Crossroads Dispatches

Art Inseparable from the Railroad, Insurance Office, Joint-Stock Company

Wow, what an amazing week. Too much to fill you in on and I'm off to Seattle where I'm staying at The Alexis, which according to their site is: "A Work of Art", is committed to the local arts community--we invite our guests to tour the hotel's permanent and rotating collection of original art." Their parent company touts: "Every hotel has a story to tell."

I've been really immersed in art lately. Another show with my friend Ruby this weekend in San Carlos. What strikes me is how folks define art when I'm talking to them. "Oh, no, I'm not an artist..." they insist. Fifteen minutes later I find out they design sets for their local theater or write poetry in their journal or....

This Ralph Waldo Emerson snippet from his classic "Art" essay seems more relevant today than in 1841. What if we elevated eating and drinking, aye, even commerce to art?

The art that thus separates is itself first separated. Art must not be a superficial talent, but must begin farther back in man. Now men do not see nature to be beautiful, and they go to make a statue which shall be. They abhor men as tasteless, dull, and inconvertible, and console themselves with color-bags, and blocks of marble. They reject life as prosaic, and create a death which they call poetic. They despatch the day's weary chores, and fly to voluptuous reveries. They eat and drink, that they may afterwards execute the ideal. Thus is art vilified; the name conveys to the mind its secondary and bad senses; it stands in the imagination as somewhat contrary to nature, and struck with death from the first. Would it not be better to begin higher up, — to serve the ideal before they eat and drink; to serve the ideal in eating and drinking, in drawing the breath, and in the functions of life? Beauty must come back to the useful arts, and the distinction between the fine and the useful arts be forgotten. If history were truly told, if life were nobly spent, it would be no longer easy or possible to distinguish the one from the other. In nature, all is useful, all is beautiful. It is therefore beautiful, because it is alive, moving, reproductive; it is therefore useful, because it is symmetrical and fair. Beauty will not come at the call of a legislature, nor will it repeat in England or America its history in Greece. It will come, as always, unannounced, and spring up between the feet of brave and earnest men. It is in vain that we look for genius to reiterate its miracles in the old arts; it is its instinct to find beauty and holiness in new and necessary facts, in the field and road-side, in the shop and mill. Proceeding from a religious heart it will raise to a divine use the railroad, the insurance office, the joint-stock company, our law, our primary assemblies, our commerce, the galvanic battery, the electric jar, the prism, and the chemist's retort, in which we seek now only an economical use. Is not the selfish and even cruel aspect which belongs to our great mechanical works, — to mills, railways, and machinery, — the effect of the mercenary impulses which these works obey? When its errands are noble and adequate, a steamboat bridging the Atlantic between Old and New England, and arriving at its ports with the punctuality of a planet, is a step of man into harmony with nature. The boat at St. Petersburgh, which plies along the Lena by magnetism, needs little to make it sublime. When science is learned in love, and its powers are wielded by love, they will appear the supplements and continuations of the material creation.

Overheard, Two Artists: "I Cannot Not Do It"

First artist: "I was reluctant to put my work out there in public because growing up my father would imply, 'Who do you think you are?', 'Who gave you permission?'"

The second artist replies: "God gave you permission."

Last night's conversation continues and I join in. We come to consensus: At some point in our lives we cannot not do it. Whatever It is.

It runs the show now.

You must understand most artists (heck, why limit this to artists? Last night an engineer shows me a poem on Kuan Yin, Jesus, and samsara that a fellow QA engineer at a well-known Vallley company authored; plus of course coding can be art) think of G-o-d as the Totality (aka Inspiration, Infinite Intelligence, Nature, Universe, Source, {insert your sense of where inspiration emerges from}).

I can imagine Guy, the philosophical Belgian co-owner of Mapro resort on Thailand's Phi Phi island rolling the tobacco along the contour of the bamboo table into the sheer cigarette paper and saying: "Now why confine the Totality to any label?"

And now I might out woo-woo Ms. Communicatrix. She writes her major takeaway from SXSW is: "I will probably not make money with any of my online ventures, present or planned. And I’m okay with that."

I’m okay because I no longer need stuff so much as I need happiness. (Recognition is still attractive to me, but I figure by the time I get any, I won’t care much about that, either.)

I’m okay because I saw people up on those daises (which looks a lot like daisies, doesn’t it?) who were making money and people who might never and the only thing that I found compelling in either was the passion that drove them. - "A preliminary and rather alarmingly woo-woo perspective on SXSW"

That was my takeaway too.

My teacher spoke Wednesday about this 'cannot not do it' shift. "Awareness is self-aware. It is empty, it is lucid and it has a sense of love and compassion and well-being... A well-being that spills over. An upwelling that spills over... We feel a deeper call to express realization than to groove in the realization. All of existence shifts into something completely different... This life is no longer going to be about 'mine'... I might have to actually be a servant rather than be a spiritual consumer. You can't become awakened without becoming responsible for what you know."

We become a servant to art. The passion at the seat of inspiration has a momentum of its own. Sandbagging ain't working. The holding-back dam breaks. The river by nature wants to run wild.

Shel Israel at the closing "Naked Converations" session of NewCommForum paraphrases a keynote at Syndicate by Larry Weber. "He says CMOs ask about psychographics, demographics, holographics,...whatever graphics. (Audience laughs). When the only question you need to ask is: 'What does the customer want?'"

Robert Scoble follows: "We're [the blogging community] doing the same thing - obsessing with numbers and lists. I felt lost [in this new emphasis on metrics]. Recently I realized talking to the Hotmail team that the most successful product teams talk and share because... They love product. That's it."

For you the passion could be kite-flying, not Hotmail. "Blogging lets me share my loves. Either love what you do - or go fly a kite... How much do you love your product? "I love my product. I love my company. I love my craft," and everything you do demonstrates that. Every post, every email, every call back."

This isn't the first time Scoble emphasizes passion. But with godzillion blogs and splogs mushrooming everyday it seems to be the ingredient that's neglected these days in the pursuit of technorati rank and googlejuice.

One thing blogging has given me insight into what it is that I cannot not do. I find myself writing about that whether it's on the agenda - or not. Blogging naked has eased me at a pace I can handle (what choice is there ultimately?) to make my avocation my vocation. (BTW my avocation is not blogging.)

Last night I heard a kick-ass presentation that nearly matched Kathy Sierra's SXSWi "How to Create Passionate Users" pres in its intensity and epiphanies last night by the artist and marketer team at Los Gatos-based Marketing4Artists.net.

It basically turns the marketing premise on its head. Sure I've worked with plenty of engineers whose product was a solution searching for a problem, but something else is going on when the inspiration isn't driven by an IPO or sale to Yahoo.

What if your business is art? What if it stemmed from a great upwelling that spills over rather than a quantitative market research study? In fact, you can't even claim it is yours per se but you're a steward of it? Does that turn marketing on its head? What companies do you think started as art, as deep inspiration that needed visible expression?

