google, although I'm far more optimistic than he.

It's become easy--I would say cliche--to poke holes at "web 2.0" and its components. Smart people--and the net is full of them--are thinking about how to fit within Google's model or how to rival it. Meanwhile, Google is developing (and buying) what all of us need to get from here to there.

So who wins?

We win.

The commons wins.

For once, we win. We the workers, the 'force' has never counted in the 'work force' can collaborate nearly for free GLOBALLY and efficiently, using our brains instead of the shop floor to barter and exchange whatever products and currencies WE CHOOSE with others. Linden dollars, real dollars, books, sex, cash FOR ideas, products, charities, whatever.

Why? How? Because what all of this innovation has resulted in the ability for us to become co-producers and partners with business, and with one another. Creators as well as consumers, makers and buyers. We are not an after thought in commerce. The world has become too flat for that.

Yes, the earth is flat. Or at least it's getting there.

For me as a business person and marketing/PR pro, although I have a lot of problems with the industry that germinated those terms, this Web 2.0/3.0 debate is not an existential exercise. It is my daily reality.

Since 2003 I have pined for a solution like Documentum's E-Room for collaboration with my global colleagues I have met through blogging and online social spaces. I have long identified such collaborative spaces--ones that work easily and seamlessly--as the single biggest competitive differentiator for large firms against the independent, networked worker. Because they cost several thousands of dollars each year and require great technical know how to administer. These differentiators-as-barriers are ripe for the net to overturn.

Enter Google, barely making a sound, but unleashing the most simple and powerful document collaboration platform -- for FREE -- with google docs and spreadsheets. I was blown away when I started using it just last week. You can collaborate with others, including your clients, real time, inside of documents (uploaded word documents, excel spreadsheets and others), in a shared space. You can administer editing and viewing rights. You can export and import to common file formats. You can even subscribe to docs via RSS to track changes! I mean HOLY CRAP. All of these years I've been begging for this, and Google tosses it out there like a crouton atop a luscious salad.

And how did Google develop it? Through web 2.0 acquisitions and software innovations. What have they created with those things? A web 3.0 collaborative nexus.

So Now What...

Just for today, decide that you are going to love the net, love what is going on here, remember how it was before, look around the room you're in right now and think about what has changed in how short a time. Forget what we call it, forget semantics, forget decimials, forget numerals. Remember the people you have met--people you've always thought, "Damn, I wish I could work with her," and understand that you can, we are, and that is a very very very cool thing.

Tags: Web2.0, Web3.0, Internet, Commerce, Tech, PR, Marketing, Advertising, Business, Anne Zelenka, Sheila Lennon, Shelley Powers, Google, E-Room, Docmentum, Knowledge Sharing, Human Resources, Blogging = Powered by Qumana

If you are a woman in Silicon Valley area who works in tech, please email Robert at Robertscoble AT hotmail DOT com or call him at 425-205-1921. He is also looking for names of female executives in the area--tech CEOs and other C-Suite level women--to feature on his show.

Now I know we have a blogroll full of Tech woman -- some geekier than others -- here, as well as some outstanding Geeky contributing editors. But Apparently, female technologists are a difficult lot to come by, so if you all could help Robert out, that would be great. He got one taker in his comments. Let's send some more great candidates his way.

p.s., Good photography skills are also a plus.

The payoff for paying attention to what Internet travelers pay attention to is apparently twofold: 1) paying attention to what consumers are paying attention to and why makes businesses smarter (i.e., more money now), and 2) holding customers’ attention long enough to fully engage them stitches a hyperlink directly from the business’s URL to the knotty little skull of the consumer, making him a Customer For Life (i.e. more money in the future).

God truly is good, is he not?
My stepfather once worked as a Managing Director at the same firm where I was Director of Corporate Communications. The CEO ran a brainstorming session (corporate dysfunction signal number one) one morning on rejiggering our mission statement. My stepfather came up with: “To make more money now and in the future.�

The management team rejected that one, but I rather liked it.

Although this attention thing sounds a little good and a little creepy at the same time, it is essentially as it always has always been: anyone concerned with what you’re paying attention to is out to make money off of you. Trying to paint attention monitoring or tracking or trust or what have you as anything other than that is dishonest. You and I are not that important. No one, I mean no one, besides a suspicious mate cares what you pay attention to online unless they’re looking to detach some bread from your wallet.

And what’s wrong with that is not admitting it is the truth, but rather, painting it as new movement, an alternative, a new way.

If I appear skeptical it’s because I’m on steroids and I’m over 40. These things happen.

Attention and Gestures, which are now inextricably linked, got a dose of Heroin recently when AOL did the dastardly deed of releasing guzumpteenthousand individuals’ search records in such a way that it wasn’t hard to tell that Granny has a penchant for strap-ons.

Mary Hodder explains it this way: “The AOL data which lumped each user's searches together with a user ID over three months, making profiling and finding them easy, meant that AOL provided enough data in some cases to indicate a lot about who the data related to very specifically. Leading to judgments by the rest of us. About the people who do or think things on the edges of society.�

Lots of times, what we seek is not what we are looking for, and where we end up is really not where we cared to go. Hyperlink does not always equal intention. Again, the accidental, the speed and simplicity of discovery, is what makes the Internet NOT like real life.

But more on “attention� and “gestures� and “search," "intention," and “data� and why I think so much of this stuff is New Age Internetism designed to make giving away your money feel better. As I said, attention is not intention. While I may assume that the person who paid attention to my blog for the fleeting seconds it took to get there today by searching Google for “Great Dane Doberman Mix� was searching for something, I can't tell whether that something was to find a home for one or to fuck one.

Two very different customers. Two very different attention fulfillment requirements. And many, many, many opportunities for savvy marketers to sell you consulting services around the variations therein.

Cue Seinfeld: Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Unless your expectations are around context and intention, around making meaning, not making purchases.

Methylprednisolone tablets USP 4mg, Day 2, 20mg.

Glorious ADD.

The Internet is where we are free to dissociate. You cannot put a value on my lack of attention.

No formula for the value of obscurity and accidents, rather increasing disproportionately in fits and starts.

It takes getting to know me. ME. YOU.

The most meaningful online relationship with one sometimes come from the unknowing of someone else, and in the unknowing of one, discovering the other.

What matters is often not the gesturing, but in the de-gesturing; it is not attention then, but repulsion. It becomes too convoluted to calculate, which way my attention flows, because it is neither linear nor accountable, except for total on the invoices of some mighty consultants.

More and more, my gestures reflect not what I am paying attention to, but instead are sideways related to what I’ve dropped my illusions about. In surrender of control, then, not in clinging to it, we wander here. We value most those instances of delight so fleeting that they are the opposite of thought and reason; they are out of time; they scatter us to the wind rather than draw us in.

They repel us outward, until we are untraceable, exiled, free, and only in knowing me severed will I tell you how you can find me whole.

Tags: web2.0, business, gestures, attention, mary hodder, e., art, wind, delight, joy, attention trust, Internt, Tech, Marketing, PR = Powered by Qumana