Category: The Psyche

True Philanthropy

Posted by Rich Harris – June 11, 2010

Call it Karma. Call it energy. Call it fellowship. Call it being nice. Call it service. Whatever you call it, I believe that you get what you give in this life. I believe this as it is evident in the opportunities I’ve been given to help others. True philanthropy is not tied to a religion, specific society or culture. It’s not being a hippie living in a close-minded liberal soup of laziness and bullshit and denial. Giving does not have a party affiliation with any demographic or way of life.

Check Your Motivation

True philanthropy only comes from helping others for the sake of helping others, with no internal quest for personal credit, no expectation of social capital gain amongst your peers. I believe that the credit you “expect” to get for helping others is equal to the amount of credit you don’t deserve, on the mere premise that an expectation exists on your behalf.

If your philanthropic work brings you personal monetary gain, directly or intrinsically, and instead of said monetary gain being 100% passed onto another charitable cause or effort, then you have poisoned the well. I would go as far as saying that you are not truly aligned with the purity of “real” philanthropy.

Lastly, helping others out of guilt is not philanthropy as you are only helping to pacify and feed your own demons. This is still “taking.”

A great quote I heard in a very cheesy action movie once was, “A true philanthropist will never put themself in a position where they are taking or personally gaining from those around them.” [Paraphrased]

Little Efforts Make Big Waves

Every day, somewhere, sometime, somehow, there are miniscule opportunities to make a difference in someone’s life, which inturn makes a difference in the lives of others, almost immediately. Little opportunities like these can create a real chain reaction that, while you may never physically see the full result, I guarantee happens on some level, at some percentage. Whether it brightens up someone’s shitty weekday morning, taking that edge off of their workday, or pushes someone else back a few feet from the proverbial edge they may have been on after a slough of things that have gone wrong lately in their life, a menial and quick selfless act on your part can really help tip the scales in a positive direction.

Here are some of the types of things even the busiest people in the universe can carve out time for, supporting a positive paradigm shift in humanity:

1. Offer to buy a stranger a cup of coffee in the morning.

2. Ask or call someone you know randomly and ask them how they are doing and then just listen and validate what they are saying.

3. Anonymously donate $5 to a charity of your choice.

4. Volunteer one hour of your time at a retirement center, home or hospice enviroment and keep an elderly person company for a little bit. Those places are lonely and dismal and our country tends to treat seniors as an annoyance as opposed to respected elders in our communities. It’s a shame.

5. Sponsor a low income or disadvantaged family one holiday season. You’d be surprised what $5 in cheap or donated toys does for a child’s spirit when times are tough. That spirit is contagious enough to lighten even the darkest of households.

We Are All The Same (Still)

There is an energy that exudes from humans every day across the globe, an energy that is constantly trying to synergize and be compatible with itself so that we can all just “get along.” I think in some cases we’ve become so fearful and complacent with one another that our personal insecurities have gotten the best of us. This fear and complacence has gotten us to the point where only physical co-existence is becoming the new “getting along.” What a bummer.

I do believe though that there is more hope in small doses than we are ambitious enough to acknowledge, small things that we, over time, inadvertently take for granted thanks to a perpetually imbalanced “work culture” that drives us full speed on the road to nowhere.

I encourage everyone to randomly and anonymously do something nice for one or more people every once in awhile. It’s easy, cheap, and will start to change you from the inside in a way that, if you aren’t used to it, will surprise you, shock you, make you uncomfortable if you aren’t used to feeling vulnerable, and will possibly break you down in a constructive way emotionally that only a few people have been strong enough to accept and experience….and those that have, see the world differently than most of us.

Onward.

Like A Population of Over-Stimulated Newborns

Posted by Rich Harris – June 10, 2010

Recently, a friend of mine, Bill Pennington (@blazing_b on Twitter) shared an amazing reminder of an article called “The No. 1 Habit of Highly Creative People.” I really got to thinking a lot about this, and all the really creative people I know that have been successful in flourishing within the confines of their right-brain (the more complex, amorphous and sometimes torrential, side of our intellect – my opinion of course).

Our Culture

The average American adult spends 8 1/2 hours a day staring into screens. We have gotten down on our knees and ripped the faucet off the water main of information with mouths and hands wide open. By majority, we are a culture of people in a constant state of waiting for the next thing to do, the next thing to react to, to eat, to drink, to socialize, to attend, to take care of, to engage on whatever level enough to prompt us to feel like we know what we’re supposed to do next while we are awake. I truly believe it’s NOT human nature that we are control freaks with how much idle time we allow. I believe we are taught by our environment how to, and why we should limit our solitude, deviate from it, stay misinformed on how to leverage it for personal growth. We do this out of fear. To us I think deep down we know that solitude is the ultimate place of vulnerability, where we are forced to face the truth, ourselves, with no distraction, and it’s uncomfortable.

I think our full tilt culture lacks balance in a way that creates more unnecessary stress, turmoil, and bad decision-making than we give it credit for. We are feeding our brains a TON of info without allowing them enough time to process what we’re taking in, apply it to our psyche the way it’s meant to be physiologically and emotionally applied, and then purge the excess “noise” from our short-term memories so that we can move onto the next thing.

Our Brains

The Similarity Between Mental & Physical Process

The average American eats about 1,800 pounds of food per year, or about five pounds per day.

Our brains are the digestive systems of information. Our actual digestive systems are a process, a series of required steps to do their job correctly, only beneficial if all steps are allowed to happen. Just like when we consume food and beverages, we chew it, swallow it, digest it – methodically processing and getting all required nutrients where possible and then disposing of the unnecessary.

Now if, relatively speaking of course, we ate 100 times the amount of food we normally do, for one day (500 pounds vs. 5 pounds), but only allowing our bodies to only process and dispose of it at the same frequency we do on an average day when we ate only 5 pounds of food, what would happen? Would our body adjust and allow more throughput to accomodate the massive increase in regular input (food)? Would our stomach eventually learn to produce a 100 times more acid to break down food faster? Would our intestines eventually adjust, able to work 100 times harder to absorb nutrients? Would our bodies eventually be able exploit and take advantage of 100 times the intake of vitamins from those nutrients? Would we be able to eventually expel 100 times more waste after processing? I know that’s a little graphic but you get my point.

My Answer: Hell NO it wouldn’t.

Our bodies would shut down. Heart attacks, strokes, bursting organs, and aneurisms would dominate the mortality charts of the U.S. Department of Health within 48 hours. The reason for this is that our bodies are designed for a certain amount of input within a range, a range whose boundaries guarantee the survival of our species. It is to this point, I believe that our brains have their own set of limitations as well when it comes to input. The Information Age has really put humanity’s processing power to the test. [I went into more detail on my opinion about this test in this post.]

Our Capacity for Input, The Natural Limitations

SMS, Facebook, IM, Email, RSS, Breaking News from 100 sources at within seconds via web, smartphone, and now iPads and other tablet computers, is now becoming a normal way of life. To boot, that is all information that blasts us in the side of the skull OUTSIDE the face-to-face part of our daily lives (raising children, having significant others, working in an office with other professionals, talking to friends, doing dishes and laundry, et al.).

I do believe that we’ve been able to adjust quite well to the amount of information now instantly available via computer and phone. But I still think that we have limits that we are inadvertently overlooking. The implementation of boundaries supporting these limitations is our responsibility and is only possible with balance.

Solitude & Balance

The sister post to the one about Creativity on ZenHabits.net was called “The Lost Art of Solitude.“ What an amazing post this was. And until I applied it to my life over the last year or so, I had no idea how important this was for our daily existence.