In the presentation, photographer Marco Zecchin said, "Usually marketing comes from customer needs. Art is the opposite. It comes from the wellspring within."

Their March newsletter kick-starts their premise (snippet below). Hmmm, I think a lot of us can relate.

1) Don't pollute, compromise or dilute your art.

Your art comes from inside you, don't let it be directed by some outside force for the sole purpose of marketing or selling it. Serve your passion.

2) Honor and respect your art.

Listen to what your art is saying to you and therefore to the outside world. Don't second-guess it, just voice its authentic story!

3) Champion your art.

Stand beside it and advocate its rights to exist in the world. Evangelize it!

The good news is that it is much bigger than you are! You may feel shy or timid in championing your art but you are not alone. Take strength from your art's sacred mission.

p.s. Did I say I was exploring art, brands, biz, passion, etc. for week or so? I'm going to go deeper with this topic for much longer I sense.

tags sxsw sxsw2006 marketing art innovation startup passion entrepreneurs inspiration spirituality

So How Does It Feel to Be A Global Micro-brand?

I received an email from someone writing a feature on marketing innovations and global microbrands.  I answered the writer's email questions while I watch tonight's The Apprentice. (TV is rare for me, but concentration isn't a problem as I learned to do homework in a household that adored TV sets in every room.)

Donald Trump is having lunch with the winning team. He's asked (gushingly):

How does it feel to be a brand?

Trump (I'm paraphrasing):  I don't think about it. It puts too much pressure on you... When you look at people dying every day in India or hungry in Africa, what we're doing isn't that important.

Hmmm. Trump gets a few brownie points on my end.

The writer's questions had me re-evaluate the value of blogging. I'm not sure I'd have realized that there were so many business people that shared my interests without this blog. Sometimes I think I'm really going out on a limb and I need to reel it back in and discuss Technorati rankings and Web 2.0 and Techcrunch parties. Precisely at those moments an email comes in from a CEO stating his own preference: "I like some of the messages with a deep meaning" or from a financier: "Beautiful. Just exquisite. Thank you."

That's why I keep plugging away.

This is a good time to attempt to answer question #1 publicly. It's still rough:

1. How would you describe your profession/work?  What do you do (for money)?

I'm a freelance marketing consultant and writer. Or I was a consultant.  I'm in the middle of a transition out of a typical consulting role that began after my brush with death and global loss, the Indian Ocean tsunami.

I'm creating (slowly, organically) an affinity group (future: Dwelve.com) that transcends any product or service. One hub spoke of the strategy involves helping international brands that exude spiritual capital -  not in that syrupy jumping-on-the-Zenification-bandwagon but as an authentic expression of the company (and stakeholders) wish to engage in the world rather than succumbing to the escape-to-Tibetan-monastery-virus. (BTW, I think the only way to operate the new and distinct operation is something other than the typical C corp.)

A lot of brand-builders talk about meaning-making. But I'm not talking about anything made or manufactured, but pointing to a deep naturalness, something fundamental, and universally essential yet expressed uniquely. In Mindfulness in Plain English, by Venerable Heenepola Gunaratana, he makes the point that the most basic of things - words like the - are often the most difficult to explain.

For instance, I met an author and poet in Sri Lanka. She hosts a monthly Enlightenment Seekers Study Circle in her home outside Colombo. Her husband works with women's microfinance in Hambantota. I felt I knew the family intimately after two afternoons.

It was only late in our relationship that I even learned her family owned a socially-conscious tea plantation. One son learned yoga on his own from books at thirteen and meditated in a Japanese Zen monastery at 17. Eventually I learned her daughter-in-law (said son's wife) was packaging and selling the tea. Reading the website I saw that their presence, their story simply wasn't coming across at all. It could be any tea company - albeit a high-quality Ceylon tea.

Tea is sold by auction in Sri Lanka. Taste enters the equation, but essentially plucking tea leaves and selling them in bulk is awfully close to a commodity.  There "value-added" export means bagging the tea leaves.

The real value-add, IMHO? (A great cup of tea is expected, a given these days.) Value add is caring about and wanting to support the people and mission behind and beyond the tea product.

FYI, the list of questions. Be curious to hear responses. I can send you my answers via email (I didn't ask for permission to post):

1. How would you describe your profession/work? What do you do (for money)?
2. Hugh MacLeod mentioned you in his rant on a “global microbrand”. What does the term "global microbrand" mean to you?
3. Is your blog a personal “global microbrand”? If so, how? And how successful has it been?
4. What is the difference between marketing by blogs for small business, and large  corporate b-blogs?
5. In such a saturated blogosphere (where most blogs have relatively few hits), how does marketing by blogs reach out to customers?
6. In the world of blogs, where entries become obsolete within a matter of hours, is marketing by blogs sustainable?
7. How do you think marketing by blogs will change the way people perceive of marketing/advertising?

Small is the New Big?

I actually like the small-is-the-new-big (and related less-is-more) meme, and am looking forward to Inc. editor Bo Burlingham's new book, Small Giants, just featured in the this February Inc.

The Devil's advocate in me mouths off:

Is simply shooting for small or less sufficient? 

Actually Burlingham's book appears to be about greatness - without worrying  and preoccupying yourself as you go about resultant size or extrinic measures of worth - be it big or small.

No bird soars too high,
if he soars with his own wings. - William Blake

Is Doing What You Love Complicated?

My friend Kamal - who is definitely doing what he loves and helping others to boot with his new venture helping folks collectively pool funds for gifts or their favorite causes and charities - sent me Paul Graham's latest essay, How to Do What You Love, with this note attached: "The definitive intelligent essay on doing what you love." Paul starts:

To do something well you have to like it. That idea is not exactly novel. We've got it down to four words: "Do what you love." But it's not enough just to tell people that. Doing what you love is complicated.

I've been traveling in tsunami-struck Thailand for the last month and have met dozens upon dozens of volunteers who quit their jobs for extended periods of time, directors of newly formed foundations, and various owners of hotels, bars, dive shops, restaurants, bakeries and more who are doing precisely what they love.

I'll say upfront that rarely do I meet Americans. Thais, French, Belgians, Germans, Swedes, Canadians, Australians, Brits, Scots, sundry expats living in Hong Kong and Shanghai and India, you name it - but few Americans.

Sandra, a friendly nurse-practitioner from Canada, came to Phi Phi, a resort island with limestone crags and turquoise bays hit hard by the tsunami, in February 2005 to set up a community medical center after the local clinic was wiped out. Still an unpaid volunteer into late December, I spoke with Sandra about HiPhiPhi, a successful grassroots organization on the island.

On one hand she understands my question about how she managed to pull this off for nearly a year, but on the other she knows that I know already know the answer. There is a tinge of impatience: "You just make it happen. It's a choice."

