"Let’s say that change is neither good nor bad. It simply is. It can be treated with terror or joy — a tantrum that says, ‘I want it the way it was,’ or a dance that says, ‘Look — something new.’ … I was in California. Everything is new, and it’s clean. The people are filled with hope. New York City is in decay. But Madison Square Garden — it’s the beginning of a new city on a hill."
— Don Draper from Mad Men. Part of a longer TrueHoop piece on the original opposition to create MSG. “Four decades later, it’s ironic that the building that was the bête noire of architectural preservationists has become the defining symbol of basketball preservationists — a receptacle for the sort of sentimentalism that fueled the opposition to its creation.” File under: Change, embrace it.
"The only way is to enjoy your life. Even though you are practicing zazen, counting your breath like a snail, you can enjoy your life, perhaps even more than taking a trip to the moon. That is why we practice zazen. The most important thing is to be able to enjoy your life without being fooled by things."
— Shunryu Suzuki, from Not Always So, an inquiry into the depths of Zen, his companion volume to Zen Mind Beginner’s Mind. He literally meant “taking a trip to the moon”, giving the speech on July 20, 1969, the day Apollo 11 made headlines by landing on the moon.
social media for good: how (not) to run a twitter campaign

A twitter campaign is one of the most effective viral marketing tools available; getting a trending topic can be the easiest and quickest way to get a message seen by millions of users. With that in mind, I wanted to run a simple experiment to see what the process of establishing and executing a viral twitter campaign was like. Though the campaign wasn’t nearly as successful as I would have liked, my methodology and results taught me a few interesting things about the makeup of viral-ity on twitter that are good to know moving forward when trying to promote campaigns for social causes.

Here’s what I did:

Step 1- picked a cause or topic to get people to support. As a big basketball fan and someone who interacts with members of the Lakers community on Twitter, I figured the current topic of Lamar Odom’s contract extension (a cause of much chagrin and angst among laker fans) would be an interesting subject. Could I get people to rally around the idea of swaying @TheRealLamarOdom to stay with the Lakers through sheer force of numbers on Twitter?

Step 2- created a content site that would ostensibly serve as the campaign hub. It took me about 15 minutes to create a simple Tumblr with some videos, relevant links to recent articles, and a Twitter widget pulling in posts about Odom. My intent was to promote the hashtag #keeplamar, and pull in those posts as a feed, but till that point I used “Lamar Odom” as the search term. Looking back, this might have been my key mistake— using a site that basically aggregates content as the “hub” of the campaign. Perhaps I would have better been served making my own content, or maybe even sticking to tweets as the primary message medium.

KeepLamar

Choosing as I did, I went with bit.ly to shorten my link. It’s an amazing tracking tool, and as feeble as my stats were, this screenshot gives you a good idea of the power it has in tracking links and trends by the minute.

Step 3- sent out a few tweets promoting the hashtag, making sure to interact with popular community members. I only have about 280 followers, which I’m assuming is a grab-bag mix of technology enthusiasts, basketball fans, and people I know in real life (mostly students). As a result, the success of my campaign hinged on connecting with influential twitterers in my field and getting them to rally support among their followers. I utterly failed in this step. My efforts to contact 2 of the more influential community members were as follows-

- One of them is the ‘unofficial’ Lakers twitter account with more than 20,000 followers. A DM to promote the movement was met with a negative reply saying he didn’t want to get involved.

- The other is a Lakers blogger with X followers, interacting with many Lakers fans as well. Similarly, he didn’t want to support the campaign, simply because he thought it was pointless- reports seemed to indicate that a resolution was immediately impending. Of course, even a week later, the situation was still ongoing with tons of speculation, but no substantive action from the public- just content to wait for the results of the ongoing private negotiations. This is an important point discussed later.

Twitter DM's

Due to the makeup of my follower group, failing to garner support from these individuals meant that my campaign simply didn’t have legs. I got a few feeble retweets from some friends on twitter, but that’s about it- no mention of the hashtag outside of my immediate follower network, let alone a mass movement.

Thoughts/Obstacles

  • One of the biggest hurdles to overcome is simple inertia- the lack of action, not due to apathy, but because people simply feel that they won’t make a difference to the outcome. as social media progressively spreads in reach and influence, I think this problem will diminish as more individuals see real examples of their voices being heard. Efforts like Lend me some sugar, that aim to influence corporations’ purchasing decisions by consumer voting, will help in this regard. [While my cause was obviously not that important, making apathy from the general public understandable, I was hoping to at least generate support among Lakers fans, who regard Odom as one of their favorite players.]
  • Reaching outside of your immediate network. As I found out, it’s difficult to amplify your voice when you don’t have a huge first degree network. I imagine it’s tough for individuals to do this unless they have a very focused theme to their twitter stream, serving as a voice for an entire community of people passionate about a specific topic. If that’s not feasible, it’s key to engage individuals who fit this profile to promote your cause.
  • Making your cause understandable and easy to participate in. In retrospect, I might have been better served focusing my efforts on marketing my message, making it more engaging for people to participate in. It’s important to align your interests with those of the individuals you’re hoping to garner support from; give them a chance to show how funny/smart/caustically witty they are while at the same time voicing support for something they care about.