I’m a single dad with 3 sons that I have half the week. I have a challenging and busy (sometimes more than full time) corporate job that I spend at least 45-50 hours a week on, sometimes more depending on what’s going on, and I’m in a band (95% fun, 5% work). Whether it’s fun or work, it’s all activity, input requiring a response or some tending to from me.

When I started carving out one day a week for solitude, it was a dramatic visceral experience at first. I equate it with me freeing up a traffic jam of information, a gridlock made of of millions of cars filled with frustrated drivers and passengers waiting to get through to reach their final destination. When I allowed myself to be alone for a day, letting some of these proverbial cars through, I was not only able to start processing what I had experienced during the week, I was also freeing up issues and thoughts, good and bad, in my brain that had been buried for a LONG time, issues that were long overdue for some TLC.

I found that the most significant shifts in development as a person, both personally and professionally, happen when I’m alone, giving myself some time to process life’s input. I end up more inspired, more grounded, more clear-headed, more patient, and more thoughtful in everything I do, even if I just give myself one day, or even one evening a week.

I highly recommend to anyone that they schedule some time for themselves if they don’t already. I don’t believe people should always be alone and not socialize. Just make sure to balance them. The better you balance socializing and solitude, the more you’ll get out of both.

Onward.

[image borrowed humbly from distractible.org]

If Hunter S. Thompson Wrote for The Tech Industry

Posted by Rich Harris – May 13, 2010

Sooooo…..I work for Seagate. They make hard drives. I’m subscribed to any and all Google alerts where Seagate’s products/services are mentioned to keep my thumb on the pulse of what people are saying about the company so that I can do my job. The latest Google alert I had received had a link titled ‘hard drive seagate‘. It linked to this URL: http://hooydgzznq.co.cc/2010/05/13/hard-drive-seagate/

If you look at the page that I just gave you the link to, it’s pretty harmless/innocuous. When you visit it nothing bad will happen to your computer, (or at least it didn’t to my Mac) but you’ll notice that you can’t *see* the copy I’ve pasted in below but what you can see is ads. I couldn’t figure out from the link I saw how the hell the link ranked so high in the alert until I viewed the source and to my lack of surprise, the copy below had been hidden in the HTML code to trick search engines and suck you in to click on their PPC ad to make you think you were going somewhere. This is a very common thing for hackers to do to cash in on PPC (Pay-Per-Click) ads….but alas, that is not why I’m writing about this.

The reason I’m posting this is that I have to give whatever acid trip’d existential mofo hacker a strong and well-deserved “Hunter S. Thompson of Technology Blogger of The Year” Award. While he/she/it put this little ditty together in an attempt to lure in search engine users looking for products in the high tech industry, I say he did it because he’s trying to connect the dots in the universe for us all to understand better…..well not really…but I got a good laugh out of it….so here it is. Enjoy this literary journey.

“Sony was also naive, but its business name was the most odd, dell inspiron 4000 audio driver. Josef mengele, the due angel of death of auschwitz, who has given versions for more than 30 classes. The 1540 place of layolle s voice is own, but no vote or rainbow boys attend. Commercial barebone computers and laptops, the state s bedroom this battery was sound s of santana. Denna proceeds in temperature with richard, commercial to his sandstone on receiving her dam despite the system she came him. Yellow security in nashville gives 83 floor in the lyrics and 60 simpletech in the appliances, which is sold primal for the southeastern united states. The writing got viable duck for a game of needs. Peoplefictionalplaceswaffle is a company milk referred by tom dell which made under power and later unix, vtech kinder laptop 3 jaar. Thoroughly through a mountain of a series of a class i address a traditional area at disk who architecturally does me a percent of the way which i usually update. An oriented design was that performance speakers would be stupid, since small parts would be coming not. Happy has been rectified of jobs verbose and available name. Sager notebook support drivers, traditional components of the supply have not disguised but skillz is laid to undergo a much link in which he faces the shareholders. Davidson county happily quite. Microsoft did to stop number carnival with windows, installing on configuring paragraph to genoese city political changes while apple was pointing a briefly disrupted, but main, public. In the different today to the laptop is st, laptop driver m6 video. i ranked together of the channels to the reputation in talk and he of mix challenged instead into his substance, laptop driver m6 video. Bivotar and juranda are on a landscape to hunt the three palantirs of zork and to learn the odd fleet krill. Another plant is that the keyboard was a culper ring film devoted as agent 355, now this memory is generally extended to major motherboard, seagate hard drive 300gb. Divorce time and functional imaging cameras. You think a magic flanked with uninstaller very form, leapster ac adapter. This mother is according to be transferred to deliver approve standard.”

Consider yourself enlightened. :-P

Twitter Auto-DM’s: Perpetuating Our Inner Lemming?

Posted by Rich Harris – May 10, 2010

[Rant Alert]

This post is a rant. Normally almost any auto-DM I see makes me angsty due to their “hey look at me me me!” nature. I’m also ashamed of their blatant attempt to shape our brains into “realizing” that as customers, we are none other than weak-willed bafoons lacking the ability to think for ourselves, incapable of doing research before committing to an action or purchase.

The Hollow Influencer

I started following some people that seemed prolific an insightful on their blog or website, had decent inbound link traffic and showed up in search fairly high in the list in a relevant way. I got a flurry of DM’s when I followed a certain group of these tweeps based on the fact that they had Social Media in their Twitter bio. I was following them just to get an updated lay of the land when it comes to the latest influencers/trending business topics on Twitter.

These auto-DM’s poured in and I was laughing at some of them but also kind of appalled by others from a business perspective. I’ll list the tweets below but will hide the author names to protect the misguided folks that meant well, even if they did miss the mark by a longshot. It’s not surprising, yet still ludicrous and sad, that this layer of the business world, the empty useless stagnant one, still existed and functioned in the background like an old kitchen appliance, louder than ever.

Harvesting The Lemming Long-Tail

The DM’s…..these are all real Auto-DM’s from people that, based on some very minimal research, appeared to possibly be legit influential marketers.

“I REALLY appreciate the follow and I’m always interested in real estate resources if you know any.”

…..okay cool cause I want you to rope me into voluntarily telling you about my real estate resources of choice, so that you can feel justified replying back and saying, “good idea, however I have a better solution, check this link out….

“I do value your follow. Hope you find my tweets helpful. Look forward to yours. A gift:”

(They provided a link here to a promo video for some dude’s “Build an Online Business” DVD.) The guy seems nice enough but calling your own DVD with you talking and it costing me over a hundo to own your DVD series, a ‘gift’ to a human being, to me is like getting ‘the gift’ of a barely working ’84 Buick from a used car salesman. “Thanks buddy, can’t wait until this heap breaks down a block down the road after allowing myself to be sold on the car when it was actually missing it’s engine and steering wheel.”

“Want To Learn How Twitter Could Pay Your Bills Every Month? Look…”

(They provided a link to a network marketing training video.) Twitter can’t pay my bills every month, only I can. Your poorly produced DVD isn’t helping.

“Thanks so much for following me! If you need any help feel free to let me know!”

Help with what??? Anything? Rad! Come wash my car, pay my bills and hook me up with dry cleaning!

“Want to see how I built a twitter list of 40,000 on autopilot?”

This one by far is the best example of everything that is jacked up about social media. Do you raise your kids on autopilot? Do you maintain your closest friendships on autopilot? Does your marriage run on autopilot? Do you keep your biggest customer relationships and accounts running on autopilot? Great job buddy. Thanks for reminding us how there are still a bunch of ‘takers’ trying to exploit peeps for revenue instead of putting some value in the fact that they’ve chosen to invest in your company, you, and your potential success. NEWSFLASH: You OWE them for that.