When I explain that my readers may want a teeny bit more guidance on how to do this themselves she explains that she isn't attached to material possessions or the security of a pension. Still I sense the question doesn't fit. It bristles like ill-fitting underwear.

I'm reminded of the title to Peter Block's book, The Answer to How is Yes.

"Granted, I came to Asia to do volunteer work," says Tilo, a stonemason from Colorado, who is a key player and a construction consultant for the Tsunami Volunteer Center. "I was building a soup kitchen in Ko Samet for the low season. At the time of the tsunami, I should have been on a boat to a small island off Railey where no one survived, but I stopped for an extra fifteen minutes to make a phone call to my Dad at the market inland."

"When I showed up at the TVC [Tsunami Volunteer Center], I felt everything had lead up to that moment," continues Tilo. "If you would have told me all this last year would have encompassed, I wouldn't have believed it."

Talking with Tik over the scent of longan nut, poppyseed, chocolate, lemon cheesecake, and tiramisu sitting on the counter at the Stempfer Cafe she tells me she has a biotechnology degree from a German university. Before I can censor myself, I blurt, "Then what are you doing here?"

She explains how she hated working in a food control lab.

"I thought making cakes was hard, but it's not," she tells me. It dawns on me that she is not a waitress, but the co-owner with her German husband. And more importantly, in her last year in Germany she chose to study baking.

I realize you can flip the question: What am I doing here? A backpack journalist jotting notes in eight-dollar-per-night bungalows while her electrical engineering diploma just rots away.

In fact, Tik's background will serve her well when she opens up the dream baked goods factory and distributes her packaged treats all over Thailand. And having grown up in this province she wants to give work to its people too, she says.

"The farung call me Mr. One Love", says Rakdeaw, whose name literally means 'one (deaw) love (rak).' His degree in agricultural education usually takes him to farmers in the north provinces, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Burma to teach them how to grow organic crops.

These days, Rakdeaw is teaching indigenous kids called the Moken at their learning center through Foundation for Children in Tung Wa. He talks to me about globalization and the need to preserve their unique culture. "I'd like to have a library here with Moken [not a written language], Thai and English books. Write down the history and culture of the people. Create a Moken dictionary. Now every day we have old people come and teach five Moken words to the children."

He shares with me tidbits of his knowledge of the Moken.

"They have no pockets," explains Rakdeaw. "What do you mean?" I'm thoroughly confused. He gestures placing his upturned palms into a bowl.

"They get everything from the sea. It is like gold for them. Always the sea gives fish and whatever they need."

Ah. They put their trust in the bounty of the universe, not their savings accounts.

I am beginning to comprehend.

p.s. The first photo was taken by Mwa - make sure you get the nasal W just right as she insists - at the Tung Wa learning center. There are 82 kids there. Mwa and Mr. One Love are pictured in the second photo. Mwa was quite the photojournalist and I didn't get my camera back until the memory stick was full. Rakdeaw says her father navigated his boat right into and over the wave "just like in the movies" and thus saved two foreigners that were on board. Like many other families in Phang-nga province, she lost her mother and sister in the tsunami.

Amanda and Global Fusion

What I figure is a six- or seven-year-old Thai girl with silky black hair plops down next to me at the Stempfer Cafe in Khao Lak.

"What's your name?" she asks me confidently in perfect English.

"Evelyn. What's yours?"

"Amanda."

"You speak English?"

"Yes. And Thai and Swedish."

I take another bite from my strudel-like dessert in the German cafe where I go for air-con and the closest thing to a latte I can find around here. After a month, I find I occasionally need to escape out of Thailand. A slice of Europe for a small siesta works wonders.

"I'm five," she barrels on answering my question before I get a chance to speak. Amanda soon after runs out the door and disappears before I have a chance to finish the conversation or dig out my camera and capture her photo.

The Thai waitress volunteers, "She's half-Thai, half-Swedish." By the look on her face I can see we both in silent agreement: she's cute, precocious - and a quite a handful.

I get back to my latte and my International Herald Tribune Thai Day issue story about the Tamarind Cafe in Bangkok. Luka Wong and Sylvie Bruzeau opened their vegetarian cafe two years ago. From their website:

"Having grown up in Taiwan and France, lived in ten countries on three continents, their cuisine is a mix of Asian flavours and European techniques, and the result is a vegetarian fusion unparalleled in the region."

Christy Srisanan, a Thai-American, currently has an exhibition at the cafe's gallery. Well, it's actually not Christy's work on display. In the last six months, more than 300 Thai children have been exposed to photography through Christy's SeedArt Project. Their photography is on display at the Tamarind Cafe through January 31.

Srisanan came up with the idea after the tsunami. She was in New York, working as an IT consultant and wanted to do something to help. She believed giving children camaras would help to ease their suffering. - "Full Belly, Wide Eyes", International Herald Tribune, January 16, 2005 (not online)

That was page 7. But I'd already read this story before in the Bangkok Post. And on page 5 there was another story (heard already too) about the upcoming Rhythm of the Earth World Festival, Bangkok's first world music event this weekend.

The most popular TV show on the Thai airwaves isn't the prime minister's reality show on his own cable channel (uh, that's another post) but a thoughtful Korean soap opera Dae Jang Geum that's based on the true story of Korea's first female royal physician. LG Electronics dropped its "Western presenter representing LG as a global brand" from its advertising and is now using the Dae Jang Geum star "to capitalise on the rising infatuation of all things Korean."

It's easy to be breathless about global fusion.

That is until you read about the opposite, the closing down of exchange and sharing: the NGO's that were set afire in Pakistan by a mob in retaliation for the recent U.S. missile strike or the cease-fire in Sri Lanka "that is hanging by a thread" or the ongoing Internet censorship in China.

This is one example of global fusion - high-tech companies such as Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and Cisco aiding the Chinese government - we could do without. Jonathan Mirsky's editorial states: "Some of the world's most famous Internet companies have lined up to show China how to cripple the Web."

The op-ed closes with a rather strange, although altogether common, assumption that Americans need to bring the issue home to censorship on their own turf to relate or care: "Americans who think in any event China is far away may be jolted by this suggestion by Rebecca MacKinnon, a former foreign correspondent in China..."

Americans who think China is far away period are going to be in for a rude surprise in a global economy. China, as is much of the world, is closer than ever. It's in the pearl tea I drink at the neighborhood cafe back in San Jose and in the electronics I buy.

I'm not even sure what my point was anymore in this post. All I know for sure is when I connected with Amanda's curious wide eyes, the notion that anywhere or anything is that far away popped like a taut balloon. 

Bonus: You don't hear about 9/11 much anymore. This story of regeneration, global fusion, creative fundraising and innovative company structures is about the Windows of the World restaurant survivors starting a new venture. Snippets below:

Windows on the World survivors - those not on the schedule that morning - are opening an upscale Greenwich Village restaurant just a walk from ground zero. The restaurant, to open Thursday, is owned by the workers and offers a menu sprinkled with food from the staff's 22 native nations...

