The Point is The People

The Point is the People.

I love that! Hopefully it's not solely a nifty tagline.

In another post I'll tell you the story of how I jumped at the chance to help market a Web 2.1 (aka The Point is People) company. (Although in my world, marketing starts before the product is conceived and I'm coming in a bit late at the product alpha stage.)

I'm asked to market pro bono all the time as if I'm independently wealthy. But this was different: They didn't ask - I volunteered. Because the point really is people (rather than really raking the dough on the acquisition).

So I'm playing around in my head how to spread the word when they're in beta. And I realize there are times folks spread the word because it is cool ["they believe that spreading it will enhance their power (reputation, income, friendships) or their peace of mind" according to Seth]. And there are times you just do something way beyond all that.

I'm very very curious about other reasons and non-reasons we spread the wealth of information, and we share.

The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing. - Blaise Pascal

I mean not even a pat on the back is in it for you. And you don't have a really firm rationale. It was only ages after I moved to Bay Area, after I'd started blogging, after I started meditating, for instance, that I could tell you a good story as to why I did so. But the real truth is I had no better reason at the moment than "It just felt like the right thing to do, and so I did."

I was chatting with Janet Johnson at the BlogBusinessSummit and she had a brilliant idea of attempting to secure Boeing Connexion (blog) as a sponsor for the tsunami anniversary tour: "Imagine a planeload of bloggers heading out to Asia." It sounded great - at first.

Yet I wanted people to go to Asia and blog only if they were pulled to do it for other reasons - most importantly their own innate reasons - well beyond gee it'd be cool to be flown free and podcast from a plane and wow! sit next to an A-Lister on a very elite flight. So I nixed that idea at least for this project. Who knows maybe next year I'll take a planeload of bloggers to Africa to help kids in AIDs orphanages use a digital camera, write on a blog, and share their experiences and stories (...I'm just imagining right now).

Why do what you do?

I am only one person, and I cannot do everything. But just because I cannot do everything, does not mean that I will refuse to do that which I can. - Helen Keller

I'm sitting in a bagel shop Sunday reading the paper. I'm astounded that the entire World section of the San Francisco Chronicle is littered with disaster stories. The headline story is the earthquake in Pakistan that has killed more than 18,000 people (and that's yesterday's count): "Race to find earthquake survivors". And "Guatemalans search grimly for bodies: 337 missing after Hurricane Stan brought mudslides": even shelters are sliding down the mountains. "200th soldier killed in Afghanistan since 2001." In one story we learn that "Vietnam's effort key to stopping spread of avian flu" while in another that "Turkey confirms first cases of Avian flu." And of course there's a Katrina story.

I can't totally "justify" why I am going to the Indian Ocean this winter. It's not for my own healing as many assume. I don't have to fly around the world to do that (and it feels 'complete' of late). I just as easily could head down to the Hurricane Stan-hit of Mexico's Chiapas region and Guatemalan highlands - I spent seven weeks there in 2003. I read off the names of towns covered in dozens of feet of mud and particularly the one where the avalanche of mud hurled down the side of a volcano and buried at least 208 people. There is a particular feeling when there is personal context around a tragedy. When you've walked by those very corn fields and farmers and their mules bearing wood for the evening's cookfire. And seen the children running out in their Mayan dress peeking from behind doorways simultaneously curious and shy around visitors.

But the tsunami aftermath is a story that I feel needs to be covered. And I have to do it. Not that others won't cover it. I'm just heeding the knock at my own door.

It sounds callous to ask for money in context of all this - and Katrina recovery still underway, I know. And if you're seeking to make a 501(c)3 charity contribution, by all means please contribute to those causes first and foremost.

In a never-before and I suspect rare thing for this blog, I'll be accepting advertising to fund the two-month artisan journalism trip (and also to support grassroots charity projects while there and to start an artistan journalism microfund. And I'd love to have Omidyar.net as a fiscal agent for the microfund, hint, hint.).

Anyone donating $100 or over gets a one-line hyperlink under a new Thanks To Sponsors section (where my rolling del.icio.us bookmarks are now listed; I'm making room on the whole right column) that'll be up from the moment one sends in the payment (like now) through Jan 16th, 2006. Robin Stavisky told me her traffic zoomed because of a del.icio.us link I had over to one of her blog posts early January. While I don't expect the same concentrated traffic as post-tsunami, consider advertising on my blog to be simply "icing on the cake". (Please inquire about logo space advertising.)

