Media Driving with Jay Moonah - communications and marketing podcast and blog

(I had originally planned to write this as a direct email to Chris Brogan & Julien Smith, the authors of Trust Agents. However, in the spirit of their book and in hopes of fostering some good discussion around it here, I thought I’d make this the first of a few open letters on the blog.)

Dear Chris & Julien,

So first of all, congratulations on the book! It’s particularly cool for me, as someone who was there when you guys met at Podcamp Boston 2006 and when (to the best of my knowledge) you first started talking together about trust economies at Podcamp Toronto 2007, to see this come to fruition. I know how hard you guys have worked on it, and knowing you both I know it’s just the next in a line of amazing things the world can expect to see from both of you over the next, oh, 50-60 years. Way to go.

So I’m a whole 19 pages in, and I’ve already got a bunch of comments. You guys know I love you, but you also know me well enough to know I’m not going to kiss your asses, so I’m going to include what I love and what I have problems with so far, and I do hope you’ll take it in the spirit in which it’s intended.

What I love so far:

First of all, the whole idea of the book is great. It’s not a theory book, it’s saying hey, here are things you can really do. For example, I love the “Build a Listening Station” piece on pages 11 and 12. While it’s relatively obvious stuff for those of us who have been doing this for a while, it’s stated so clearly and simply that it should be understood by anyone reading. I can see folks everywhere putting down the book and going to their computer to set up their listening station. Very cool. I’m looking forward to more of these kind of things throughout the book.

Also, I love the Pistone/Brasco & Conway/Kubrick stories you use to start off the book. One thing I love about both of those stories is that the two protagonists kind of make up a ying-yang, with elements of good and bad in both. Pistone is a good guy, but you get the sense that as Brasco he had to get in close touch with his dark side in a way that almost certainly left him conflicted at times. Conway, on the other hand, is a classic con-man, clearly in it for himself and yet at some level you admire his audacity and wit. I hope that’s a theme that re-occurs in the book — to many business-y books, I find, fall down in their depiction of life and work as black and white.

Things I’m not hot on so far:

Okay, you guys know I’m a McLuhan fan and so I have to pick on you a bit for your use of McLuhan (although I’ll try my best not to pull a Woody Allen on you.) First of all, the first paragraph on page 18:

We all know what the word media means, but in his 1964 book, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (from which comes the famous slogan, “The medium is the message”), author Marshall McLuhan describes a medium as any extension of the human body. We like to think of media in the same way.

Okay… there a few problems I have with this. First of all, your contention that “we all know what the word media means” I completely take issue with. Frankly, I believe most people absolutely do not know what the term media means, and tend to use it to mean “mass media” a.k.a. “the media.” Media are, simply, different means by which we communicate. But people also forget that ‘media’ is the plural of ‘medium.’ So, when you go on to say “we like to think of media in the same way (as a medium)” it’s like saying “we like to think cars in the same way as a car.” What?!?

I think (maybe) what you mean is “we like to think of modern social media as being like the electronic and non-electronic media that existed in McLuhan’s day,” except then you immediately undercut this point by pointing out how Facebook and Twitter are different than traditional mass media forms, in that they extend human relationships. While the last point here makes some sense and I think actually is your real point, as I’m reading this I’m thinking invoking McLuhan wasn’t really necessary to make this point, and in fact confuses it, at least for me. Or if I’m totally out to lunch on this, please feel free to set me straight!

The other thing that bugged me was the “Trust Agent’s Version of a Resume or CV” on page 16. I’m frankly a bit sick of the “you don’t need a resume” mantra that seems insentient in social media. First of all, it’s disingenuous. Sure, I’ve also got my last couple of jobs without initially showing a resume, but in many cases I’ve had to present one after the fact for HR purposes — many companies like to have these things on file in case questions ever do arise about your qualifications. This is particularly true in the public sector and in nonprofit organizations that are supported by public money. You don’t want to be the sidebar in a story in the New York Times about shady hiring practices, do you?

Also, an extremely important point in times of economic uncertainty is that there is no such thing as job security. You may have got your last five jobs because of your killer blog, but when your company goes bankrupt and you’re out on the street, and a friend says “hey our company is hiring, send me your CV” and you say “I don’t have one, but here’s my blog address…” well, good luck I guess.

That’s it for now guys, I’m sure I’ll have more stuff to say as I go along. Talk to you soon!

Cheers,
- J.

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Sep

Episode #81 – Information, Openness and the Marketplace

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Expanding on ideas about linked data, some thoughts about standards and data portability as a way of ensuring healthy competition.

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Sep

Episode #80 – The Promise of Structured Data

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Thinking about the ways a web of data changes the way we interact with information.

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Sep

Episode #79 – Managing Information vs. Encouraging Conversation

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Some thoughts on finding the balance between traditional “command-and-control” as opposed to more participatory approaches to managing organizations and events.

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Aug

Episode #78 – Personal Space and the Digital Native

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Do those of us who didn’t grow up with digital technology have the right to impose our ideas of what is and isn’t appropriate behaviour in the digital world on the natives of that world?

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