At first, the grieving workers considered making their restaurant a sort of tribute to 9/11, including memorabilia. But a survey they commissioned concluded that customers want to enjoy fine food and atmosphere, not be reminded of terror and death...

So they decided on a restaurant with dishes that include favorite family recipes contributed by the workers, whose native lands include Haiti, Jamaica, Italy, Mexico, Thailand, Colombia, Egypt, Bangladesh and China_ and even a handful of workers born in the United States. The eclectic menu will change with the seasons and aims to satisfy both traditional and exotic tastes with fare ranging from organic chicken with cranberries and New York aged ribeye steak to bartender Silverio Moog's Philippine lobster and minted sweet potato spring rolls.

"This is the new American food. It's cooked in a kitchen where everyone is equal, no yelling, no screaming. And you actually own the dishes you're washing," said executive chef Raymond Mohan, born in a village in Guyana...

The Colors waiters, busboys, bartenders, chefs and dishwashers all have a stake in the venture, financed with about $2.2 million. The Italian food consortium Good Italian Food (GIF) offered $500,000 as an equity investment, and the Nonprofit Finance Fund put up $1.2 million for the project from 15 smaller lenders. Modest funds came from Roman Catholic nuns in California, Michigan and Ohio.

"We got nowhere with the big banks," said Bruce G. Herman, a workers rights advocate who represents the Italian consortium. "And who stepped forward? The religious community, a nonprofit fund, a foreign cooperative."

Each Colors staffer also spent at least 100 hours working for the Restaurant Opportunities Center (ROC-NY), a Manhattan cooperative organization that raised another half million dollars. Its members are teaching other restaurant employees how to build a worker-owned restaurant - an innovative model for the international food industry...

The Italy-based GIF consortium includes the cooperative CIR, which has sponsored joint-venture restaurants and pasta factories in China, Vietnam, and Croatia.

GIF president Ivan Lusetti, speaking from Italy, said GIF's 7,000 worker members drive successful businesses "because people are more motivated when they share the profits, they pay more attention.

"Now, let's see if our democratic model can work in America. That's the challenge.""Windows on the World Survivors Open Restaurant - Worker-Owned with Global Food", NY Newsday, January 4, 2006

Bonus: Ethan Zuckerman's view: "I’m even happier that we’re finally beyond the question of whether the Internet and blogging are important and deep into the debates about how we protect the Internet’s most powerful feature - the ability to give anyone online a voice."

An Internet Fed Mostly by Amateurs is Fascinating

"I don't want to read blogs by political extremists, listen to podcasts recorded by droning amateurs, or watch videos produced by talentless would-be directors - even though the Internet makes all that possible.

I want to get my news from highly skilled professionals, listen to music by the world's most brilliant performers and composers, and be entertained by big-budget Hollywood extravaganzas.

Of course, I'm biased. I make my living writing this column, and my paycheck is threatened if everyone decides freely available blogs -- even at lesser quality -- are an acceptable substitute.

Carr concludes: "The layoffs we've recently seen at major newspapers may just be the beginning, and those layoffs should be cause not for self-satisfied snickering but for despair. Implicit in the ecstatic visions of Web 2.0 is the hegemony of the amateur. I for one can't imagine anything more frightening.''

Amen." - Mike Langberg, "An Internet fed mostly by amateurs is frightening", San Jose Mercury News, October 23, 2005

Amen!? I typically enjoy Mike Langberg's columns. But where the heck do Nicholas Carr and Langberg think talent comes from? Does it plop up wholly formed in the sea foam like greek goddess Aphrodite?

Or does the granting of a degree from an accredited film school or art school or journalism school now stamp one with the Good Housekeeping seal of approval?

Should Bill Gates or Steve Jobs meekly crawl back and complete their professional degrees?

Or does it sometimes come from passion, gumption, inspiration, and the sheer love of it?

Why whine that the talent pond got bigger? What ever happened to that little old adage, Let the market decide?

There's probably too much Kool-Aid and hype over Web 2.0 to be sure. It's the disdain for amateurs that riles me up. Making sure we're on the same page: amateur, definition from Wikipedia (he, he):

The other, perhaps somewhat obsolescent usage, stems from the French form of the Latin root of the word meaning a "lover of". (See amateurism.) In this sense, retaining its French inflexion ("am-a-tEUR"), an amateur may be as competent as a paid professional, yet is motivated by a love or passion for the activity, like a connoisseur. In the 17th and 18th centuries virtuoso had similar connotations of passionate involvement.

SILICON VALLEY IS WRITHING WITH AMATEURS

And they are the heart and blood coursing through the economy. I didn't feel the need to respond to Carr when I read a reference to his piece (again I'm focusing on the "cult of the amateur" aspect) over at Om Malik's blog. But this was too much. Langberg writes from the Valley!

Yesterday Dave Winer waxed on about openness and spoke of Silicon Valley exuding a "sense that this place is come as you are, no invite required". Dave nails precisely why I moved here myself from an invite-only state (which now that you mention it, invite-only events were the rage there):

This is why I came to Silicon Valley in 1979, when I was 24 years old. In Madison there were people writing software, smart people (some) but I wanted to make software at a different level. I wanted to make stuff that changed everything, that opened closed doors, that gave people power that used to only belong to the rich and old. Like an open conference, I needed to give something up to get there. But there was no gatekeeper at the door to Silicon Valley telling me I needed an invite. The door was open because not only is that a value of the web, but it's also a value of Silicon Valley, even if some people usurp that. - "Like a Bloggercon", Dave Winer's Scripting News

At the recent Accelerating Change Conference, Steve Jurvetson shared his emphasis on biological metaphors in technology and science. And how it's infiltrated the way venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson funds companies: new ideas are on the emergent edge, on the fringes. So they make sure they have an open call model. They actually read every single business plan they get, with or without a social tie, because by definition their social hub isn't the fringe.

At the same conference, Mark Finnern of SAP shared they'd just hired their #2 contributor to their online SAP developer network in-house. "He'd have never made it through our HR filters," Mark confessed. But his raw talent and passion for what he did and the community was exposed for all to see.

The so-called "cult of the amateur" means one fed up with their stultifying day job can start doodling cartoons on the backs of business cards. And upload them online. And after a few years people seek you out to doodle for them. For Kim Polese and Budget Rental Car.

So it's an Open Call age. But the cult of the amateur isn't anything novel in the Valley. It precedes Web 1.0.