I just can’t stand this stuff and I don’t bitch that often…so here’s my rant and whining for the quarter. My point here is you can’t squeeze an organically built business relationship out of some cheese-0-matic of a DM so don’t try and sell people that way. It just looks cheap and self-absorbed.

There are of course selfless/harmless versions of these but I just believe that if you want the smartest customers as your loyal customers, don’t treat them like they’re idiots with your messaging.

Onward.

You Can Check In, But Can You Check Out?

Posted by Rich Harris – April 18, 2010

I stopped using Foursquare. Not because it’s a bad app. Not because there’s anything wrong with it. It’s a great app, first of it’s kind to really put Geo-Loc on the map with regards to mainstream popularity. I was enjoying using it. But a line in a recent blog post entitled Foursquare and the Analog Groundswell by Michael Brito (@Britopian on Twitter), he had said, “…..Heck, if I had the time I would be all over Yelp but I am on profile overload at the moment and just don’t have the time.” While the whole article was great, this particular line really struck a chord with me.

Honestly, over the last few weeks I’ve been feeling like an over-stimulated newborn. Outside of my actual day job, submitting data to services like this on a daily basis in my personal life was turning into a full time job in itself and I was realizing that I was losing my ability to be present. It was beginning to feel 10 times as draining as the most high maintenance relationship I’ve ever been in. It’s funny too because without even having any discussions about this with a good friend of mine, Jennifer Leggio (@Mediaphyter on Twitter), she had almost simultaneously written a blog post, Five reasons to check out of Foursquare, about some similar thoughts and realizations.

Let’s face it, the only way to get the most social capital of apps like Foursquare is to be fully committed to consistency, checking into every venue you are at, at all times without missing a beat. If you are a mover, this can really crank up your commitment to your Blackberry/iPhone on a whole other level. When that commitment starts to take over the things going on in your offline life that are actually tangible and matter – Time with your friends & family, enjoying a sunset, etc. – When you are attending an event or experiencing something and are focusing more on documenting it and making sure you are ‘checking in’ as opposed to just being present and fully enjoying the experience for what it was meant to be, then you are sacrificing parts of yourself that aren’t meant to be sacrificed while you walk this earth. That’s my opinion anyway.

I’m not dogging the apps, or the technological and social concepts, or even the business and commercial value. I still think all that stuff is cool. I just knew something was wrong when my 7 year old got frustrated with me for stalling in a Safeway aisle so I could ‘check in’.

Onward.

Social Media & The Responsibility of Thought Leadership

Posted by Rich Harris – March 7, 2010

It’s so easy to get buried in information nowadays if you aren’t methodical about channeling, funneling, and organizing your incoming tweets, feeds, and messages. Even when you get organized, you have only made it to zero. How can you and your clients or company get above zero? How do you propel your company in a way that makes them visible above the others without looking like just another news regurgitating spammer junkie? For the sake of spewing at least one social media and business cliché in this post: How do you rise above the noise?

Some of the most well known thought leaders currently in the social media spotlight [@BrianSolis, @SethGodin, @ChrisBrogan, @Britopian, @Mediaphyter, @AaronStrout and many many many many more] did not get where they are by doing only what has been known to work. They’ve always focused on pushing us outside of the traditional approach, existing marketing patterns, and evolving the marketing status quo, focusing on the understanding of human behavior, it’s place in business. If there’s a calculated risk opportunity presenting itself that maybe others haven’t seen yet, they’ll try it and discuss it publicly. These folks know that business won’t get better and advance closer to that streamlined revenue utopia we all strive for unless they go ‘this way’ while everyone else is going ‘that way’.

Succeed and Expand

While being a copycat can be traditionally considered the purest form of flattery, I think it’s important for social marketers to realize that in the online marketing world, imitation is only imitation and offers no real value to what we are all trying to do if that’s all you do. News comes and goes fast and the competition for something fresh is fierce.

So You Have A Mountain…

…of data at your finger tips that you’ve accumulated. After lots of trial and error, say you’ve learned how to target and cultivate a niche market. What now? How can you aggressively capitalize on that market and get even more niche, dissecting it into more detail so that you can execute even more effective campaigns and conversations? You will need to get creative in the way that scientists had to when they worked towards dwindling physical matter down to molecules and eventually atoms. In some cases where there’s a mountain, there is a mountain range. After going to the top of one and slamming your flag into the dirt, set up a functional camp of explorers to delve deeper on said mountain, and then you should start heading down hill and start your next climb on the adjacent peaks to see what lies ahead (figuratively speaking of course). :-)

Be The Modern Day Lewis & Clark of Marketing

Social media for me has really been more of an expedition than it has been a job. I think it’s really easy to get mired down in the day to day, pulling the same old story of coming into work, checking out industry specific news and influencers, retweeting some cool stuff, having some convos with relevant and meaningful people on Twitter and Facebook, and then heading home to throw down a Guinness and do it for another hour or so before bed. While it’s important to recognize, acknowledge and maintain all the things you’ve discovered over the last quarter and even the last week, the successes should only make you hungrier for more ideas, new territories and new markets. Never stop.

The Personal Brand: The Balance of Give and Take

Lastly, social media is un-ending monster-sized manufacturer of the personal brand. It has given those of us that know how to promote ourselves, our talents, our hobbies, our lives and everything we do, as a brand. While I’d be an idiot that should be slapped if I produced “Rich Harris the T-shirt”, I’ve always had some inkling of narcissism in my hat. I acknowledge it. I roll with it. I embrace it. However, I am also very aware that not only does the world not revolve around me and everything I have going on, more importantly there is an amazing amount of value in what thousands of other people are doing around me. Their marketing and business ideas, their ambitions, are all extremely important to the big picture and the greater good of successful business and networking.

It’s a great thing for me to simply acknowledge that there are others around me, but as someone who is trying to shine in his own little bubble, it’s more important that I extend myself and elevate those folks around me who also have great (and hopefully even better) ideas than me as well as great ideals. Not to cater to my hippie side too much here, but it’s important that you pay very close to attention to the balance between 1. Giving back to social media, business and marketing and 2. Building your own legion of followers. In my opinion, your value is absolutely and ONLY equal to the amount of value you place on others and how much you lift them and their social capital up. In this life, you get what you give and I believe that couldn’t be more true in marketing and business. The social information age is the perfect time and place to do it.

Part of your priority menu as a social marketer should always be finding people that are smarter and better at what you do than you are……and sharing their thoughts and leadership with others.

Other sources…

Digital Marketing Today: Leverage Social Media to turn your Thought Leaders into Sales people

Redmond Channel Partner Online: Become A Thought Leader

Thought Leadership Times [blog]

[Image Credit: Paige's Arting & Scribbling Blog]

Onward.

Open API’s: Good for Syndication. Bad for Safety?

Posted by Rich Harris – February 18, 2010

Unearthing Another Reality

I’m usually not focused on writing about breaking news but being a regular user of Foursquare and then watching all the press and online noise yesterday about PleaseRobMe.com, I really started to think about open API’s, their possibilities, the good, the bad, and the bigger picture. While I’m not necessarily offended by what the PleaseRobMe.com guys have done (after all, we all have access to that data), it does remind us how a little creativity + ingenuity + behavioral data = influence. Regardless of how truthful or how it’s spun, we can essentially do whatever we want. I think the PleaseRobMe.com dudes used humor to reveal how ridiculous our assumptions are that we can just use all these tools so lackadaisically and believe that nothing bad could come of it.

It’s Just Data, Right?

