Heather Gold

The Heather Gold Show: Outside In Rundown

The Heather Gold Show: Outside In

Friday January 12th, 2007

Bradley Horowitz‘s name kept popping up. Some programmers at Songbird raved about him, “He bought all the cool shit at Yahoo.” By that they meant: flickr, upcoming and other sundry “Web 2.0” companies that make great stuff.

As we discussed in the show, he’s like an A+R guy that the indie musicians trust. He has real spirit, which is why I thought he’d make a great guest. The passion he wanted to discuss was hacking and the sublime that comes from subverting systems for their own good. Bradley create Yahoo Hack Day. He’s an insider that got other insider’s to listen to outsiders: bringing hackers to camp on Yahoo’s lawn and bring Beck to play for them all. Super cool outside coming in. I thought so, until Anil let me know the other day about Beck’s Scientology, a “religion” that’s so insider, you have to pay to belong.

Harmon Leon is an outsider who stays an outsider by geing a fake insider. He read a piece about infiltrating a Benny Hinn faith healing hoping for release from his “bird flu” and being hurled to the ground by staffers as Benny rebuked the demons in him.

<a href=”http://www.culturalodyssey.org”>Rhodessa Jones</a> helps women who are outsiders (on the “inside,” aka prison) transform themselves through theatre. She defied cliche liberal ideas by asserting the need for prison, “some people belong in prison, okay?”

Bradley and Rhodessa were clear on one central truth. The way to connect and cross boundaries from outside in, is to really listen to people with regard. Harmon’s technique for gaining the trust of groups from the Christian right to the young Republicans? “I just parrot back to them their own beliefs.” People are happy to look f=no further.

Highlights and Links

• Harmon Leon – first infiltrated on a dare to himself that he had to get and lose a job within 3 hours, all the while working in a bad fake foreign accent. It took many efforts to get the fast food place to fire him. The clincher was shoving a vanilla shake and fries in his mouth, and spewing it on the floor by customers. “Ich been sick.”
• Rhodessa’s story about working in a peep show in early 1970’s San Francisco and recognizing ptron’s Richard Pryor and jazz great Mose Allison. She was playing Mose’s music and when he approached her she recognized him, and he took off.
• Rhodessa Jones’ Medea Project

daily epigram: feminism predicted web 2.0

daily epigram

This occurred to me while I was attending Meshforum 2006. There were lots of different presentations full of excited hope about viewing the World and Everything In It (including business) As Networks.

Here’s what I got from feminism (and the Sisterhood from the shul in my small town on Niagara Falls) long before Web 2.0 starting pushing these truths into a business reality that seems connected enough to butch stuff like routers and executive summaries to feel real and important to a whole new group of people.

• deep connection comes through small networks of people

• discussion is action

• gossip builds social bonds and keeps local news alive

• publicallly acknowleding private truth is transformative

>this is proceeded by witnessing your own truth which has been previously disbelieved in public

• an integration of both “male and female” roles is better for the individual and general good. It is evolution and eventually removes the ghettoization of functionality (so 19th century). Feeling (“feminine”, expressing (with feeling = “feminine”, with Powerpointing = “masculine”) and distributing (“via hierarchy = “masculine, via distributed network = “feminine”)
• If you come to an agenda with an issue, say so.

> Ok, so this used to look like “speaking as a differently-abled, lactose-intolerant, Latina …” But it’s exactly the principle that Scoble and others use to keep credibility in their business blogging

In the blood from a stone department

“People look to adult movies for personal contact, and yet they’re still not getting it. HD lets them see a little bit more of the girl.”

– porn director Robby D. in today’s NYTimes

I don’t think that HD is going to give porn viewers personal contact. Nor are girls going to give them adult entertainment. Why go to a hardware store to buy bread?

(Thanks to Liz B for the lovely phrase)

Great post by Derek Powazek on a new approach to print publishing via the web. He’s starting with a photo mag.
Derek guested on the talk show during the Intimacy theme.

There are a number of people I’ve known since the early web days who were always doing it with passion and an understanding and caring about community. Derek is one of the last to begin his own start-up and I’m sure will be innovative and successful. Back in the bubble days I wsa helping put flashed up versions of one of his early great site Kvetch on a system that played these little movies between web page loads (yes, I’m dating myself).

It really feels so good after the insanity to see great people doing great and *reasonable* things and see them make such a difference.  This is where much of Web 2.0 came from as far as I’m concerned (I’d include movable type and flickr in this camp)
Derek knows online comunity like few else and I’m very interested to see how this, ahem, develops.

Does the gift economy or fair use apply to comedy? Jay Leno sues Judy Brown.

Jay Leno, NBC studios, Rita Rudner and some other well-known comics have sued Judy Brown over her compilation joke books. Judy is well-known in the comedy scene as a teacher, but more as the writer of these books. She often posts to lists I’m on asking for jokes. She offers credit in the books when she does this and the chance to be then able to promote yourself in your bio as “published in ” Joke Soup or whateer book it is she’s writing. This also means you can say “xx ‘s work has appeared in blah blah book alongside Dave Chappelle, Ellen DeGeneres, Sid Caesar, Lenny Bruce…” etc you get the point.