Don Valentine (think financier behind Apple Computer, Cisco Systems, Electronic Arts and Oracle) reminesces in an oral history of the Valley about one particular amateur:

We financed Steve in 1977 at Apple. Steve was twenty, un-degreed, some people said unwashed, and he looked like Ho Chi Min. But he was a bright person then, and is a brighter man now. - from Silicon Genesis oral history site's 2004 interview with venture capitalist Don Valentine

Public relations guru Regis McKenna recalls that first meeting because he put the two visionaries in touch:

[T]he first time he met Jobs, a long-haired, brash youngster who wore t-shirts, cut-off jeans and sandals... McKenna recalls: "Valentine called me afterward and said, `Why have you sent me this renegade from the human race?'"

"They were the renegades of the computer industry," recalls [Regis] McKenna. "It was a grassroots movement, with a social dimension not unlike civil rights or the environment."

The microcomputer revolutionaries believed big business - which they equated with big computers - was not to be trusted. McKenna attended computer club meetings: "They had discussions around not connecting microcomputers to the mainframe because then they would be controlled by them." They didn't need to worry. Few in Silicon Valley paid attention to them.

...A lot of companies in the Valley didn't see it coming [microcomputers, personal computers]," recalls McKenna. "Many people at Intel didn't even believe in them."  - "A time, a place, a mystique: How the Valley of the Heart's Delight became Silicon Valley", Electronic Business, 10/15/2000 (free reg required)

Bonus: Steve getting his first order, barefooted. (Excerpt from Apple Confidential: The Real Story of Apple Computer, Inc.)

My observation on what's happening in media resembles the personal computer revolution: LSD, Litmus Tests, Hackers and Blogging for Dollars. (Please note that Apple didn't kill IBM. They co-exist in the market. And with Taligent they even partnered together once; ok, now defunct but when do any of these joint ventures work?)

THERE'S ONLY SO MANY TALENT MYTHS IN THE WORLD

"[Barry] Diller made what I consider to be some obvious statements, like, "there's only so much talent in the world," suggesting that there are limits to what amateurs can accomplish, says the OnoTech blog in "Web 2.0 -- amateur vs. professional."

If we keep telling ourselves that, well, we might just believe it. "Artmaking has been around longer than the art establishment. Through most of history, the people who made art never thought of themselves as making art," say authors David Bayles and Ted Orland in Art and Fear.

I'm with Dan Gillmor, "Web 2.0, Journalism and Nicholas Carr": "I celebrate the amateur, meanwhile, because the amateurs are rediscovering their voices after a dark age when they were assumed to be nothing but consumers."

This past Saturday I met a credentialled filmmaker  (film school, works as videographer, blah blah) whose working on a documentary film - on her own terms. Asked about her distribution plans, she says she'll cross that bridge later. She's self-assured although she quips: "Even if we just a few DVD parties to show it, that's fine." Even 'talented' people get fed up watching their original, signature voices squashed. Even 'talented' people get fed up watching their talent squandered.

We'll not take away your King Kong or The Matrix. Sure, I watch big-budget. And gritty low-budget independents. I'm an avowed Sundance junkie (hmm, this film fest post is called Democratization of Creativity). And when one thinks Sundance has gone too mainstream, there are a half-dozen other film festivals piggybacking on their heels. Most of these films will never be seen in any other theater.

Far too many sketches, scripts, photos, films, and journal scribblings lay completely hidden privately because the book agent didn't call back, or they didn't have an 'in' to Hollywood. It's not necessarily about making it big, the thing is just dying to get out.

Making art is a common and intimately human activity, filled with all the perils (and rewards) that accompany any worthwhile effort. - Bayles and Orland, Art and Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking

I've been blogging and writing continuously for 21 months (not counting a few months at an abandoned blog). I feel as I've not hit my stride - yet. If you throw enough pots, you will be a master potter.

So where does talent come from? Mastery? In a post on art, Taos and brands, titled Signature Voices, I begin:

I first admired R.C. Gorman's work when I first moved to the West, to Salt Lake City. You can spot his unique work in any line-up. Walking into his gallery tucked on Ledoux Street last week, there was a particular painting, Woman in Canyon de Chelley, that struck me. Damn, I should have bought his work 12 years ago. The price tag: $65,000.

In the gallery, I flip through a cookbook (the theme: food and nudes). It's Gorman's early work. More like you might notice in any talented art student's sketchbook. If you pay attention though, you can begin to see a trace of his style, his stamp, his voice emerging.

In the same post, I mention I was caught off guard by a nondescript 1903 painting by Georgia O'Keefe (that's classic O'Keefe left and not the oriental cherry blossoms painting). It's identical to any rank amateur just fresh out of art school's attempt at cherry blossom branches with a Zen flair. Not distinctive O'Keefe. Judging by dates on her other work, I surmised: "She clearly came into her own in the next decade."

That's a decade, hmmm. Take a peek at this research:

Andres Ericsson is a psychologist who studied Expert and Exceptional Performance in individuals as diverse as chess players, musicians, computer programming, bridge, athletes, and physicists. He has brought a remarkable new insight to the age-old question of whether expert performance is because of exceptional talent (or nature) or because of long hours of effort usually led by parents or adults (or nurture). His conclusion covered areas as broad as motor performance in sports, music, and medicine with the conclusion that, regardless of talent, expert and exceptional performers achieved that status by effort. All have put in about ten years and 10,000 hours of deliberate practice in their development. How does practice improve talent so much? We adapt to domain specific restraints. We develop anticipatory skills. You know as a diagnostician what is possible or likely and learn to anticipate what we will find or do. Soccer and hockey goalies, for example, do not have better reaction times than other players. Constant practice and accumulated knowledge allow them to anticipate shots. Their expertise is not a natural gift but a learned mastery of their craft.

Ten years and 10,000 hours of practice—that means three hours of practice per day. In addition, practice is not defined the same as performing what we already know. Lounge musicians who simply play are not getting better unless they are deliberately practicing, that is, doing work may be not considered fun but a deliberate and concentrated effort to improve skills. - from 2004 AOSSM Presidential Address

10,000 hours, whoa. Gulp. That's a big daunting number. Sans passion (or a hefty enough paycheck) it may be insurmountable. Entrepreneur Will Allred writes in his FireBlog post "Are You Playing or Practicing?":

I've been reading The Extraordinary Leader by John H. Zenger and Joseph Folkman. The authors make a brief reference to a study by K. Anders Ericsson and Neil Charness published in 1994 called "Expert Performance: Its Structure and Acquisition". The article, which talks about sports and music prodigies, is summed up by the following:

The traditional view of talent, which concludes that successful individuals have special innate abilities and basic capacities, is not consistent with the reviewed evidence...More plausible loci of individual differences are factors that predispose individuals toward engaging in deliberate practice and enable them to sustain high levels of practice for many years.

Hmmm, sounds like passion is the key to sustained practice.....

While the frontal lobes may be important for providing the judgment and flexibility of thought that underlies talent, structures in the temporal lobes and limbic system supply drive and motivation, which [neurologist and writer, Alice] Flaherty believes are more important parts of the creative equation than talent itself. This applies not only to writing, but to all kinds of creative ability.