There is a data collection procedure that they have done with small children when it comes to their exploratory behavior. I saw it on Discovery Channel years ago but I haven’t found a photo, video or article on it online yet. I will link out to it when I find it, or better yet if you know, send it to me and I’ll append it to this blog post and credit you with the find.

Basically, they would put a toddler in a big playroom full of toys. There would be a camera overhead in the center of the room. The child would also have a small concentrated red light affixed comfortably and safely to the child’s back on his/her shirt or overalls. For about an hour or so, as the child ran back and forth doing things, playing with different toys, hitting several different areas of the room every minute, the camera would capture the patterns of the child’s movements over a specified amount of time, drawing it’s movement patterns for the camera. Child psychologists would then analyze this crazy light pattern of movement to better understand attention spans and other developmental characteristics during playtime.

I think apps/sites like Foursquare are collecting the same type of data about adults and probably tech savvy teens too. I have two teenagers that are under my guidance with their data-enabled phones but it’s a little unnerving to think about how much easier it is now for the underbelly of society to learn about them. I’m not much of a conspiracy guy but there are some evil (and intelligent) mofos out there that see this kind of data as the framework for their silver platter of chaos that they can feast on to their heart’s content. API = Open book.

We Are A Giant Research Project

Think about all the sites and online tools that we love. Think about all those sites and online tools that we love and interact with often through multiple means that have open API’s. Think about the amount of data we are giving them about ourselves, friends and family. Just like when an MRI creates a 3D image scan of your noggin by collecting data, these types of sites are doing the same with your behavioral patterns and those you associate with. The funny (or odd) part about all of it is that we are voluntarily (and excitedly in some cases) providing this information to whoever wants access to it for whatever reason. More interesting is the fact that we are connecting apps like Foursquare to our Twitter accounts, which we sometimes connect to our Facebook accounts and other publicly available accounts like Tumblr, Identi.ca, etc.

Foursquare was designed to be a fun way for us to keep track of where are friends are (hopefully only the ones we truly trust), incorporating the fun/reward factor with badges, mayorship, etc. If you are diligent about using the app, it also is giving people an idea of what your daily routines are, good, bad, ugly and indifferent.

This behavioral data collection phenomenon is not just limited to Foursquare either. Think about all the areas now in which people make available data about themselves. MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and the fairly recent wider opening of LinkedIn’s API channels can you give you all the info you need, a 95% heuristic view of a person’s life, just shy of physically hanging out with them in their own living room. If you are a social/tech guy like me using all these services, people can now know your name, your aliases/monikers used (47project for instance), your work history, your hobbies, your music interests, what you look like, your schedule, social and business affiliations and the convos you have within those circles…..all of this is pretty much excessible through API’s. They can also, after finding all that out about you, wormhole into your friend’s lists and find out all of those exact same details about them if they’ve posted it anywhere online. This is a really gnarly concept. The gnarliest part about it is that we are feeding it by choice. It’s not all bad but there’s awareness and responsibility that comes with the use of all these cool apps and sites.

Mindfulness

If you are like me at all, waiting hungrily on pins and needles for the next new social app phenomenon to grace your news feeds, so you can be the first to slam it onto your Blackberry, iPhone, or Android, plugging in your login creds, getting on yet another grid, remember that the more of these sites and apps you use, and the more info you choose to reveal about yourself publicly online, should be kept proportionately equal to the amount of vigilance and proactive awareness you should have about the possibilities of your data being used and/or misused.

Other Great Articles on The Subject

ZDNet: Please Rob Me: Ethical or not? [poll]

Mashable: Are We All Asking to Be Robbed?

CNET: The dark side of geo: PleaseRobMe.com

Information Week: PleaseRobMe.com Solicits Social Theft

Onward.

Facebook’s Juxtaposition of Reality, Our Responsibility

Posted by Rich Harris – February 15, 2010

The Information Consumption Routine

Every morning I boot up my MacBook Pro, I start some coffee, throw together a quick breakfast, load up Gmail, Facebook, etc. and start observing,  joining, or creating conversations. You never have any idea what you are going to be talking about every day on Facebook, it just happens. The access to these conversations every day is starting a huge cultural shift in personal communication and all of it’s different levels of value and meaning. While there is no replacement for the real deal, we’re learning very quickly how to “read” the correct emotional tone of Facebook statuses, Tweets, IM chat sessions, based on who we are talking to, when we are talking to them, who their other friends are on Facebook, and what your history is with them.

We’ve also started joining groups and fanning pages en masse, not even for the sake of the participating in the group or page itself, but just to have an opportunity to announce publicly in an information stream….to let the world know….(diminuendo to a dramatic pause)….that you’ve just become a fan of “Standing On Your Head While Stacking Golf Balls On Tuesdays After 3pm PST” and you don’t care who knows it!

The Needle

There are a couple things going on now that I think we really need to pay attention to. There are benefits and inherent flaws in the mobilization power contained within an environment like Facebook. The feelings of immediate connectedness can almost distract us from the thought of what it really means to be connected and reciprocal with others around us.

Benefit

Facebook on one hand has made it possible for us to amass quickly with like minded individuals for a passionate purpose. It puts those that have always wanted to make a statement or do something big with their opinion but never had the right medium for it. They were too shy, too localized, or too overwhelmed at where to even begin. All understandable of course. This has opened doors for them and given them a voice that puts them on the map. This is a very positive thing.

Caution

There is another side to this coin however, a price or cost that is being paid. Unintentionally I think we are training ourselves, to some extent, to feel morally validated by joining a group on Facebook called “Cure Cancer” and that’s all. It’s as if somehow we’re giving back by joining the group publicly and opting in to messages/news from the group or fan page. Now I do believe strongly that the dissemination and forwarding of information by supporters is awesome and will never be a bad thing. It’s a tangible contribution and good reason to join a group. Fans of a cause on Facebook can get the word out quick and promote. But we can ALL do that on Facebook, with just the click of a mouse, and then we update our status with how much we love bacon and then play Farmville (FB games are not my gig).

I don’t have the stats but I just wonder what the ratio is of people on Facebook that ‘joined’ a great cause to the amount of people that have actually either volunteered 1 hour of their time or $1 to any charity anywhere within the last month. I very much include myself in the group of people that wasn’t really giving, and did so without really realizing it. I was joining, and still do, online communities with a premise that I support. I share their posts on my wall, I retweet stuff to spread the word. I just started to question myself on how much have I actually tangibly given back or made any real contribution to any of these philanthropic institutions or initiatives. When I looked back at my level of giving back vs. what I took for myself, it wasn’t looking promising. I was out of whack and am still in the process of scoping out a way for me to contribute that allows me to also keep the quality of the other things I’m doing in my career and family life extremely high. Both can easily be done. You just gotta get creative.

Balance

I realized I really need to step it up in the area of real, actual contribution. Even a dollar a month helps, or donating an hour of your time at a teen center, a homeless shelter, an understaffed public school, or an old folks home giving some people your conversation time to brighten up the tail end of their existence as they get ready to move on. Look through one of the big charity fan pages or groups you’ve joined on Facebook and see if there’s something in your local area you can check out and contribute to every couple of weeks for an hour or so.

Reciprocation, Social Responsibility

Not to get all preachy here but the online world is permanently infusing itself with our psyches, our communication, sense of belonging and community, all at the click of a button. We need to be careful to not get complacent with a subconsciously perceived substitution for physical interaction and presence, for actually going somewhere to help a perfect stranger that could really use someone to talk to for an hour, a family that could use a $20 bag of groceries this month, a dollar to Haiti, or donating some old books you’ll never read again to a school or two.

You know me, I love social networking and yammering on about nothing more than most of you probably ever will but I am reminded constantly by my kids how important it is focus on the tangible.

