Logic+Emotion

iPhone Art Vol. 1

So I've got a bit of a new hobby on my hands. When apps for the iPhone made their way unto the market, one of the first applications I downloaded was Sketches, a simple drawing program that lets you paint with your finger. You can't really control it all that much—and that's what I like about it. It forces you into the messy. Quite the opposite from my rather sanitary visuals. So here's the first set. I like to do these in my downtime or whenever the inspiration strikes. Since they are the exact size of the iPhone screen, you can download them from Flickr and make one your background if you like.

Walls of Separation

Today as I watched a video of Peter Arnell describe the rationale behind Tropicana's rejected package design, I had a bit of an epiphany. Many companies, brands and organizations are inadvertently building walls between themselves and their customers. It's unintentional, happened over time—but ultimately in this age of empowerment, customers feel more connected to each other than they do to your business or brand. Maybe it's always been this way—but it seems to me that it's getting worse, not better. How else can you explain things like this?  Somehow, some (not all) brands seem to be increasingly "out of touch" with their own customers. Here's some food for thought around what I think might be some of the walls that are separating customers from your business.

Legal Mumbo Jumbo
Most large organizations have dealt with lawsuits and ugly legal situations, so understandably they've put large legal teams in place for their own safety. This is a smart business practice. But it also has a side effect. When legal restrictions prevent you from talking openly and honestly with your customers, there is bound to be a disconnect somewhere. In a recent conversation with Ford's Scott Monty, he said "somewhere along the way, we forgot how to talk to each other". So while companies have to protect themselves, I'm wondering if there are opportunities to take a second look at this barrier. Can it be better?

Profit At All Cost
As cliche as it sounds, if selling "stuff" to "consumers" is all your business cares about—I have to conclude that it will eventually become a barrier. I believe that this economy is pushing us toward a "post consumer era" (more on that later). Which means that if your business is only in the business of making money and everything else comes second, you'll be in trouble with consumers who are examining what they really need to be happy. Profit at all cost can become a barrier especially in this down economy because as people look deeper into themselves, it'll seem odd that all you want to do is sell to them.

Brand Sorcery
I believe in the power of brands. I also believe in "brand sorcerers". These are the folks who invent emotion and meaning around your brand that is completely out of touch with how your customers feel about it. Brand sorcery creates hype and applies purpose to every nuance it touches around your brand or the "re-branding" of it. It's not based on any good research or instinct. Often times it's based in personal preference and self preservation. That said, good brand efforts can do the exact opposite and remove barriers. Pick your brand partners carefully—enough missteps here can alienate customers.

ROI Infatuation
In this economy, ROI is king and it's understandable. I can't stress that enough. But infatuation with it also kills risk taking which means that you could be in a perpetual cycle of risk aversion to the point of losing the spark that started your business in the first place. Your customers may be passionate—they could be willing to support you. But barriers can rise up if you never take chances with them and only focus on the desire to see a monetary "return" on all of your initiatives.

Ivory Tower Syndrome
This one is a biggie. If your business has become so inward looking as to forget about where your customers spend their time, then you may never be able to relate to them again. Ivory Tower Syndrome means you've forgotten how your customers live, what they do with their friends and families and what they value, Or worse, you've created artificial representations and don't send your employees out to experience it first hand. This can become the ultimate barrier often formed as a result of others.

Tone Deafness
If you've lost the ability to connect and empathize with your customers, then you've become tone deaf. This means you can look at the data, the demographics and the numbers but never really understand, relate or "get" them in any meaningful way. So it's natural that your preference of communication will be one way vs. a dialogue. It's easier to maintain. Tone deafness becomes a barrier when you can see your customers, but can't figure out how to touch them anymore.

Corporate Disconnect
Your customers have a culture, your company has a corporate culture. Sometimes they are aligned like in the case of Harley-Davidson who understands that people who park cars at there HQ need to do so in the back lot. The front is reserved for bikers—as it should be. Corporate disconnect means that the culture if your company has become incompatible with the culture of your customers. Once this happens, yet another barrier is formed.

So off the top of my head—at a gut level I'm thinking some of these things could be challenges. What are your thoughts? How can we do better? How can the "walls of separation" (if the indeed exist) be torn down?