"To be truly creative chess player," she says, "probably just loving the game and playing it ten hours a day may be more important than having some special pattern recognition ability in your brain." (from March 2005 National Geographic, "What's In Your Mind?" issue)

Voila! The formula, please: Passion + Practice = Artiste. I don't think that's the precise formula exactly, but it's a close enough approximation. Passion is the fuel that drives amateurs (insert French inflection and accent yourself).

And the Internet is our open studio to throw pots, take up a brush, collaborate on jam sessions, squiggle cartoons and practice, practice, practice. Anyone can drop into the studio without an appointment. Sometimes it's a work in progress. And sometimes you walk into a masterpiece.

As a renowned documentary filmmaker (once an amateur whom trained herself by getting her hands on a camera and just-doing-it) once shared with me, "There's a secret. If you put in the effort, the universe has a matching grant program. And it'll meet you halfway every time."

Related: Much of what I write in this blog, and this post: We're All Journalists in the Age of Ordinary Art.

Photo credits? You mean besides O'Keefe's Oriental Poppies? It's only an amateur. Amateur's story (via Wikipedia):

He became interested in photography when his Aunt Mary gave him a copy of "In the Heart of the Sierras" [1] while he was sick as a child. The photographs in the book by George Fiske piqued his interest enough to persuade his parents to vacation in Yosemite National Park in 1916, where he was given a camera as a gift.

[Ansel] Adams disliked the uniformity of the education system and left school in 1915 to educate himself. He originally trained himself as a pianist, but Yosemite and the camera diverted his interest toward photography.

And:

[T]he shadowcatcher Ansel Adams, who believed that his camera was a combination of machine and spirit, wrote in his autobiography about one afternoon that shaped his destiny. He was married in his twenties and still living with his mother and his aunt. The time had come when he had to choose between his two great passions - photography and piano. His wife, Virginia, told him she would support him in whatever he believed to be his true calling, but his mother pleaded in anguish, "Do not give up the piano!" The camera cannot express the human soul!"

Adams paused for a moment, then replied with the confidence of the moment, "Perhaps the camera cannot, but the photographer can." - from Phil Cousineau, The Art of Pilgrimage: The Seeker's Guide to Making Travel Sacred

tags social media web2.0 art citizen journalism journalism blogging business entrepreneurship startups creativity

Fusing the Business of Your Soul with the Soul of Your Business

You have a source inside you, a cool spring that sometimes
stops flowing, frozen
or clogged with silt. Spirit
is the art of making what’s
blocked start moving again. - Rumi

I promised a story on the beyond competition mindset for today, but I've postponed it until tomorrow. Speaking of competition, the extent that one ceases to perceive any 'us' or 'them' is the extent that one ceases to experience competition. Not because your competition is squashed like a little bug, but because when you are rooted in one Presence, then who is the Giver, who is the Receiver? If you think the marketplace is vicious, watch the competition in your own mind.

Begin your spiritual life with the understanding that all conflicts must be settled within your consciousness. - Joel S. Goldsmith

Turns out Dave really was simply busy. Although he says he blew a gasket when he heard the title of my forty day series, explaining that: "But  business has no soul, and that's okay. But trying to put one there only creates confusion, and really, aren't we trying to put one there in order to gain a competitive advantage?" The short answer, yes, for some people. Maybe many people.

I'm writing for those that wish to reconnect with that cool spring again. A wise man once told me I didn't need to go to India to discover myself. He's also the one that told me about The Autobiography of a Yogi - a mind-shattering book where I unveiled another layer of how much I do not know. Yet I witnessed he could not or would not live or embody his spirituality, including within the workplace. He wasn't in integrity with the naive entrepreneurs that often sought his counsel. He traded his soul for the price of that which he acquired.

Do not require a description of the countries towards which you sail. The description does not describe them to you, and tomorrow you will arrive there and know them by inhabiting them. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

This series is for those that do want to live out their integrity, authenticity, and graciousness. What good is it if you are centered, calm and compassionate - but - and it's a big but - only when hiding in a Himalayan cave? Business will bring up all your unresolved shit, pardon the language. (Marriage is an even tougher spiritual practice.)

We cannot choose 'whether' to engage with the world, only how to. - Stephen Bachelor

It's time to re-publish a relevant snippet from We Are All Zen Students, We Are All Businesspeople before we start. It begins here where a reader writes about their contemplation of a new entrepreneurial venture. (This is someone that does not need to work for financial reasons):

It really clicked when I read your post on Parsifal. I have been fascinated with the Parsifal myth since I first read it in Joseph Campbell. Like a lot of people, I was on a bit of a spiritual quest in college and after. I started with metaphysics and worked my way east and back west again. There is  no question that Joseph Campbell's writing meant the most to me.

Maybe Joseph Campbell settled my wanderlust or more likely getting married, having kids, and starting a career led me down a more pragmatic road for the past decade. But in the past couple of days I have gotten introspective again. I forced myself to think of why I really want to start a business. After all, my life is pretty good. [Candid description of a pretty good life follows...] Honestly, I don't want for much. Why do I have the urge to put it all on the line... I know that the urge to do it is real. I know that I have enjoyed working on this idea as much as I have enjoyed any work that I have done before...

My reply:

Ah, perhaps that is it: "my life is pretty good." From what you've said, you realize you don't need to devote your life to an ashram or monastery or meditate in silence in a cave or to travel around the world seeking adventure to embark on the hero's journey or spiritual quest. The journey is inward.

It's too easy in an ashram anyway. The real tests on the quest come via relationships. Only in relationship can you see mirrors of yourself all around you. I can think of two arenas right away that will bring up every piece of baggage, every edge of your Ego, trigger every button and expose each blind spot and more: Marriage and Business. (You've already got the marriage relationship covered.) Yep, business. It's easy to be "calm", "centered", "authentic" and in living in "integrity" safely esconed in a hermitage. But you only test your mettle in relationships where it's NOT as easy to stay true to yourself (or even explore what "true" to your "self" means).

Anyway, perhaps you are drawn to the business as a way of stretching yourself to your full potential. Perhaps business is the context of your Kurukshetra (battlefield of Bhagavad Gita) or your Forest (Grail legend)?

My sense is that if you read this blog that perhaps business is your Kuru, your Forest as well (but the main thread that ties readers together is this sense of adventuring and questing, rather than retreating from the hero(ine)'s journey).

And that's what the forty day series is about, not injecting something that sounds soulful to spiff up our flagging businesses and tune into a hot trend, but rather putting our whole higher self into it, no holds barred.

These Are Not Conversations, These Are Not Relationships

It's very surreal and astonishing that the only two people I've sent a final draft of my essay Marketing: What's Love Got to Do With It? before it was available at the More Space blog are the author and the citation in this post. Doc chimes on the post too:

I am so sick of marketing and marketers.

Me too. Have been for a long time. In fact, that's why we wrote Cluetrain six years ago.