Onward.

Social Media: Perception, Trust, Influence, Control

Posted by Rich Harris – January 28, 2010

Human Perception – Intangible Yet In Control of Humanity

Since humans began walking the earth, how they perceive the world around them dictates the direction of humanity. In my opinion, it is very clearly Pavlovian in nature. When we are born, we have a default set of electrical impulses and chemical/hormonal responses that make up who we are. Once the process of pregnancy is done, we are then thrust into the world and from that very moment that we are born, inhaling that first breath of air outside of the womb, our senses are stimulated, taking input, processing it, categorizing it, labeling it, assigning physiological responses to it, and so forth. Life experiences and environmental influences, if even on a small level at first, start shaping our perceptions immediately and thus the process of environmental influence on our brains begins. This environmental influence is the foundation on which the building blocks of our perception of the world are stacked over time for the rest of our lives. Environmental influence and these building blocks are what you as a social marketer need to understand and have spinning in the back of your head when you are digging deep in search of that golden soft spot with your current and potential audiences.

The Connection

Now, while I know that I geeked out a little bit in the first section of this blog post giving you all my worst impression of Bill Nigh the Anthropological Science Guy, my focus here is to help really break down social marketing in more cerebral scientific terms. After all, ultimately there truly is an equation for all this stuff. Can social media be broken down to a chemical/molecular level? Of course it can, just like everything else….I’m sure either way however, there’s a chance I sound crazy, and more importantly, I hope you feel compelled to question me on it. :-)

I’ll now connect my science rant with the title of this blog post: Whether you want to call it ‘building positive brand awareness with conversation’ or ‘social media’, personally I think perception control through influence is really what this comes down to. We need to learn how to harness everyone’s perception by understanding how to influence it on a deeper level. We all want to tweet, syndicate, and converse. We all want everyone on the planet to follow our company and become it’s fan. The biggest problem however that execs have expressed concern about with social media is that it makes them feel like their company’s message is out of control out there in the interwebs. Understandable.

SM is a tad bizarre in that you need to be able to focus on celebrating and embracing it’s freedom and socialness while simultaneously keeping your company’s reputation and perception on the up and up which is done through SOME sort of control. I know most will wince at the thought of putting the words ‘social media’ and ‘control’ in the same sentence but I’m all about using a combo of understanding how the process of human perception and response can be exploited to get people to not just feel good about your company, but to feel even better about influencing someone else’s perception of your company; a much more valuable measurement.

Creating Perception

So all those building blocks of perception I mentioned in the borderline mad scientist intro paragraph I whipped up at the top should be heavily regarded because they are moldable, morphable, and can be sculpted and shaped through all types of influence. Social media being no exception of course. The path to these building blocks is a good first impression created by their observations of your company on the various social platforms. Knowing your audience and where to find them in the sea of Twitter/Facebook noise is key. Once you have that nailed, make sure your content/tweets/positive customer engagements are happening publicly there for them to see. Those are good catalysts for these new potential customers to give you ‘access’ to molding their perception of you….letting their consumer guard down, establishing at least some initial trust, etc.

Managing Perception

After you’ve gained that initial level of trust through your positive and targeted first impressions, maintaining that moving forward is key. As I sit here all day every day and watch my 24″ screen dedicated to nothing but streams of Twitter search word columns using TweetDeck, while my other monitor watches a few other tools, I am reminded daily about the importance of maintenance. While you can’t control what people are gonna say, you CAN keep tabs in realtime about the overall perception of your company or brand (we all know that already). Watching this stuff on behalf of (and sometimes in defense of after some bad PR) can feel like an overwhelming digital version of Whack-A-Mole, ensuring that you catch every bad piece of press to counter and every good piece of press to augment. I can’t reiterate enough the importance of making the maintenance part of your social media role an extremely high priority. If you do not, you leave the mercy of your company’s public influence to the wolves.

Onward.

Haitian Vacation: Catastrophe And Guilt

Posted by Rich Harris – January 21, 2010

So there was a post today entitled “Haiti cruise stops draw ire, support“, published on the Travel section of CNN.com. I’m a little conflicted on this one.

First, The Obvious

Human suffering sucks. Personally I can’t even fathom what someone in Haiti, directly affected by the earthquake, the type of emotional, mental and physical trauma that has been, and continues to be, endured by those that were there; especially those native to the area. The suffering and loss of life there is incomprehensible to most of us. The world can’t do enough to help in times like this and if anything it’s a healthy slap-in-the-face reminder that….the bad traffic yesterday, the toe you stubbed and fractured on the way into the bathroom, the coffee pot that exploded all over your clothes right before heading out the door to make that meeting you are already late for….all of your bad Monday experiences are really not a big deal at all. Misery is relative but human disaster can have a silver lining if we all respond proactively and positively and take a moment to express thanks for what we DO have.

The Issue

Someone interviewed in the CNN article, who had already planned and booked a Haitian Cruise with her sister and 87 year-old mother said, “We kind of discussed it: How can you sit there and say, ‘Waiter, bring me a drink’ while I’m on a private beach … knowing that 100 miles away, people are dying…”. The good news here is that they actually thought about it, discussed it, and processed it in a way that was indicative of the fact they had a conscience. This is a good thing. That passes my test.

So should people feel guilty for going on their Haitian cruiseline vacation even though 70,000+ people just died only 100 miles away from your vacation spot? This begs the next question. Take a step back and ask yourself…with this logic…should people feel ok and justified in being more fortunate than others?

Emotional Relativity

It’s no mystery that the things we attach our emotions to are relative to our surroundings, the people in our lives, and most obviously how we were raised. That’s just reality. I will NEVER truly know what it’s like to grow up in an environment other than what I actually grew up in, and neither will you. The closest anyone will come to this is transporting ourselves into someone else’s shoes, trying to at least live a week or so like they do. But even then, most get to ‘go back’ to their actual lives.

I’ve seen lots of colorful posts on the CNN story I linked to above about this. The opinions are all over the place and it’s interesting to see, on a scale of guilt-influenced behavior, how and why people respond and react emotionally to events like the earthquake in Haiti.

Here are some comments:

“These cruise ships are delivering tons and tons of food and water to Haiti. And these supplies get distributed right away. Royal Caribbean is teamed up with Food For The Poor to help the needy. 100% of any revenue made at Labadee is donated. I would feel honored to be on one of these ships. I would get off the ship, not to party, but to buy something from a local vendor or to tip a local worker. How many people get to help so directly, in a terrible situation like this? And someone that has been at this port of call, said the local workers get to eat at the cruise’s buffet, on the beach, along with the passengers. Royal Caribbean has 10 employees missing because of the earthquake there. The employees were from Haiti and on break when it happened.”

“People die every minute of every day all over the world. I guess none of us should ever smile or go on vacations. Or is there a specified distance from which you are allowed to not be miserable?”

“It baffles me why people going to Haiti wouldn’t want to have some personal involvement with people beyond sitting on a beach and buying trinkets. That would be a truely rewarding vacation.”

As you can see, even though I’ve only given you a snippet of the responses, there’s quite a variety of what opinions are acceptable and which ones aren’t.

My Opinion

If you have inner peace and enjoy your life, you are not a selfish asshole. If you are on vacation or have lots of great people (family/friends) supporting you, a good job, some cool stuff in your house, etc., the positive emotional capital you’ve gained in your life from these things should not be linked to world catastrophes that happen beyond your control. I would say that if you can contribute funds, even $1 dollar, to a disaster such as this one, it’s all gravy without guilt. Every time I go into Safeway (which is often because of my teens ability to consume at an alarming rate), I’m always prompted to donate to a charitable cause on the card reader, whether it be breast cancer, leukemia, Parkinson’s, etc. I try and donate at least a few bucks to each new cause that comes through their system. It’s easy, affordable, and helps make a difference in SOME way. Should I feel guilty because I don’t donate EVERY time I’m swinging by to pick up a loaf of bread, already late to pick up my kids? No.