Thinking Visually, The Movie

Watch Thinking Visually, David Armano, Critical Mass  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

OK, so it's not "the movie" but above is a video from my talk the the Motion Graphics Festival a few months ago. To be honest with you, I'm just so pleased that I had the opportunity to talk about something besides social networking, user experience or brands. I firmly believe that thinking and communicating visually will be an increasingly important skill for all of us as we navigate through complex times. The talk was outlined as follows:

Effective communication is everyone’s job—whether you are trying to sell in a concept or convince a client. Visual Thinking can help us take in complex information and synthesize it into something meaningful. In an increasingly fragmented and cluttered world, simple imagery, metaphors and mindmaps can get people to understand the abstract and make your ideas tangible. Find out why thinking visually may be one of the most sought after abilities of the 21st century.

Hope you find it helpful.

Re-Thinking The Focus Group: Tropicana Design Flops

A while back, I wrote a white paper called "The Collective Is The Focus Group". A version of it was printed in BusinessWeek as well. The general point? Consumers can get feedback to any brand in real time—networks amplify what they have to say and sentiment spreads at light speed. Companies need now have to listen, learn, and adapt at all phases of an initiative.

So today as I'm flipping through the New York Times, I come a across an article describing how a micro-groundswell began against Tropicana's package re-design. As it turns out, Tropicana consumers not only care about it—their most loyal consumers do.

"It was not the volume of the outcries that led to the corporate change of heart, Mr. Campbell said, because “it was a fraction of a percent of the people who buy the product.”

Rather, the criticism is being heeded because it came, Mr. Campbell said in a telephone interview on Friday, from some of “our most loyal consumers.”

The article spcifies that most feedback came in through fairly traditional means including e-mail and phonecalls—but one specific thought in the article caught my attention:

"Twitter is the ultimate focus group,” Mr. Shankman said. “I can post something and in a minute get feedback from 700 people around the world, giving me their real opinions.”

What I think is worth calling out here is that hindsight is always 20/20 and you shouldn't confuse consumer/user input with doing exactly what people tell you to do. If Tropicana had a problem in packaging, they are ultimately the ones who need to solve it. But the consumer reaction tells us that there may not have been a problem in the first place. Forget Twitter, what if Tropicana scrapped focus groups for something that could give them access to people who like the ones who sent e-mail were super loyal? What if they could iterate designs without ever having to go to production? Or what if they simply found out sooner that their opportunities lay not in package design, but elsewhere? Could their consumers outside of focus groups have helped them figure it out sooner, better? Perhaps the same ones that called and wrote e-mails.

One thing I've learned from blogging is that I always have to make the final call when designing a visual or putting out rough ideas. But the feedback I get here and across other networks is critical to my process. It's not really about focus groups any more. It's the insights you get from continual feedback. It's iterative development, input and cycles—whether it's for your product or the way you market it.

Listen, learn, adapt—repeat as needed. If I were a brand manager at Tropicana, I'd seize on the insight that there are people out there who actually care about the brand. There might be an opportunity to engage those same people who revolted against the re-design.

People, Places + Events

Just a quick update of places I'll be either speaking at or attending. March is going to be an exceptionally busy month! If you plan on attending any of these events or just happen to be in town, please seek me out and we can try to meet.

3/09/09 // New York
Parsons "At The Edge" Innovation Lecture Series
I'll be joining forces with BusinessWeek's Bruce Nussbaum, giving a talk to his innovation class at Parsons School of Design.


3/14-17th // Austin
South By Southwest Interactive (SXSW)
I am participating in several panels and events at SXSW. You can find me at the following:

3/14  6:30-7:30 PM Friendship is Dead with Russ Unger (Salon)

3/15 Cogaoke (Event—throw me a vote if you like this blog!)

3/16 All Hat, No Cattle (Event)
I'm co-hosting this event with Dell's Richard Binhammer (RichardatDell)

3/17 Social Media For Social Good (Panel/Event)
On this panel I'll be discussing how we can use the social Web for good things, citing our experience raising nearly 17k for Daniela and her family. Panelists include Scott Goodstein, Beth Kanter, Stacey Monk, James Young and Randy Zuckerberg. The panel will be moderated by Jeff Pulver and Tikva Morowati.

3/18 Mashable Party

I'll be teaming up with Scott Henderson and Beth Kanter on project to help some folks out. More information to come on that later.

3/30-31 // Paris
Marketing 2.0
I will be talking about Micro-Interactions alongside folks like Scott Monty of Ford, Martina Zavagno of Nike, Paula Berg of Southwest Airlines and Conny Kalcher of Lego.

