New Media is About The People
February 27th 2007
Managing the Gray #28 was one of those that I recorded by the seat of my pants. No show notes. Nothing but a brain full of thoughts that came to me in the shower today surrounding two events this past week that reminded me that with all the tools, widgets and gadgets that we have that none of the fun of new media would be possible without the people involved in it. That is what today’s show is all about.
Links that I mentioned in the show or that I think will be helpful include:
- Pictures from our Nashville trip
- Jeff Pulver (thank you again)
- Chris Brogan
- Christopher Penn
- Thanks to Reid Givens for the audio comment
- crayonCast
- Julien Smith’s blog post on this topic
The comment line is always open at 206-309-4729 so please drop in a line.
DUDE. the story about that guy at the bar, who’s going back to school… unbelievable.
This is my first comment, but had to say great show and thanks for putting it out there. Struck me in the following way:
In finance the idea of gearing is really important. e.g. using the (relatively) small deposit on a house to benefit (or lose) from changes in the Total value of the property.
The higher the gearing the higher the potential reward (or damage).
New media is like increasing the gearing of the way we intereact, and it happens on all sorts of levels. I think people engage more with you when they feel they’re in a dialog with you. But also the ability of the technology pair up publishers and subscribers with niche congruence makes each message that much more directed.
Anyway - keep it fuzzy.
It is indeed all about the people, beginning to end. There are a lot of people in new media who are looking for the quick buck, the hit and run, so they can extract a meager amount out of it and move onto the next scam. I am pleased and proud to say that none of my friends fit that category. You, Julien, Chris Brogan, Whitney Hoffman, and so, so many more are in new media not for profit, not for power, but because you genuinely care about the people around you, and for that I’m very thankful.
Reid’s comments really hit home for me. Our brand may seem fragmented by the different projects we’re involved with, but it’s really all our brand the same.
One of your best shows in a while, C.C. Just amazing stuff.
I wanted to build a bit off of the comments you made about new media being about the people more than anything else. There’s a hefty portion of design in my job, and we sometimes focus on the design of a site or a project as the single most important aspect of a site. You touched on this a bit when you mentioned the “pastel logos with drop shadows.” I wrote a post a while ago about how design is important, but it’s definitely not the thing that will bring people back to a site. (For an example, just look at MySpace, the most-popular-ish site on the Web. It’s horribly designed, but with a hundred million people on there, that isn’t the focus.) It’s about the conversations and the content of the site, but at the end of the day, we build sites to connect people in some way, for some reason. When it comes down to it, it’s all about the people.
Hi C.C., I listened to this on my way home from work today.
I loved the story about the cavalry coming to rescue you. How cool is that?
There’s definitely something important and fundamental in all of this human connectedness that we are building. Weren’t computers supposed to dehumanize us all? Weren’t we supposed to all be numbers? Doesn’t look like that happened after all.
Great podcast; keep up the good work and keep on Twittering.
C.C.,
Great show! As I mentioned yesterday, I’ve got an audio comment coming your way. Stay tuned!
In the meantime, I’m reminded of a post to my blog back in January that hits on some similar points. I called it Putting the Social Back in Social Media.
Talk to you soon!