Do your thing, live your life, help others in need when you can.

Is Facebook Too Much Yin?

Posted by Rich Harris – November 26, 2009

yin_yangLet’s face it, Facebook has no Yang. You can only “Like” something or “Share” with others. When an ‘unfriending’ happens, the ‘unfriendee’ is not notified so that the ‘unfriender’ can bow out of battle quietly, hopefully without anyone noticing. Socially, it’s almost encouraging denial of the fact that with all the average size multicolored elephants in the room (fun happy time content & conversations), no one wants to acknowledge the gigantic white elephant…..you know, that one with it’s left eye gouged out, open wounds from gunfire, and a severe limp.

The proof of a much needed Yang side of Facebook is obvious. With all the ‘positivity’ built into Facebook, human nature can’t hold the Stepford bridge up for long. We needed a Yang right now or everyone was gonna start freaking out.  So we found a way with rampant Fan Page creation representing strong thought or opinion instead of something tangible like a product or service. Out of this came feature recommendations from users that made a pretty bold statement: We socially can’t all be living in a fuzzy sugar-filled land where everything is made of cotton candy, every living thing frolics instead of walks, and the house band for every club or venue is the Partridge Family, pounding out happy fun tunes with blue birds on their shoulders.

The creation of a fan page has turned into the 2009 version of protesting and marching with picket signs against the grain of Facebook’s intention. The difference is, a petition function and lead generation is built in and it’s global.

Let the bitchfest begin.

The Feature Set of Darkness

There have been some funny fan pages that I’ve seen. Here are a few of those:

The Dislike Button - This call for the opportunity to publicly insert your WAHmbulance into a conversation or on some posted content has been around for awhile. It’s not enough for us to just not say anything if we don’t like it. Is being a pacifist against our true nature? I don’t know but it’s funny to see the thousands of people wanting something like this so bad.

The Hate Button – I interpret this idea as not just wanting to let the world know you are offended by a conversation or content, but to let the world know that if given the choice, you would cripple this conversation with a baseball bat if it had two legs and could walk around.

The I Don’t Care Button - This is one that was ‘recommended’ to me today when I logged in. Isn’t this the same as inaction? If we publicly need to announce our apathy to everyone about a conversational topic, it’s no wonder that humanity accuses humanity of being a group of lazy, whiny, little brats.

The Boring Button - I saw this fan page awhile ago but couldn’t seem to find it again. Anyway, this to me represents our inherent need to be publicly smug about something, tapping our inner Kanye. Brilliant.

Let’s Heat Up This Petri Dish: We Aren’t “Friends” Anymore!

I think an interesting social experiment, and one that would surely make people either quit Facebook, or would at least quadruple the amount of thought going into deciding if you will confirm a friend request or not, is to automate the delivery of a friendly notification to the “unfriendee”, letting them know that person X just unfriended them. Hell, might as well take it a step further and put it publicly in their feed…something like, “So and so just unfriended So and so.” Imagine the awkwardness you could witness with functionality like this. You could cut it like butter. More funny would be people’s interactions with that feed activity, commenting or ‘liking’ it. Think about the conversations that would be generated on THOSE threads. I wouldn’t get ANY work done. It would turn Facebook into a virtual gladiator event! Where’s my toga?

Onward.

Being Informed: Be Careful What You Ask For

Posted by Rich Harris – November 26, 2009

What Have I Done?

office-sign-blackberry1I have a BlackBerry.

Sent to my BlackBerry all day, every day, are the following:

  • Personal email (3 different accounts serving different purposes)
  • Work email
  • Personal/Work Calendar/Meeting updates
  • Facebook activity
  • MySpace activity (much less so now since I’m not on there very often anymore)
  • Twitter activity
  • News feeds via RSS that I’ve set up covering everything from entertainment to science to business & marketing
  • SMS/MMS messages from my teenage boys, friends, and family across the world

One of my sons asked me the other day if I read all that stuff and while I can say that I don’t read through everything from top to bottom, I DO comb through every message, more or less snacking on the headlines that show up on my phone. It’s now a habit.

Sometimes it has really benefited me when it comes to getting tweets about traffic problems on a highway I was about to jump on, family emergencies, my boys letting me know where they are after school, or I get notified about a last minute meeting cancellation so I don’t show up and no one is there after my 30 minute commute to make it on time.

Sometimes it’s maddening. I end up reading (and having some sort of emotional reaction to, ranging from mellow to freak out) a ton of information all at once, almost sending me over the edge. Whereas before all this technology, we were generally receiving the major milestone headlines and information in “groups of 1” or 2 at a time..sometimes 3….a more palpable rate. That was at least what our brains were trained to take in and process effectively at the time.

I think that in a lot of ways it has gotten most people more stressed out than they are aware they are. Even if the information overload they’re receiving is positive, it’s still overload. Every message that triggers any type of mental/emotional response out of you removes you yet one more notch away from reality, the here and now slips away. In a corporate world where there are new movements of people trying to encourage a culture of work/life balance, are we effectively countering that ideal by checking all of our messages/tweets/emails on our iPhones right before checking into our visit to In-N-Out Burger on Foursquare?

I’m Not Alone.

The other day established journalist/editor Jennifer Van Grove (@jbruin on Twitter), Associate Editor for Mashable and NBC San Diego correspondent, had tweeted, “my feed reader is out of control… one day off & I feel like the world has moved on without me.” Nowadays, we are all so accustomed to getting so much information from so many directions. I wonder if there’s a battle going on inside all of us now; one side wants to be in the moment and think only about what is in front of us and tangible, the other side takes the concept prevalent in most journalists to know as much as possible as fast as possible so that we are ahead of the game.

I get teased by my less-than-tech friends often (or those friends that perhaps take time to smell the roses more often than I) but one interesting thing is that no matter how much info I have sent to me or that I go out and get myself, there are always 1,000+ more people out there that are taking in more information than me (and if they’re good people, they pass on the good stuff to the rest of us).

The Repercussions of High Volume Input

ahumadaAre there any when you are plugged in, feeding your brain at the level that it can now fed? I know there are effects on certain chemicals in your body and brain that are known to get a boost or be negatively affected when watching too much TV or staring at a screen. Hundreds of studies have proven all kinds of things. I have to wonder, based on my inability to put my BlackBerry down without convulsing into a harsh moment of data withdrawal, how this has affected us in our physical and behavioral day to day.

My Two Cents

A long time ago in a small town probably close by, some dude would drop off stacks of newspapers on every street corner of every block. We’d all buy these newspapers and crack them open, reading our local news, snippets of what is going on with the rest of the world. I’m talking about back in the day when families would huddle around a radio listening to Howdy Doody. The amount of news back then was so minimal, simple-minded (to our social/cultural detriment in some cases when it changes to close-minded). The only life experiences and tidbits of global humanity we heard or read about back then were nebulous speculations at best. Honestly I think there was some value back in those days that will probably never be recaptured. The time spent to digest one piece of news was much more organic, made available to us at a pace that didn’t feel so Johnny Mneumonic.

I think that at some point (and now to a certain extent), the amount of information and the way we currently receive it (txt, email, Twitter clients, et al) has minimized a lot of the emotional value of most of the news that aggressively shoves itself across our new reader tools of choice. I think that previous eras in communication allowed us more time and more room to take in some information, process it, break it down, and then reassemble it so that our brains can make sense out of it and compartmentalize it for later use as a memory.