4/27 // Minneapolis
Future of Advertising Series
I still have no idea what I'll be talking about at the College of Art and Design. Got any suggestions?

Battle of the Brands

Earlier this year I gave a talk on something I believe is an emerging trend whether we like it or not. The idea of everyday people spending countless hours building and managing their reputations online. I made the comparison of this equity generating behavior to that of brand building. Ordinary people, having micro influence in this macro medium we call the internet.

Since I only had 20 minutes for the talk, I missed out on very important part of this phenomenon. The potential risks and downside of of this activity as it can relate to your full time profession—especially if you are not self employed. Take Scott Monty, who currently heads up social media initiatives at Ford. If you go to Scott's Twitter page, you'll immediately notice a dichotomy between Scott Monty, the individual and Ford the company he works for. Ford's logo is evident all over the page and even hovers over Scott's "avatar" which shows up in thousands of Twitter streams globally. Scott has over 12,000 followers on that social network alone.



Scott was well known in the social media space prior to his employment at Ford (which probably helped him get the job) and uses his network to talk about work and personal related issues. The lines which separate the two are blurry. Recently, Scott's been receiving some criticism over how he handles this delicate balance between his brand and the brand he works for. To pull a recent quote from one of the blogs:

"... if Scott Monty wanted to show that he was really doing this for Ford, he'd open up a Ford Twitter account — an idea seconded by another social media site — to use daily for his work rather than his current ScottMonty twitter account. Because right now it seems like he's set up more for ScottMoCo promotion than for FoMoCo promotion."

This post is not meant to defend Scott, though I do know him and have spoken on several occasions, but I think there is something much bigger worth thinking about which goes well beyond the surface accusation that Scott is promoting himself at Ford's expense. And for the record, based what I've seen, I think Scott is being rather generous levering his personal network to help jump start Ford's initiatives (which includes several Ford Twitter accounts and outreach programs).

Powered By People
Here's the simple truth. If you are going to have your company play on the social Web, then you have to be ready to play a full contact sport which includes unpredictable scenarios. The latest evolution of the Web and the ways business tap into this are enabled by technology, but fueled by real live people. This means that hiring people like Scott means bringing his existing network into your organization and your organization into his network. On the flip side, individuals like Frank from Comcast, Lionel or Richard from Dell or Tony from Zappos have put their company first in their profiles thereby building equity through their jobs.

In either scenario there is still common ground. The social Web is personal, and dependent on people and when a person leaves your company, at the end of the day no matter if their persona had JohnatBrandX attached to them, the people they interacted with in all that time will remember the person behind the brand. That person takes their equity with them while leaving the infrastructure they have put in place at the company they worked for. If it sounds messy it's because it is and will be. It's powered by people and people are messy. People also tend to be more loyal to other people than they are to faceless organizations.

If your company, or you as in individual doesn't like this—don't even bother investing seriously in social initiatives, because they aren't automated, easy or quick solutions.

Blurring Lines
Some will say that separation of church and state is the way to go. Always lead with the brand. I'm not sure it's that simple. Take a look at Frank Eliason's (@comcastcares) personal blog. Frank talks about life, his family and yes—his work.  While @comcastcares on Twitter leads with the service that Frank and his team provides, Frank has swapped the company logo for a picture of himself. It's not always business on the social Web, often times it's personal, and this is what makes it work. In my humble opinion, while we can try to compartmentalize our "personal brands" with the brands we work for—the more we try to separate them, the less human it becomes. The social Web thrives on personality, mixing a "personal touch" with a professional service.  When Frank talks about life and business on his blog, it makes him not only a person, but an employee like many of us. And vice-versa on Twitter, which is why I assume he ditched the Comcast logo for a photo of himself instead.

At the end of the day, the social Web blurs the line between individuals and brands. It's not exactly clear what the rules of engagement are in these scenarios. But they will undoubtedly emerge as more companies put their people on the front lines of communication & interaction.

More Human Than Human
I've had some interesting conversations about this topic with people who have invested time developing and nurturing their own networks. Though they may not have the notoriety of a Monty, a Eliason, a Menchaca or a Hsieh, they may be unaware that they represent the organizations they work for more than they know. Using social networks on company time can help you do your job better or can be viewed as unproductive time. Either way, it brings up questions about how clear the line is between our work, our social networking and where they overlap.

And what about when social networking is your job? That's when we need to remember that at this point, it becomes about human contact regardless of who you work for.