It's even more surreal that what instigated my essay in the first place was the divisiveness and lack of respect and dialogue I witnessed prior to the 2004 U.S. elections. And I saw the very same in the media, in society, and in the blogosphere itself that went far beyond the political. I saw it in dividing my own family:

I struggle to find the spot of land - a little patch of grass swaying in the canyon gusts - across the ever-widening gulf to build a bridge.

Many people won't even have a conversation with me because they obviously know me: because I am in marketing, because I am a blogger, because I'm one of those technocrats, because I am an American, because I was raised by first-generation immigrants, because my last name is Rodriguez, because I'm religious, because I'm not Christian enough, because I sound like green organic granola new-agey, because I sound like a ruthless capitalist, because I am a woman, because I'm young, because I'm old, because because because...you have me pegged. Alas, the ironic thing is that is what far too many marketers are trained to do: Peg people. Peg our motivations. A professor writes:

You, Ms. Rodriguez, appear to be an enemy. I teach philosophy and literature at various schools here in the South, and one of my principal difficulties is instructing young minds to be mindful of people in marketing, for such souls buy and sell the anima and animus of our cultures as if we ourselves were mere commodities... A marketer with integrity though???? Possible?

Dave stopped speaking to me offline. No biggie. I figured he was busy. I really like what he has to say: I'm not big on the conversation meme myself. But his post got me wondering why the silence: Aha, I'm one of them. One of those marketers. In what passes more like an attack than a conversation re: Squidoo in the comment stream at Buzzmachine, Seth Godin himself chimes in: "Not sure why people feel so angry..." (Well, don't you know you know your people - ahem marketers - are scum of the earth?)

I'm not surprised that last election day I quoted Rumi (fuller version via Hip & Zen):

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing & right doing, there is a field. I'll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about. Ideas, language, even the phrase each other, don't make any sense. - Rumi

In the essay I write:

For the first time ever, we now see at least three worldviews, or decision-making frameworks, clashing in the media. [I had to grossly oversimplify in the essay, in truth there are five; but three are predominant in a business context within developed nations.] And even more in the marketplace. The working assumption that everyone holds the same frame of reference used to work just fine—when a single predominant worldview governed business and media.

I used the word clashing on purpose. There's a lot of clashing.

I'm not here to defend marketers or marketing. Nor any mere label. Funny that today Yvonne writes: "Labels slide off of her like melting ice." The truth is I try much harder to do same for others: I don't see anyone's identity as a marketer and another as an anti-marketer.

Anyway, labels don't mean much. Within the label business or marketing, there are those for whom a world of competition is actually not their reality. Tomorrow I'll share a story that exemplies a business that does not subscribe to a winners and losers worldview reality either.

Other posts that instigated the essay are: Beyond Cluetrain Conversation: The We Story; Evangelism is Dead, Long Live Conversationalists; Highest Common Denominator; The Casualties of Ideological Warfare; and Never Vote Straight Party: The Origins of Ideas, Part 2.

Bonus: If you read Jory's essay to the very brilliant end, you'll see she is also singing the same beyond competition tune when an unlikely mentor, Calvin, enters her life.

Ultimately, my essay is on compassion in business. The essay begins with and I'd say is framed by this Peter Drucker quote:

Society needs a return to spiritual values—not to offset the material but to make it fully productive... Mankind needs the return to spiritual values, for it needs compassion. It needs the deep experience that the Thou and the I are one, which all higher religions share.

In addition to Drucker, Eckhart Tolle in The Power of Now perfectly nails my own view:

Compassion is a deep bond between yourself and all creatures. But there are two sides to compassion, two sides to this bond. On the one hand, since you are still here as a physical body, you share the vulnerability and mortality of your physical form with every other human and with every living being. Next time you say, "I have nothing in common with this person," remember that you have a great deal in common: A few years from now - two years or seventy years, it doesn't make a difference - both of you will have become rotting corpses, then piles of dust, then nothing at all. This is a sobering and humbling realization that leaves little room for pride. Is this a negative thought? No, it is a fact. Why close your eyes to it? In that sense, there is total equality between you and every other creature.

One of the most powerful spiritual practices is to meditate deeply on the mortality of physical forms, including your own. This is called: Die before you die. Go into it deeply. Your physical form is dissolving, is no more. Then a moment comes when all mind-forms or thoughts also die. Yet you are still there - the divine presence that you are. Radiant, fully awake. Nothing that was real ever died, only names, forms, and illusions.

The realization of this deathless dimension, your true nature, is the other side of compassion. On a deep feeling-level, you now recognize not only your own immortality but through your own that of every other creature as well. On the level of form, you share mortality and the precariousness of existence. On the level of Being, you share eternal, radiant life. These are the two aspects of compassion. In compassion, the seemingly opposite feelings of sadness and joy merge into one and become transmuted into a deep inner peace...

True compassion, as I have just described it, is as yet rare. To have deep empathy for the suffering of another being certainly requires a high degree of consciousness but represents only one side of compassion. It is not complete. True compassion goes beyond empathy or sympathy. It does not happen until sadness merges with joy, the joy of Being beyond form, the joy of eternal life.

p.s.  Sometimes you stay: 'You're running away. You don't have the guts to stay and change it.' This post is about A.G. Lafley, the Chairman and CEO of Proctor & Gamble, nearly leaving P&G twenty years ago. I nearly left business and technology three to four years ago myself.

tags social media cluetrain marketing business spirituality

The Doing It Ourselves Culture

"We were four miles from the beach at a neighbor's brick house. It was clear out, no breeze, nothing. Then all of a sudden the water came down the street like someone was dumping a big bucket. Thirteen-foot-high tidal waves were coming straight at us."

It was then that Donnelly let out her first scream.

Griffin looked outside the window for the highest ground he could see.

"We aimed way over here to get to a house over there," Donnelly said while pointing in two different directions. I thank God that that house was sturdy. We always wanted to see that big house.

"We held on to the porch post," she remembered. "We held onto it for more than five hours."

A story straight out of the December 26, 2004 chronicles. Or so eerily familiar for one who first-hand experienced the tsunami exactly nine months ago today.

But it's actually a Katrina survivor story.

I'm standing outside in the spectacular crisp fall day in front of the Swedish American Hall yesterday somewhere near where the the Mission and the Castro areas blur in San Fran, the edge of think for yourself independent streak lifestyles. I'm continuing my conversation with Niti Bhan who has walked over with me to the site of Webzine 2005, the epitome of DIY culture (DIY, btw, is Do-It-Yourself). It's not ususual to encounter Webzine attendees have pulled up their own sleeves to help with Katrina, whether that's to uncover the truth and set up computer and communication networks or to distribute and coordinate local shelter resources.