When I walked into an Urban Outfitters in Santa Barbara and saw her latest book I thought “why didn’t I get my stuff into her? I could have been in this book.”

This idea of advancing yourself by association is a whole other blog post. Living in a Google world is actually making this more important to many people as it’s how you are found. It’s something that start-ups do, bankers, lawyers, academics and comedians do it too.

Judy asks and credits somewhat-known, lesser-known and unknown comics for submissions and credits them. I never knew how shw got the rest of her stuff. Leno’s suit claims she and others on her behalf go to clubs and crib their material without letting them know or getting permission. And she’s not paying anyone for their jokes.

I’m seeing mixed reaction on comedy listservs I’m on.

I’ve spent enough time around open source ideas and Cory Doctorow and friends that I generally like the life philosophy of giving and being open to have your stuff be out there. I’m far enough away from law school that my brain has thankfully forgotten all the details of the compilation law suits over the phone book and every detail of fair use exemptions to copyright (which allow for the free use of small elements of copyrighted stuff for things like journalistic and academic purposes).

There’s:

1) the law as we have it now,
2) our ideas of how we want it to be, and
3) the practical realities of our lived lives that don’t really care much about the law

There’s a generally understood “code” among comics that you don’t steal another comics material (an unwritten law of kinds). It’s enforced by the respect or lack thereof of other comics. The truth as people like Cory have been talking about in tech circles and is true in comic circles as well, is that it is your ability to keep producing the material and the alignment of the material with you that creates your value. So “give away your information” and then people will pay for the hard bound copy or the DVD or to see you live. You’ll gain fans.

The practical reality of that for comics is a little tougher than coders. Any coder can get online and give their code away themselves. Comics haven’t been able to distribute themselves so easily, till the Net.

A joke, like a piece of code, can have a life of its own and get easily separated from its creator.
So is Judy brown just like a blogger? A curator of comedy? Someone who’s turning people on to comics? Is she any different than Myspace or Youtube if they decide to sell or license compilations of comedy submitted on their pages as “self-promotion” ?

I hate the feeling of being stingy. Of not sharing stuff. At the same time, comedy and perfoming have shown me that you get paid when you feel you deserve to get paid and make a decision not to do the work unless you get paid. You also need someone who wants your work, of course, but that emotional feeling of self-worth, that decision is at the crux of what turns someone who wants your work into a customer.

At a minimum, it seems like a choice the comics should get to make themselves. If Judy didn’t ask for permission from all the comics in the books, then I’m glad I wasn’t in them.

What else can comics learn from coders and vice versa? When do you get paid? How much do you “give away”? Is the law a pointless thing unless you have Jay Leno’s money anyway? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Intimacy in social media

Here are notes from a conversation I lead at Web 2.2 today. I’m thinking a lot about creating conditions for quality connections online rather than volume eg. myspace “friends”

I’m especially interested in extending the connections and coversations I’m helping happen in live shows.

Many thanks to Ted Shelton for his conference sponsorship.

Google buying Dodgeball and the window of indie-hood

Chris Messina wrotea great post about Google’s purchase of Dodgeball which is a cell-phone-connect-up-with-your-pals-in-a-serendipitous-way-in-the-real-world kind of system.

Chris writes about who owns log ins to sites and your id information.

What I’m wondering about is the fact that I signed up for Dodgeball a few months ago and already it’s been bought. The time between cool things are being made, released and bought is getter smaller and smaller. It reminds me of how you can now see a fashion trend in the Castro or Bayview and it will make it to Mervyn’s in Indiana in a matter of months. It used to take ages for shit like suede construction boots to filter up to fashionistas from the queers and then back down to middle America.

Meryl Streep’s character delivers a great and hilarious monologue in The Devil Wear’s Prada that captures the top-down part of ths influencer cycle in The Devil Wears Prada. But this bit of writing misses the whole cycle.

Much of the fashion looks like this: mid-western fashion in 70s>discarded to 2nd-hand clothing shops>re-contextualized and brought out to queer or urban punk land by poor kids in urban centres on the coast>picked up on by stylists>Milan+ Paris for a week>back to high end stores like Barney’s in NY>knocked off and sold at Mervyn’s in Indiana.

I’m still thinking on the tech cycle. Any ideas?

inspiring web work: Songbird

My pal Rob Lord’s company. What a great name—Pioneers of the Inevitable. What a beautiful site and application and work process and core idea. With killer t-shirts to boot. The whole thing makes me want to bake cupcakes and dance around.

Phenomenal life lesson: whatever is happening (even if it’s as big as the web) you can always draw a bigger frame around it.

Check out more of designer J Koshi’s stuff.

Google! Youtube deal! 2000 flashback.

This is an excerpt from my book-in-progress An Honest Living which tracks my search for meaning through work. This Google/Youtube deal reminds me of a moment in the heat of the coke frenzy of the dot com boom. I am sure that the deal is inspiring startup CEOs everyone to create a Powerpoint slide of delusional correlations like the one I discuss below. There are 250 Video start-ups revising their pitches as I write this based on this logic. “They do video..we do video. They’re worth 1.6 BN, We’re worth at least 390 MN!” Perhaps attention-needy blondes everywhere should be revising their own pitches too: “Paris does slutty…I do slutty. My valuation just went up over 1000%!” Tip of the mental hat to AAN.