The Road To Co-branding
Recently I talked about the idea of "brandividuals" (my hobby is making up words). For some, the idea is scary—the melding of our personalities with the companies and brands we work for. Call it whatever you want, I believe we'll see more of it—not less which means we'll need to figure out how the balance works. In it's simplest form, the phenomenon will look like "co-branding", two brands coming together toward a common goal. As someone who spends intimate time in this space (I am an full time employee for Critical Mass) the dance is delicate. It requires an understanding that the arrangement can be mutually beneficial along with a comfort level of the space. If your company is dipping it's toes in the the social Web, then you're going to attract employees who are active participants across multiple networks. Some, like Scott—may bring that network to your job.

There will be risks for both sides. But in the end, the switch from automated to manual means being powered by people. People with real faces, lives, families and potentially fans (not to mention critics).

Lastly, let's not forget to keep our eye on the prize. As Scott says himself in his video interview:

"We're not interested in advertising on social networks—we're interested in getting in there and interacting with people"

Questions About Questions

There are no wrong questions, but you may night be asking the "right" ones. The right questions lead to a deeper understanding and will help you find what you're looking for. Here's 2 questions I get asked often.

1. What software do you use to create your visuals?
2. What widget did you use to raise money for Daniela?

Both questions are valid and will yield simple answers which I'm more than happy to share.

1. I use Adobe Illustrator.
2. I used a Chip In, in combination with PayPal.

Simple answers to basic questions. And maybe that's good enough for what you're looking for. But I actually think that these are the wrong questions. Or maybe there are better questions to ask, to which the answers are found not only by asking the source—but by looking for clues. Here's the questions I would look for answers to.

1. How can I be a better visual thinker?
2. How do I even start cultivating a community?

Ok. Now we are getting somewhere. Each of these questions gets closer to identifying something that is closer to the root, but achievable if you work really hard at it. The hard part is that I can't answer these questions for you fully, you have to do the legwork. But I can point you in the right direction and then you have to chart your own course. So let's take a stab at it.

How you can be a better visual thinker.
This question will yield many different answers from the sources you ask and it definitely cannot be answerd in an e-mail, comment or tweet. In fact, I am not an expert on visual thinking and merely practice my own version of it my work and thoughts. So, I've actually provided my answer to this question as best as I could in this slideshow. You can download it, print it out put it on your wall if it helps. I'd also point you to the Vizthink site community which discusses nothing but visual thinking. And I'd recommend a crash course in appreciating visual communication. You can do this by simply picking up a Sunday edition of the New York Times or browsing their site, not to mention scouring the Web for evidence everywhere. My one word of advice? Re-train your mind to notice everything. Visual communication is all around us from our roadways to our grocery stores. Instead of taking it all for granted—stop and think about what works and what doesn't. This is the first step of many. You'l have to figure out the rest for yourself.

How you can cultivate a community.
This question requires you to refocus on the more important word.

Hint: It's not community.

The word you need to hyperfocus on is cultivate. Think of how one cultivates a garden. It takes several factors:

1. Passion for gardening
2. Patience
3. Willingness to weed, prune, seed, and grow. All the hard work that comes with producing fruit
4. Appreciation for the fruits that have been yielded
5. A desire to share the fruits of your garden with your neighbors

There's no magic bullet for cultivating a healthy community. But if you can do it—that's the main ingredient behind stuff like raising nearly 17k for a family. Cultivating something can lead to all sorts of things like getting your community to spring into action when you need it. To learn the art of cultivating, you again need to sharpen your powers of observation. Go to the places where healthy communities are in place—see who people are learning from. It could be brands or people. Web MD did it by connecting people to each other and the knowledge they were looking for. Chris Brogan did it through thousands of micro-interactions over time. Seek out the examples, watch and learn. You'll find out more this way than by asking any question.

Questions are good—but question which ones you should ask and what they'll get you. You may only have one shot to ask them. And my opinion is that you'll get even better answers by discovering things for yourself. Start with observation, see with fresh eyes—it all begins here.

Behind The Scenes At The NBA All Star Weekend 09

While I'm not at the NBA All Star weekend, I am engaging and monitoring some of the conversations around it (while still trying to have a life). I won't be able to tune in tonight. But as I'm going through our efforts (adidas + Riot) of covering the event through the eyes of Dwight Howard, I came across this video where Dwight is looking over some uploads and playing around on Twitter. Cool thing was that I actually spotted one of our adidas clients in the background—someone I have worked with in a previous job. It's nice to see clients, athletes, agencies etc. all coming together to pull this kind of thing off.