Just seeking $75 here. $20 there. $200 here. Heck, if Web 2.1 can raise well over $1500 in a few days - and that's just from two "entities" (Chris Pirillo and KRON4), I think we can probably do something for this microfund. And if you just bought a umpteen megapixel digital camera and you have another perfectly good digital camera going unused, donate that instead of cash. (Or iRivers for podcasting, PR gurus for publicity while I'm on the road, or frequent flyer miles.) Donate now - select Tsunami Anniversary Blog Tour fund, as I'm doing other fundraising as well.

p.s. I've been very inspired for last two years by the 100 Friends project (coincidentally founder Marc Gold is doing tsunami relief work right this minute & reporting on his blog.) In How to Change the World by Traveling, he advocates (and I agree): "Look for people who are already trying to help themselves and give them a little boost."

Who Needs $1.5M?

[NY Times Executive Editor Bill] Keller pointed out that it cost the Times around $1.5 million to maintain a Baghdad bureau in 2004. (It cost one Times freelancer much more last month: He was murdered.) “This kind of civic labor can’t be replaced by bloggers.” The Times’ assets: “A worldwide network of trained, skilled [observers] to witness events” and write about them, and “a rigorous set of standards. A journalism of verification,” rather than of “assertion,” and maintaining an “agnosticism” as to where any story may lead. - "Over to You", Jeff Jarvis' Buzzmachine (Ditto - great to meet Jeff Jarvis in person finally at Recovery 2.0 meeting.)

Perhaps some of journalism's civic labor isn't being displaced by blogs... but some is. And I'm seeing many stories ignored by mainstream media picked up by bloggers. I'm not proposing a $1.5M bureau, but what if each of us trained one or two people when we traveled around the world on how to blog. They're already in the field. They know the terrain. (I'll be doing that.) BTW, there are folks capable of dropping their own agenda. That's what good writers do - they observe and surrender to the story that wants to be told. 

p.p.s. Nope you don't get a phone call. But this was a simple idea that worked for raising over $200,000 for Katrina: "The Katrina challenge began organically when he posted a note on his message board at www.brianwilson.com and a fan [of musician and former Beach Boy Brian Wilson], not believing it was actually Wilson [himself urging people to contribute to Hurricane Katrina relief efforts], challenged him to call. Wilson agreed, but only if the fan donated to Katrina relief. From this one exchange came Brian's Katrina challenge where he and his wife Melinda decided to match all cash donations and Brian would call each donor donating over $100." (BrianWilson.com via Worthwhile Magazine)

Bonus: Meant to comment on this long ago, but I loved Dave Taylor's take on this: Katrina draws out the opportunists, even in the blogosphere:

She writes to me saying “I’m going to be issuing a press release about this tomorrow, but I’m going to donate a percentage of my sales to Katrina relief funds. Can you blog about it so I can gain more visibility, please?”

Uh, no I can’t. In fact, I have to admit that I am apalled [Dave's emphasis, not mine] by companies that send out press releases touting their “wonderful humanitarian efforts”. This is just trying to ride the coattails of disaster for personal gain, in my opinion. You want to impress me? Just donate a percentage of your sales without telling anyone.

Comments

[Melanie]

Hi Evelyn, I love your continuing theme of the post-money transcendence & reputation-based culture. So true, and so unequally distributed yet. As you know, Mihalyi Cziksentmihalyi in “Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience,” re: the materialism/happiness tie, had a corroborating finding that happiness levels reverted to whatever their default had been prior to "big-happiness" events like lottery-winning.

Btw, this whole Second Life / metaverse / virtual worlds as the Internet 2.0 platform seems to be really taking off. The State of Play & Second Life simul-conference (www.slconvention.org) in NY this weekend underlined this. Second Life is free & with 60,000 users has the potential to become a platform for many things including interactive education and simulation. The annual Serious Gaming Summit (e.g.; education/gov't simulation) conference coming up in Wa DC 10/31-11/1 further highlights the theme of education platforms.
(www.seriousgamessummit.com/home.html)