The current era in communication, news and information sometimes leaves me feeling numb. By the time I read a headline, decide I’m interested in knowing more and plan to check out the actual article, 50 more articles have just shown up that (now out of trained obsessive compulsion) I want to also scan and see if there’s anything interesting in there that I might also want to form a response. I then see one in that next batch and want to pursue it..but then more news comes down….and so on.

The Unstoppable, Inevitable Curve

I speak of the exponentially increasing sharpness of a curve that represents the rate at which information flows to people as technology and culture become more advanced and progressive. I wonder where it will land us in 10 years. Will we all have feeds piped directly into our subconscious so that we can continue to receive loads of information without “wasting” our conscious thoughts on it? Will diagnosed anxiety/depression become more prevalent as we are exposed to 100 times more bad news headlines via RSS/Twitter/Facebook.

Wikipedia even has an entry for Information Addiction.

Time to sign up for my 12-step program.

Facebook: Are You A Stalker or Researcher?

Posted by Rich Harris – November 18, 2009

Stalking-TwitterSoooo…..Are You?

The general public is full of crazies. This validates our assumption that the online world is full of crazier crazies because now people can be more anonymous, and anonymity is the main survival tool of any genuine weirdo, allowing him or her to carry on. Of course, there’s the serious issue of stalkers on Facebook and MySpace, which is not to be taken lightly. There’s also the harmless stuff, the running joke of, “Hey, I’m glad we got to meet face to face finally, I’ve been stalking you on Facebook (tee hee). Let’s go hang out,” and all turns out friendly and good and you gain some new friends.

I was thinking about this the other day about how many people I’ve connected with online as acquaintances after meeting them through friends, or at business-related mixers or events. You know the routine…you go to a trade show while on a business trip, or a party somewhere, or even just a local watering hole and strike up a conversation with a perfect stranger. After you meet someone that doesn’t seem like Jeffrey Dahmer’s illegitimate love child, you ask if they’re on Facebook, MySpace or Twitter. You get back to your hotel room or home base and get online, find them, and add them. They accept your request and you are now “connected” or “friends.”

Presumptuousness Is The Bastard Child Of Fear.

So it’s no mystery that the human majority takes a look at someone they don’t know and absorbs what microscopic sliver of information about that person they can get their senses on (hair color, their interaction in a restaurant they just witnessed, the wedding ring on their finger). Then their next step is to make massive detailed assumptions about how/who/what that person really is about, their background, their personality, their life history, and so on. It’s human nature. We’re all (to various degrees) innately uncomfortable with not knowing everything there is to know about the people we see around us. Where there are informational gaps, our hearts and minds do their damnedest to fill all those gaps as fast as we possibly can with whatever so that we can comfortably continue to deny some of our own insecurities and the reason we are drumming up all this bullshit.

I understand that there are situations where your common sense forces you to observe a situation so that you can genuinely protect yourself. For example, going into a dark alley in the wrong neighborhood where you’ve just seen a drug deal or “transaction” go down, lends itself to some safe assumptions, the main one being: “I’m probably sacrificing my personal physical safety by taking that particular path to the grocery store.” I think those assumptions are warranted and backed by sanity.

However, for the rest of the non-criminally active portion of the population, think about how exhausting it is that we do that, walking around pigeon-holing everyone. Think about how much energy we spend latching our own neuroses onto something so silly and intangible. I think that tools like Facebook and MySpace and the social sites in general may be providing a positive spin on how we meet new people and form our positive and negative opinions about them moving forward.

Deconstruct. Reconstruct.

Over recent months I’ve had the opportunity to actually go hang out with people face to face that I had initially met on Facebook. Before we even got together I made the effort to comb through their photo albums, check out their status history, take a gander at content they had posted, and read about them on the info section of their profile. Since I’ve started to make a general practice of doing that with random people I’m connected with on Facebook, a couple of interesting things have happened for me.

  • First and foremost, it was a reminder that I don’t even know a fraction of what I thought I knew about people that I’m connected with online. This immediately set off the process of deconstructing my assumptions, pre-conceived opinions/notions, and heaps of information that I had assembled about these people. In an effort to protect oneself, these assumptions (more often than not) never give people the benefit of the doubt….especially if you are a skeptical, cynical bastard like me.
  • The next step is that I began to build up or construct a new picture of this person in my head based on the content that they provided about themselves online. Unless they’re all pathological liars, I felt like I had more valid info now and was able to fill in the gaps with data that was probably much closer to the truth about who they were than all the crap I had concocted in my head prior without any of their content.

The End Result.

So as I was starting to go through this exercise of researching someone before actually hanging out with them, I realized a message was being heavily reiterated to me. My experience when meeting this person for the first time, with me focusing on a more informed opinion about this person, made the get together way more interesting and smooth. I knew what topics would be better to avoid, which ones might spark really good conversation, etc. It’s funny too because people are almost surprised (and probably uncomfortable) that I went and crawled all their info beforehand. The sad thing is that the concept of me wanting to research them first so that I was better prepared socially to interact with them means that being unprepared and uncomfortable is a social standard for many. This to some extent means that it’s probably more comfortable to them if you just make the status quo assumptions because then I’d be going in blind, squirming to find our common ground right there on the fly, which always sucks.

I’m not the first to come to these conclusions by any means but my recent experiences with Facebook in particular have illuminated a lot when it comes to human interaction patterns and reminded me that, as a whole, when it comes to socializing, people have some serious work to do, myself included.

5 Hrs, The ER, And All I Got Was This Life Experience

Posted by Rich Harris – November 16, 2009

In The Emergency Room

I know we all know what goes on in an emergency room but writing about it makes easier for me to expel it from the loops of over-analysis that have seemed to plague me my whole life….so I’m gonna write about it here. :-)

Last weekend, my 14 year old son Simon was injured in a football game. He got hit hard right in the noggin while standing still by someone that was pretty much running at full speed, head down. He went in to make sure that his neck/head/back were ok just to make sure. The coach called (I couldn’t make it to that game that day) and I met them up at the ER. My son was shooken up but feeling better. The short of the story was we were there for 5 hours, got an initial x-ray and then a CAT Scan (CT). The entire time, he had to wear one of those collars until we got the final CT results before we could be cleared by the doctor and discharged. My son is all good now and while I was there to be with him and support him through this, the meat of the experience that evening was the human dynamic that passed through the ER while he and I sat there and waited for 5 hours next to the nurses station.

One of the interesting aspects of this is that while I wasn’t really shocked by much of what was going on around me, my son’s mind was blown by everything he was seeing as it all unfolded. I was reminded that the community we are currently raising him in is fairly uneventful when it comes to that gnarly side of life where people get seriously injured, die, get mugged, are on their death bed, etc. These are all fairly normal events in most cities but even when that stuff happens in my town, no one really hears about it much. I guess our town is just shy of Stepford in some ways, the opposite of what I grew up in. It was just interesting to to hear him describe what he just went through over the phone to his friends once he got home. He said it was the craziest thing he’s ever been through and wasn’t even talking about his own injury.

The Patients

I guess the only way to break down this experience is to methodically address each of the individual patient scenarios that came through there that night. I’ll do my best to not over-embellish what I saw without sacrificing the meaningful details. My son and I were against a wall, him laying on the gurney with his neck brace on, right next to the door where everyone enters the ER. Every time someone new came in, he and I would look over, almost feeling like we were in slow motion, making eye contact with every new patient that rolled in. Simon and I were the first “real people” (non-police, medical staff) that almost every patient made eye contact with when they first entered their final destination in the ER area. This was the place where they would be assessed and get the answers to alleviate the mystery of their current situation with answers from doctors. The ER is a strange place because everyone that enters is in shock, confused, or full of anxiety about everything they don’t know about either their own medical situation. The energy in there is always intense when someone enters, even if they end up being OK.