All of the media being we are producing over All Star weekend can be found here.

NBA All Star 09

When we were pitching the adidas business as Riot a part of our vision was the ability to create content that could live anywhere tapping multiple networks as they are designed for the distribution of media. Another part of our strategy was creating spaces where that media could be aggregated. So as the NBA Allstar weekend approaches, it's great to see some of that vision coming to fruition.

If you are a fan of Dwight Howard, you should really check out this site we've designed specifically for the event. We'll be updating it with photos, videos and even Tweets from Dwight himself. Media will be uploaded to destinations such as Flickr and YouTube and the site simply sucks it all into one place and allows you to see it at a glance while giving you the option to go directly to the source on their respective networks. And yes, the page even scrolls. A sight for sore eyes.

There's also a more standard You Tube page with a variety of videos of Dwight if you're just interested in the videos. Also, if you text "allstar" to 234327 you'll get a message from Dwight letting you know what he's up to over the weekend. Though I don't typically watch Basketball, I'll be following along over the weekend as well and tagging tweets with #allstar09 (feel free to do the same if you plan on watching).

And it's nice to see the microsite gradually evolve into something less contained.

Whose Logo Is It Anyway?

Mary says that she did the "Thinking Visually" logo used on this piece posted publicly on Craigslist. She told me this personally, after I called her expressing that it was something I produced. This kind of thing is bound to happen to individuals and brands everywhere. If your stuff shows up in a Web browser, it's likely to get used in ways you didn't intend. That's just a reality of the space.

So I'm putting my faith in the buddy system vs. the legal system on this one. Let's give Mary the benefit of the doubt and assume she created the logo and it's a sheer coincidence. I originally posted the logo here over a year ago. The date is there and everything. If she wanted to clear her reputation, she could do the same thing on her Website. After all, it says "please don't steal" right on it.

In case you're wondering, the visuals I produce here and aggregate here are for you to use in your presentations, sideshows and blog posts. They are meant to be a resource for you. A reference is always appreciated. But if you're going to say you did it yourself. I'd ask you to prove it.

Stolen Identity

You might recognize some of these faces. But on this suspicious site, they've been given new identities. The faces and names don't match up. The site itself is highly suspicious. Either it's less than tasteful way to build a following and market an individual, or a tactic to collect e-mail addresses. I don't know, but something isn't right. Either way, it's a sign of the times to come. Your identity may not always be yours on the internet—which is why you need to know who you're talking to.

The Best Little Ad Trader Joe's Never Made

Trader Joe's has to be one of my favorite business stories and brands today. I personally love to shop there (and I hate shopping). It's an example I often use of a great customer experience, but also one that validates the strategy of finding an under serviced niche that exists and servicing it better than anyone else (kind of like what's going on on the Web with all this 2.0 nonsense). So when this video surfaced, filmed using a Palm Treo presumably by a Trader Joe's cuatomer—I practically squealed with delight (on the inside of course). Trader Joe's doesn't support people taking videos in their stores, so in theory they could threaten some kind of action. But being a "TJ" fan, here's what I would recommend they do instead (assuming this is an authentic video produced by an actual customer).

Listen
There are close to 100 comments on the video and over 33,000 views of the video. Track all mentions and embeds of the video and listen to how people are responding to it. If Trader Joe's isn't using a conversation monitering service, go with the the tools available out there such as social mention.

Learn
The video is mostly complimentary but shows Trader Joe's warts and all. Once input has been gathered from across the Web, put together a report with some qualitative findings that can be discussed internally within the organization. Remember, a brand isn't what you say it is—it's what they say it is. What can Trader Joe's Learn if anything?

Adapt
Use the video as fodder to figure out how your orginzation will respond to these types of inevitable situations (similar to the volume content generated by scores unofficial Trader Joe blogs). Maybe it's time for TraderJoes.com to embrace some of these fan blogs/videos? There's some great stuff out there.

Respond
Engage your customers in the comments. Talk to them—but only after you've taken the other steps. Use it as an opportunity to get into why they love your brand and what could be better about it. Then go back to listening—lather, rinse and repeat.

I heart Trader Joe's. And this video. It's catchy as hell and one of the best advertisements they never made.