I'm telling Niti one of my first thoughts when the eminent danger of the tsunami was over and I'm sitting surreally at a stunning clifftop hotel restaurant with my injured leg sprawled on a white patio chair waiting for what was next was (and no idea what that would be):  "I realized I'm in a foreign country injured - with no money, no ID. So I'm screwed. No one will help me without money." (This is a few hours after the tsunami when information was non-existent.)

Yup, no one will help me without payment was my conditioned response. The post-apolcalyptic scenes in NOLA would jibe with this instinctual "I'm on my own. It's now every man or woman out for themself now." We may watch out for our own family unit, but our mind doesn't register the elderly black woman living alone in the corner house.

It was only in talking with Niti that I realized this thinking is deeply systemic as she points out. And I think Dave Rogers hinted at the same thing with respect to consumer culture. The McGyver mindset ("There's nothing you can't do if you have a Swiss Army Knife, a roll of duct tape, and your wits") might be prevalent today if it weren't for The Gap and MTV. The community-bound intrinsicly-motivated pioneer spirit that founded America wasn't going to cut it for the industrial age's mass sale of consumer goods.  Over time, we've learned to rely on keeping up with what the Joneses are wearing and doing, our insurance premiums, our social security, our paychecks, our 401Ks and our expectations and purchases of a guaranteed safety net and the illusion of control.

Through all her agony, a wishful Donnelly continued to believe that someone was going to save her...

"I was imagining FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) coming up in military trucks for survivors," Donnelly said. "I was expecting people to pick us up." - "Katrina: A Lifetime Ago", Greenville, Mich. The Daily News

There is no 911 equivalent in most parts of the world. And there is no pension. Niti witnessed a neighbor family struck in an auto accident in Delhi, India and she grabs them into her car and rushed them to the hospital. "There's no ambulance coming," she says, "and if the police come they're just as likely to rob you as help."

A European woman whom speaks English and a little Thai swooped down to the Ko Phi Phi beach I'm at with a first aid kit about 45 minutes after the tsunami. She leads the 20 or so dazed tourists up the hill to the scenic clifftop restaurant to get us high and out of an impending rumored second wave. Later she signals a small boat with a distress flag to fetch the injured. She leads us down the torturingly steep stairs towards getting us to a hospital on the mainland.

She is no official. Simply a private citizen with her wits about her making things happen, Doing It Herself.

Even if resiliency and resourcefulness sometimes foisted on you rather than a choice -- as you can ask programmers who have lost jobs to Asia or entrepreneurs wiped out by the dot-com crash can attest -- living spontaneously, grounded in the midst of mystery, and from the inside-out is an emerging trend. And as we mature individually and societally, we realize self-actualization ("What must I do?") doesn't come in a sixteen-ounce convenient package but it's something we ultimately face and create for ourselves.

"I define the Age of Transcendence as an era in which mainstream culture shifts from its traditional primarily objective, materialistic and rational foundations to postmodern subjective, metaphysical, and intuitive foundations." - David Wolfe, author of Ageless Marketing in "Transcending our Primordial Roots"

From consumer-generated media, the rise of amateur photographers, blogging, MAKE magazine, open source software where you can peek behind the hood and tweak and contribute, bootstrapping entrepreneurs bypassing VCs, free agents, the rise in experiential spirituality (rather than mediated by middlemen) from the charismatic gospel movements to meditating at a Zen monastery to the Emergent Church movement, we are surrounded by evidence of the DIY age. As Joi Ito says: "Good amateurs are better than crappy professionals."

I don't know about you but I'm making it all up as I go. And I'm finding plenty of evidence of that I'm not alone. As WebZine 2005 wrapped up, Maheesh Jain, shared that the popular CafePress website was assembled in 30 days flat. They figured they'd focus and sell T-shirts, mugs, and mousepads at first. When orders started to pour in, that's when they scrambled to find out how to actually manufacture the stuff. "We went to a mall kiosk," confesses co-founder Maheesh, "and asked a guy selling these kinds of wares for advice." They were working out of a garage cranking out products for three months before they had a real office. A grand experiment through and through.

If you think this is seat-of-the-pants story is atypical, you've not met many entrepreneurs of late. Or many DIYers.

We have gumption and guts and a reservoir of strength beyond that that which we know. Our mettle was rarely tested in the consumer age. We bought into the illusion of safety - but heroes and heroines don't get forged there. (And we're all heros and heroines of our own lives - check out Joseph Campbell and Maureen Murdock.)

The DIYers are heeding their call.

But doing it yourself is only scratching the surface. My dependence of others after my near-bankruptcy and after the tsunami reinforced how interdependent we truly are, and that was an unexpected blessing. In the midst of chaos, compassion reigned. One of the lessons that stuck for me in the tsunami was this amazing idea of we're in this together, and we're working together.

So I'm just as interested in DIO - doing it ourselves. Not going it entirely solo.

This isn't my story below, but it is so typical of what I learned from the tsunami; it's good to hear this one coming out of Katrina rather than the more publicized anarchic horror tales:

[Evacuees Janet] Donnelly and [her son Tom] Griffin were both exhausted and frustrated when fate intervened on their behalf.

By coincidence, Griffin met one of his co-workers from the local Domino's Pizza. The man was loading vehicles and working despite the tragedy surrounding him.

The co-worker told Griffin to get his mother. He then loaded up the pair and took them 12 miles away to a huge house belonging to Domino's franchise owner Glenn Mueller, which had withstood Katrina's wrath.

Mueller not only owned the local Domino's store, but more than 180 others throughout the Deep South. He is Domino's largest franchise owner in the southern United States.

"We do have a fortunate story," said Griffin, finally showing shades of a smile. "This man (Mueller) opened up his home to us. He was paying his employees. They were giving pizza to police officers."

Mueller even transformed his pizza training center in Gulfport, Miss., into a shelter for workers and their families.

So like hundreds of other Domino's employees, Griffin went to work. The assistant manager and hopeful store manager led a crew of employees making pizza. The only difference from their usual routine was that these pizzas were for anything but a festive atmosphere.

"These guys (Domino's corporate officials) lost a lot and they still helped," Griffin said. "It's going to be hard for me to find another job. Mueller told his workers that no matter where you go, you would always have a job to work at. He even gave me his cell phone" number.

Donnelly and Griffin stayed at the Mueller home for four days caring for the thousands of new refugees. - The Daily News (serving Greenville, Belding and Montcalm County, Michigan), "Katrina: A Lifetime Ago", September 26, 2005

Bonus: Niti talks about being grounded in ambiguity and uncertainty in her Living in Liminality series parts 1, 2, and 3:

From the Greek limnos, meaning "threshold," liminality describes an in-between time when what was, is no longer, and what will be, is not yet. It is a time rich with ambiguity, uncertainty, and the possibility of creative fomentation.

p.s. That's my handmade badge from Webzine. We cut and paste from magazines, brochures, whatever was available to create our unique calling card. It's probably the only badge I might keep a little while longer than the event itself.