My girlfriend is a tech reporter. That’s the other group where there are lots of women. These guys love to talk about themselves and it seems like they didn’t have any contact with women till they were adults. Put a reasonably attractive, intelligent woman in front of them and they’ll tell them anything. I spend my time at the conference with the writers. I enjoy them more than everyone else. They get to say what they really think. I have to be excited! about! ! whenever! I ! talk! to! anyone! to convince! them! that! they! should! know! us!

CEO! wants me to just call up the studio where I used to work and do a deal with them. He wants me to do this with everyone I’ve ever had a relationship with. I don’t want to do this unless we have something real to offer in exchange: a real deal. I learned this first year law school: the difference between a gift and a contract. Of course you only need a peppercorn worth of value to make it a legally binding contract, but I’m having a hard time coming up with a peppercorn for potential partners. I don’t want to suck people in and then have them resent the hell out of the deal. I understand why I’m the 4th business development person in a couple of years. I resist the scorched earth policy on my Rolodex. I’ve been at enough companies to know this won’t be my last job and I don’t want to ruin my reputation on it.

But promise of value is a peppercorn. I just don’t understand that yet. Business is changing right before my eyes. I meet S, one of my girlfriend’s friends who has a new start-up. He’s convinced 8 friends to work on it for next to nothing. They Believe in it. He used to date her before I did and so it feels a little tense. I ask him about his business as a way to bond. He is an engineer and he’s building tools to create online communities. Boy that sounds vague to me.

“How are you planning to market it?” I challenge him.

“We’re counting on a lot of word of mouth.”

I am dumbfounded. I think he’s naive as hell. No marketing plan? Community as a business? We’ve all been doing that online in the web scene but how is that a business? Where ‘s the business model? S later sells his business to Excite for millions.

At work the next day, CEO! shows a few of us the presentation he is taking to potential investors. He lists public Internet companies and the number of page views they are receiving (that’s the number of times people are viewing a web page at their sites). He also lists the number of their “members” and besides each, their valuation. As if a company is worth some dollar amount based on the number of times someone looks at their site! Below these other companies he lists ! and it’s number of page views and then its valuation. It is a crazy number. It is a crazy slide. I cannot believe my eyeballs.

That’s what he’s basing all this on: the number of “eyeballs’ that looked at something made at ! even though we have no ad salesperson, zero ads and can’t even account for the number of page views we do have to our partners (something I’m supposed to deliver). He thinks we’re worth that arbitrary amount of money. What happened to making money? I miss the days when I stacked shelves with real things to buy that people really want. I imagine a conversation with my Uncle Jack about all of this. We have nothing on the shelves. We are slipping everything to the back of the stack. There is no chocolate bar in front. Nothing to buy or hold in your hand. Market share. Eyeballs.

Pick my panels in the SXSW panel picker

This year, in the Net fashion of the year, SXSW is having panels selected by you and me: the public. I’ve got a few suggestions in the mix. I’m planning on defintely attending the conference and bringing/podcasting The Heather Gold Show there. If you’ve got great Austin venue or guest suggestions, let me know.

Like a fresh peach, pick these ideas here. What do you think about these ideas? Do you RSVP to events? Please comment. I’m listening.

You’ve Got Your Chocolate in my Peanut Butter

Creating shows for the Net and television together. Why neither one will kill off the other. The interweave between social community and creative content isn’t new, but is now the basic building block of a growing show in the brand new era in which this is possible. Hear from people approaching this connection from traditional media networks, online media networks and successful independent creators.

Context: The Next Layer of the Net

The Net has brought us more information. More text, more images, more audio and now video. And the future only promises to bring us more access to more of it in more places. How do we find things when we don’t know specifically what we want? After “web 2.0” enables the average user to create even more stuff, the next layer of the Net needs to help it all make sense. This session combines experts on technologies and individual curators and communities that are already creating context and not just more stuff.

A New Commons: Beyond Affinity Groups

The political realm stopped being a realistic commons some time ago. America is now described as “red” and “blue” or “black” and “white.” The web has accelerated the growth of affinity groups and “tagged” identities. How is a commons possible, in which those who are different or in disagreement or self-contradictory to meet and engage with one another? The trick is to create space in which people can be their whole selves (all their affinities and more) together.

RIP RSVP

Our sense of social obligation is shifting as we live busier and more transient lives. Replies are no longer held up by action. Upcoming.org identifies some social options as being “watched” and not even attended. Dodgeball assumes that planning isn’t part of our connecting. Are technologies helping create our changing communication around commitments or are they helping us have more connection in a culture that wants to avoid social commitment? What does a a real friendship mean in an era of Myspace friends and can the net help these friendships and commitments be ongoing and reliable in the RL (real world 🙂 How are our views of personal relationships affecting the evolution of business as service and relationship management and vice versa?