What’s the Point?

So why does this all even remotely matter? The recent evolution of the web has demonstrated the power of motivated individuals or groups in the face of traditionally omnipotent policymakers, whether governments or corporations. As these tools get more refined and more people realize the power they hold, it’ll be easier to amplify an important message. In light of this, one of the more important facets of this new mode of interaction is that it’s all voluntary; you don’t have to listen to the loudspeakers or participate if you don’t want to- just unfollow someone. You’re only as effective as the level of engagement you show with those around you. I imagine seeing more platforms specifically dedicated to the promotion of large-scale movements that utilize the power of real-time networks. These social media sites hold a lot of promise of “individual empowerment” and the like; it’ll be fun to see how they live up to the hype.

kortina: msg: Stanley Kubrick on a Life worth Living found this great advice via Kortina who found it via Afrremble Quotes who didnt provide a source so I went to the Google which brought me to WikiQuotes which pointed me to this excerpt in Google Books which contains the Playboy interview Eric Nordern had with Kubrick in 1968.

kortina:

msg:

Stanley Kubrick on a Life worth Living

found this great advice via Kortina who found it via Afrremble Quotes who didnt provide a source so I went to the Google which brought me to WikiQuotes which pointed me to this excerpt in Google Books which contains the Playboy interview Eric Nordern had with Kubrick in 1968.

    "

    Just as Chinese writing is at least one step closer to nature than ours, so the ancient philosophy of the Tao is of a skillful and intelligent following of the course, current, and grain of natural phenomena— seeing human life as an integral feature of the world process, and not as something alien and opposed to it. Looking at this philosophy with the needs and problems of modern civilization in mind, it suggests an attitude to the world which must underlie all our efforts towards an ecological technology. For the development of such a technology is not just a matter of the techniques themselves, but of the psychological attitude of the technician.

    Hitherto, Western science has stressed the attitude of objectivity— a cold, calculating, and detached attitude through which it appears that natural phenomena, including the human organism, are nothing but mechanisms. But, as the world itself implies, a universe of mere objects is objectionable. We feel justified in exploiting it ruthlessly, but now we are belatedly realizing that the ill-treatment of the environment is damage to ourselves— for the simple reason that subject and object cannot be separated, and that we and our surroundings are the process of a unified field, which is what the Chinese call Tao. In the long run, we simply have no other alternative than to work along with this process by attitudes and methods which could be as effective technically as judo, the “gentle Tao,” is effective athletically. As human beings have to make the gamble of trusting one another in order to have any kind of workable community, we must also take the risk of trimming our sails to the winds of nature. For our “selves” are inseparable from this kind of universe, and there is nowhere else to be.

    "
    — Perhaps a bit long as a quote, but this page from Alan Watts’ Tao: The Watercourse Way was too good not to put up
    [Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

    West Eats Meat- off the pretty sublime Ravi Shankar In Celebration album

    "The factor most in Cowen’s favor is the wind at the backs of all techno-optimists like his brethren Clay Shirky and Don Tapscott: the forward momentum of technological development. You cannot turn back the clock. It is impossible to envision a future where there is less information and fewer people on social networks. It is very possible to envision increasing abundance along with better filters to manage it. The most constructive contributions to the debate, then, heed Moore’s Law in the broadest sense and offer specific suggestions for how to harness the change for the better."
    — Ben Casnocha’s review of Create Your Own Economy, a defense of internet information culture by Tyler Cown
    bored with a pencil and paper- “Brandon Jennings” or “The Truth is Never Pretty”

    bored with a pencil and paper- “Brandon Jennings” or “The Truth is Never Pretty”

    “AYURVEDA’S TIPS FOR BETTER HEALTH (SINCE 1898)”

    “AYURVEDA’S TIPS FOR BETTER HEALTH (SINCE 1898)”

    "A world which increasingly consists of destinations without journeys between them, a world which values only “getting somewhere” as fast as possible, becomes a world without substance. One can get anywhere and everywhere, and yet the more this is possible, the less is anywhere and everywhere worth getting to. For points of arrival are too abstract, too Euclidean to be enjoyed, and it is all very much like eating the precise ends of a banana without getting what lies in between. The point, therefore, of arts is the doing of them rather than the accomplishments. But, more than this, the real joy of them lies in what turns up unintentionally in the course of practice, just as the joy of travel is not nearly so much in getting where one wants to go as in the unsought surprises which occur on the journey."
    — Watts, Way of Zen
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    Themed by: Hunson