Thoughts On Paid + Earned "Media"

(click for full size image)

I'm not one of those people that believes the world is being totally upside down with how we get the word out about our products and services, but I do believe there needs to some acknowledgment of several models that need to work together (and right now I am only focusing on digital—that's big enough). So I'm in the process of sketching out a very high level model of 2 approaches which in my opinion will need to work in tandem in the not so distant future. The paid and earned models.

Buying Digital Media
The business of buying media has been around as long as marketing and in the digital space, while it may be measured differently, the principles are similar. You determine where you'll get the most bang for your buck and purchase media placements in digital environments that are deemed appropriate. In many cases, agencies are used to broker the deals. The latest wrinkle to this model is to partner with specialized firms who deal in niche media such as communities, networks, forums and blogs. These firms will take payment and make arrangements for your communications to exist in these alternative areas. While as an advertiser you may not have control over the communications (for example, bloggers in this model still say what they want) but the "placement" remains paid for or purchased.

Earning Digital Media
Earning digital media doesn't mean it's free. It's not. It's just that instead of paying directly for a placement or making arrangements with a partner—you are paying for the time and resources of people who will investigate what's being said about your brand and engage on your behalf. These can be employees, contractors, agencies etc. but it requires manpower and effort.  However, the reason the "media" (apologize for lack of a better term) is earned is because you can never actually buy it. The people talking about your products and services are never compensated by an agency or network—however they can be set into action by triggers you've put in place. This could mean establishing a relationship, sharing news, seeding content, talking to, and in general interacting with the people who actually care about your product or even better the topics associated around them. Earned media is tricky, and no one has figured this out exactly yet, however it's real and the search engines pick up on it. The trick is figuring out how to meaningfully participate in the spaces where your brands, products and services are relevant.

It's a pretty big enchilada here that I'm trying to capture and I know I'm not covering all the basis. But trying to get my head wrapped around making the two models work better together. So what do you think. What are the differences? Where do the lines blur? How do they work together better?

Thought of the Day

"Design is rapidly moving from posters and toasters to include processes, systems, and organizations. Design is the accelerator for the company car, the power train for sustainable profits. Design drives innovation, innovation powers brand, brand builds loyalty, and loyalty sustains profits. If you want long-term profits, don't start with technology—start with design."
~Marty Neumeier

Frienship Is Dead. Long Live Friends.

The first time I met Russ Unger in person was at a gathering at a local Chicago watering hole. Within minutes Russ and I had identified a Polish football fan still nursing the wounds inflicted from his team's loss (and presumably treating the symptoms with alcohol) and we instantly identified a timeless photo op :-). Though Russ and I had never met each other, we'd been introduced by a mutual friend and had been  keeping in touch online. These days, we get together fairly regularly for a lunch and chat—I'd consider Russ a friend.

But what is a friend really, in this day and age when we can have literally thousands of them on Facebook, and numerous other networks? How do we decide who are business contacts, industry acquaintances and genuine friends? Where is the line and does it blur at all?  These are some of the topics Russ and I will be discussing at our upcoming SXSW Salon session titled "Friendship is Dead".

It's a really interesting and relevant topic in times like this. I've always considered the people I grew up with and went to college with my closest friends—but increasingly as I meet people who I correspond with across multiple networks, I've noticed there is a similar dynamic that happens to that of when I get together with old familiar friends. We're able to launch right into a comfortable conversation as if we've known each other for years. But in reality—we'd just met.  Is this something you've experienced? Is that friendship? That's what we are hoping to explore.

Social Circles

As I've discussed before, we're living in a time where our social circles are expanding and potentially overlapping more than ever. Our inner circle contains our most intimate and trusted friends while our outer circles contain more numerous casual contacts. But there are new and emerging dynamics around that. For example, when we were helping Daniela and her family, it was my outer circles that I appealed to and acted first offering all kinds of support. I didn't even think about approaching family and lifelong friends (initially). The inner circles acted later as the news spread. In retrospect, this was interesting behavior on both my part and the part of the individuals who sprung into action. I described the feeling as neighborly—perhaps another subset of friendship.

If you're coming to SXSW, be sure to join Russ and myself on Saturday evening. The format is low key, will include refreshments and it will be more of a conversation. There's certainly downsides to all of this as one person can only support so many meaningful relationships. It's definitely something worth thinking about as we navigate through possible the most connected age in history. Hope to see you there.

I Care

Let someone know you do to.

Professional Prism of Trust