Gavin Baker

I have this quote (picture above) by Bruce Nussbaum on my wall. I put it up about a year and a half ago and I still believe it’s true. This isn’t a post on a radical new idea, but rather recalling it as a reminder. Here’s the quote:

Social media is upending relationships between customers and corporations, brand owners and brand creators, consumers and producers, centralized authority and anarchistic periphery and-pay attention here-designers and their audiences. People want to design their own experiences, or at least have a big voice in it. With Web 2.0 technology and blogs, they get that voice. People are increasingly designing their own shoes and clothes, their own screen pages, their own interfaces, their own homes. And when they’re not, they want designers and managers to really understand what they have to say. Nike is changing the way it designs and manufactures because of social networking. So are dozens of other companies. Yes, we will always have our brilliant geniuses who intuit their audiences and create wonderful experiences for them. Ive and Jobs at Apple. Bang & Olufsen and its incredible designers and designs. But even Apple is getting hit very hard on the sustainability issue because it isn’t listening to its social networks. Brands have ideologies. They stand for things. People believe in those things. When the culture of Apples’ customers changes, as it is happening today, it has to move with it. You, as designers, can’t just do ethnology anymore. You have to join with those you’re observing to be in their culture and create with them.

The sections I’ve highlighted above and will discuss below are:

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I was fortunate to attend the Cincinnati area AMA lunch today, where Kip Knight, Vice President – Marketing of eBay spoke about “using the power of all of us to build your business” where he outlined his thoughts on the trending of business and marketing of companies moving into an open sourcing and collaboration model and away from the command and control model so many companies are familiar with.

Kip covered ground quickly, and interspersed his big ideas with humor to keep it light. As a result I left with a couple pages of notes. While Kip didn’t plant to many new ideas in my head, he proved a great review of blogs and articles I’ve read in the past few months. It’s also great to see yet another industry leader such as eBay to embrace these ideas.

You can view my full notes here (pdf download), but I thought I’d share a couple things he mentioned which I found very helpful and interesting.

First, Kip talked about a couple methods/programs they use to monitor the pulse of the eBay community.

* Voices – They fly in 20 users (sellers/buyers) each month and senior management with other key employees sit and talk with these users. Learning what they like about the site, what they don’t like, features they’d find helpful, etc. Once these users visit they become part of the Voices community and can be called in the future to answer questions and provide opinions on new ideas.
* Visits – This method takes 3 ebay employees to visit site users in their homes and watch them sell/buy on eBay. One employee asks questions, another takes notes, and the last video tapes.
* Views – Once a quarter, they conducts topical focus groups around the country on topics that are important to the company and it’s user base. i.e. Topic for Q2 2008 is safety

Secondly, he mentioned a couple stats I found very intriguing, the first of which is that 40% of the things sold on eBay are sold/listed via their API. 40%! That’s huge!

He also mentioned Wikipedia and how it’s huge user base allows for it to have a minimal staff of 5 full time employees, yet it is very agile in maintaining it’s product (obscenities last online for 1.7 minutes). It blows my mind that they are that quick in removing information that doesn’t conform to their community rules.

His talk sparked quite a few questions and ideas that require a bit more development, but I’ll follow up with additional posts later as those thoughts tie in for me, especially how they work with Abunga.

He also endorsed a book that I’m currently reading which is “Ultimate Question: For Unlocking the Door to Good Profits and True Growth” by Frederick F. Reichheld. The book focuses on the use of what is called the Net Promoter Score, boiling down to the question – would you recommend us to a friend? Pretty simple question, but very pertinent.

Have a great Easter.

One of the first sessions at SoCon07 we talked about Web 2.0. Basically the idea that the web becomes dynamic and changes with use. One of the comments was “they get smarter with use” This stirred a thought, I’ve mentioned the TED conference before and one of my favorite TEDTalks is by a word-artist, Rives. Check out the video. He puts an interesting spin on “the internet.” Watch it once, twice, be changed.

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It’s got a few lines that I find funny, but one that I find more interesting is “we can interfere with the interface”

WE CAN INTERFERE WITH THE INTERFACE

do you?
I know I haven’t, but can I, you bet.
Will I? I’ll try.

Going back to the above comment, they get smarter, they get EASIER with use. So Web 2.0 or 3.0 of 4.0 is not that we can do more interactive graphics or total flash takeover, but that the web becomes a connector of, dare I say it, everyone? Moving beyond the screen, what if we can take this connectivity, this interaction, this smarter with use web, and create a smarter with use world. Remember, “we can interfere with the interface. It’s not if you can, but do you?”

Last night I attended my first new media/marketing event and it started off with a bang. We met for dinner at Veni Vidi Vici, in Atlanta, GA which was a great venue. Hosted by Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson of crayon, and well known for their podcast For Immediate Release, the word was spread via their blogs/podcasts. I personally first learned of the event from Shel’s blog. I came down from Knoxville, and it was worth it. Amazingly enough, I was not the only person who traveled a distance to the event. Professor Robert French came down from Auburn with two students, Ashley Imsand and Wes Gossett.

It was a night of greats: great food, great conversation and great wine. Conversation ranged from the impact of social media, to podcasting techniques/practices, and lastly some chatter about conference talk. Both un-conferences such as the one I am attending this weekend SoCon07, or BlogOrlando, Blog Savannah. As well as other conferences such as TED (technology, entertainment and design) [ps. I love the TEDTalks, I get inspiration daily from these great thinkers.] Also the DEMO conference, which I am not as familiar with but hope to be.

I found out about a new startup that provides a turnkey social media platform. ThePort. Sounds like a pretty interesting idea, personally I think it’s value isn’t providing the service, because eventually that will become a commodity, but selling companies on the platform, and the service.

Hicham has an interesting software solution that creates a process out of parts of marketing, so that the software helps faciliate the management of materials and information thus freeing the manager up to think, and engage in creative and strategic planning. Pretty novel.

The attendees:

Ashley Imsand of Auburn University

Wes Gossett of Auburn University

Robert French of Auburn University

Shel Holtz of crayon

Neville Hobson of crayon

Hicham Bouani of GlobalProjex and Bouje Publishing

Jacqui Chew of ThePort

John Patton of ThePort

Neville’s posted a picture here

It was a great meet and great, and I highly recommend your attendance any similar event. Personally I was struck that blogs, forums, etc are mediums of communication. They convey information, or messages, but ultimately people are hoping to connect. In this case we met in person, although it was entirely planned on a blog(s). It will be interesting to see how this plays out in Web 2.0, as people want to take connection to a new level.

Great event!