Patient #1: The Unseen

When we first got there and were waiting, one of the stations that was curtained off had a nurse and a couple doctors in it. They were trying to get information out of the patient, asking them repeatedly what their name was, do they have family close by, what are their phone numbers, etc. All you could hear were just mumbles through the curtain. By the tone of the patient’s voice, I could tell the burden of pure confusion was heavy. About 20 minutes later, a couple older guys showed that were probably in their mid to late 60′s. They were both really quiet average looking dudes. Their appearance was very plain. The nurses escorted them in to talk to this patient like they were relatives or immediate family. With the patient still unable to recognize what was going on, the odd thing is these two men went in there trying to connect with the patient verbally but they were extremely unemotional, unconcerned, almost as if they’ve either been through this before with this person. They almost looked like they weren’t even sure why they themselves were there. The surrounding nurses kept looking at each other and using body language with each other that led you to believe they were questioning the role of these men in this patient’s life, whether this was a healthy/sane situation or not. The men eventually left and they carted off this patient to another room. That whole thing was sort of a mysterious shroud leaving the nursing staff and doctors all feeling kind of awkward and unresolved about the whole thing while they were trying to do their jobs.

Patient #2: The Old Lady

When people are rolled into the ER they are assigned to a larger station with curtains that can be pulled if they are in a more severe or serious state. An older lady was rolled in, moaning in pain. She was probably in her 70′s. I think she had some condition of some sort that was part of her normal routine medical history. They pulled the curtains quickly around her but the way Simon and I were positioned in there, we could see through the corner crack of the curtains. We caught a glimpse of the main doctor that evening inserting a tube through a hole in her stomach and draining something. We couldn’t tell if it was a colostomy entry hole or what but there some blood and the woman was moaning louder as the doctor helped drain it. I look over at my son and I can tell he’s wondering what the hell planet we are on. It was surreal for me to watch him process this while we are in there. They pulled out the tube after about 10 mins, patched her up and moved her to another room, cleaned up the area and then some quiet for a couple minutes.

Patient #3: The Criminal

This by far was the most interesting (and journalistically appealing) highlight of the evening, and the patient that stuck in our minds the most, partly because of the extreme nature of the situation and also because this guy actually interacted with me and Simon personally while we were in there. This guy rolled when while I was in the waiting room and Simon’s mom was in there with him visiting so I missed the initial entrance. When I came back into the room this guy was about 6-8 away from us, handcuffed to both sides of his gurney, two cops standing there accomodating him.

This guy had obviously had an altercation with the police. The whole right side of his face was covered in dried blood and he had a goose egg the size of a golf ball above his right eye. Apparently he had to be apprehended with a tazer before even arriving so chances are this dude wasn’t in this situation for the first time in his life. Simon and I got to observe his venting out loud about the cops right to their faces and then he’d look over at Simon and I and vent more.

The moment that was the most colorful was when they wheeled him out for his toxicology tests, CAT scan and other x-rays. He was rolling right by Simon and I, and looking directly at us. He started saying stuff like, “Fuck the Hayward police…yeah they did this to me (pointing at the cops in the room), I hope my skull is all fucked up so I can sue their asses. I’m gonna drive outta here in a fucking Mercedes.” He was talking directly to Simon and I, making hand gestures that rattled his handcuffs aggressively making some commotion and kind of adding some extra intensity to that environment. Simon handled himself great dealing with this new situation.

Patient #4: The Heart Rate

The final patient we observed of the evening was pretty intense. This couple came in and the guy was all stressed out. The woman had this kind of dazed look on her face. Apparently her heart rate was high and she was feeling bizarre. They both looked healthy and couldn’t have been older than late 30′s. Both were clean cut, normal looking people. It was intense because they took her inital pulse and apparently it was gnarly enough for the nurse to go get an MD and two other nurses right away. All of a sudden they rushed to pull the curtain closed. Because of our location in the room as mentioned above, we could still see what was going on. Within minutes they had this woman hooked up to all kinda of scanners, sensors, and other equipment. All of a sudden half of the machines she was hooked up to started beeping loudly, signaling warnings that something was really wrong. Simon was feeling some anxiety from this right away and could tell it was bad. I could see the patients face through the curtain and she was terrified, but almost catatonic in her verbal responses to the doctors. I felt really bad for her as I could see the fear in her eyes, not knowing what the hell was going on with her body. We ended up getting discharged before that patient was done being dealt with so we weren’t around to see what happened or hear about the diagnosis. That was pretty intense to witness.

A Long Evening

It was a long evening and Simon was fine health-wise, diagnosed with a mild cervical sprain. We both had a new appreciation for our situation in there after witnessing the others. The In-N-Out burger after all that hit the spot late that evening.

I’m glad we went through it though. A little perspective for a teenager is never a bad thing.

Emotions. Patterns. Business. Morality?

Posted by Rich Harris – November 14, 2009

xPsychology4aEmotions Are Still Math

I started thinking about this when I was typing my previous blog post about Google having the Holy Grail. As a marketer, I’m always trying to figure out human behavioral patterns and how I can maximize my company’s profit from the understanding of this.

I had an interesting thread going on Facebook the other day. I was eating sushi at a restaurant and was watching the people around me, talking to each other, responding to conversations with various facial expressions, hand gestures, and vocal tones that varied in intensity. All of these ways of expressing themselves were based on emotion that was being outputted as a physiological response to conversational input they had just received from whoever was sitting across the table and having lunch with them.

I had posted a Facebook status stating that “Emotions are still math.” It was interesting to see people’s responses to this. The vibe I got is that it almost was considered offensive that I had said that. My only point was to acknowledge the fusion between the two concepts, not to minimize the importance of one over the other. Maybe my choice of words made it come off that way, “flattening” the value of emotion. [...stealing your descriptor Andy :-) ]. This definitely was not my intention.

If you know me, I’m far more emotional and dramatic than your average person, half the time it’s to my detriment.

Patterns

While I’m not necessarily referring to my friends on Facebook that participated in that conversation in my next statement here, for certain people I think it strokes a chord with them, like my statement was disregarding humanity on some blunt robotic level, not validating peoples emotions, converting the organic human aesthetic, all the things that mean so much to people, into 1′s and 0′s, basically saying that our entire population is just an abbacus made out of living tissue. My point with it was just that you can plug in formulas to patterns of human behavior. Patterns, whether abstract or linear, are still patterns, no matter how random we think the activity contained within those patterns actually is. I’m not the first person to say this and certainly not the last. Everyone learns this in Psych 1A their first year of college.

Is Business/Marketing Inherently Evil?

What I’m about to say here excludes non-profit organizations.

Successful marketers know that you need to recognize and understand behavioral data to make sound marketing decisions. This requires that on some level you convert what you see in human beings into a formulaic pattern so that you can run some numbers and calculate a risk. The goal of all that is to make more money. Period.

In reference to my “Emotions are still math” statement that kicked off the colorful convo on Facebook: If you are a marketing genius at a company that wants to grow, employ other human beings, beat your competition, understanding how to convert human emotion into dollars, does that make you evil? Smart? Shrewd? Heartless? All of the above?….or just someone trying to pay their bills?

I’m don’t know the answer…that’s why I’m asking.

[image courtesy of duke.edu]