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“…the privilege (not the right) of delivering anticipated, personal and relevant messages to people who actually want to get them. It recognizes the new power of the best consumers to ignore marketing. It realizes that treating people with respect is the best way to earn their attention.”

The phrase was originated by Seth Godin nearly a decade ago; ironically, Godin is the keynote speaker arranged for the MIMA Summit on Oct 5th.

I understand  “permission” can be a gray area – open to interpretation and relative to individualistic preferences – but, isn’t it better to be safe when dealing with such delicate commodities as people’s time and attention?

MIMA has pushed it’s permission limits and abused its right to email me for three specific reasons – surely I am not alone!

1) I have received no less than 6 email messages from MIMA within the last 30 days (July 31-today) and I’m willing to bet that I would have received at least one more before the end of August (had I not unsubscribed today), since they’re marketing me every 4 days on average.  I’m not even registered for the Summit;  I wonder if registrants are getting an inordinate amount of communications/updates as well -or- maybe it’s just repeated attempts to coerce the uncommitted (read: sell).

Remarkability speaks for itself, I don’t need a boilerplate reminder every week for two months in advance.

2) WHY HAVE THE SUBJECT LINES FOR THE LAST THREE EMAILS BEEN IN CAPS?  CAN GODIN CONVINCE MIMA TO STOP YELLING!?!?

3) Please be human.  If you seek the need to invade my brainspace so frequently, at least show me that there’s a real-live person behind it all by returning my email should I respond (favorably) to one of your solicitations. Otherwise you’re reminiscent of egocentric, one-way, old media communications.

4) (I know I said three) but while we’re at it, what’s with the sheer volume of hyperlinks.  15 hyperlinks in one email? Sorry.

I wonder if MIMA is losing any other “permission/attention assets” with their aggressive and seemingly senseless marketing tactics?

Rose: “Did you seek/get venture funding?”
Arrington: “You know, I’m not going to answer that question…I don’t want to answer that question”

Sam Altman from Loopt

“Loop transforms your mobile phone into a social compass to discover and navigate the world around you.  Use loopt to see who’s around, what to do, and where to go.”

There are 65,000 iphone apps!?!?

“The mobile phone will be more revolutionary than the PC was”

Chris Anderson from Wired

These are tough questions to independently & objectively answer but one thing we can all agree on is that there’s no shortage of problems starting us straight in the face – pick one. It boils down to values, what are yours?

So why are we (generally, at large) still so fixated on learning, embracing, and even exploiting “social media” for such commercialized purposes? In this sense I think “social media” is still in infancy stage which might explain why we’re acting like infants;  it’s almost as though “social media” has become an oxymoron.

Make no mistake – the shift is happening: “social media” is growing up and maturing into a matter of practical social application. I see “social media” is a function of networked people, therefore, the network(s) themselves are evolving – which is a good sign.

Social Media for Social Change is a small example of an emerging trend: people using social tools to connect & collaborate with a deeper more humanistic purpose.

I am of the opinion that the next phase of “social media” will include more “social” and less “media.”

Marketers, advertisers, narcissists, ego’s, and the like should consider that “social media” (tools, networks, apps, platforms, etc.) are not created or driven by anything other than our human nature: that is, to be human.

While there is a place for humanity in the marketplace, our society/culture is still largely off balance-we’ve still got a ways to go before we find an equilibrium between capitalism and humanism within our society.

The good news is, based on my research and inclination for trends, I speculate that  we will be seeing a noticeable increase in the worthwhile & meaningful application of  “social media” tools.

And yes, there is plenty of financial opportunity in the next wave of “social media”, but it will be reserved for the most aggressive “social animals” who in and of themselves, represent merit & “social value”. In other words, the metrics will change from arbitrary variables (# of twitter followers) to meaningful social yardsticks – ie “how many people have I/we directly positively impacted today?”

Many individuals (including myself) and organizations stand to enrich themselves and the world around them by moving beyond the “media” and into the “social”; making a bunch of money in the process doesn’t hurt either, which is entirely possible if done correctly (read: people>money).

What if, in the future, our value is primarily based on our “social contribution”? What kind of effect would this have on our communities and the world at large?

If anyone disagrees or has thoughts on this subject, please share…

With so many .com’s focused on free, I consider it timely and relevant;  I’m going to be expanding on this subject over time, but here is a primer I recall reading well over a year ago on a plane ride.

Some questions to get the wheels turning:

defining free:  what does free mean? What is really free vs. what is not really free? In the end, what is the true price of free?

philosophizing free: what should be free vs. should not be free? Does information really want to be free, and if so, in what context-freedom from boundaries/limits or freedom from a price tag?

predicting free: what will be free vs. what won’t be free 1, 5, and so on? Where does free lead us? Is free a viable long-term business model, either as a stand-alone strategy or part of a product mix ?

Here’s three different expert opinions on free.  I need to think about this one a bit before adding my 2c…

Seth Godin: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/06/malcolm-is-wrong.html

Malcolm Gladwell: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2009/07/06/090706crbo_books_gladwell?currentPage=all

Mark Cuban:  http://blogmaverick.com/2009/06/30/free-vs-freely-distributed/

Initial Impressions:

The Wayzata Ballroom is absolutely beautiful & they’ve done it right: plenty of good food & drink

This is a great promotional tool for Reside, I think any agency should do what they can to throw an informational/educational event.  Bring people together around your brand- it’s great for spreading brand awareness within the local market.  This will surely be enlightening as I’ve been meaning to dig into the cloud more…GigaOm has a ton of serious cloud content.

8:39 – here we go!

Matt Meentz opens with his some stories on mystarbucksidea.com, the obama transition team site (change.gov/citizenbriefingbook)

Over to George Reese: founder of Valtira & enStratus.

Cloud computing: 42b market by 2012 according to IDC; Merril says 160b market.

What is cloud computing?

virtual servers, think dell & sisco

the service is accessible via web browser or network API

requires zero cap exp & is pay as you go

Implications:

Empower access to tech to those in need without the know how thus increasing innovation & freedom/flexibility to make mistakes, frees up cap for other needs.

Layers of the cloud: Saas (software as a service) is on paas (platform as a service) is on infrastructure as a service (Iaas)

next speaker: Eric Scheel, Reside Chief Technical Architect

“conversations are going to occur whether you like it or not, so? do you want to be a part of it?” old quote but worth hearing again and again and again…not enough orgs are listening.

More bullets and examples of embracing social media…heard all this a million times before…can we move on already?  It would be refreshing to experience a presentation on “overcoming the psychological barriers to social media”.

In my opinion, a lot of orgs/marketers need some basic education on what the fundamental power shift from producer to consumer means:  why they must listen, how to be humble, and when /where to interact with their audience. If they cannot wrap their heads around the big picture then no amount of social media will help anything their au their audience.  For example, an friend of mine is closely involved with a social media project within a major fortune 500 co.  He recently described his job as merely being a corporate psychologist as he’s hand holding executives 2 decades older than him: bogged down with inter-office politics, overcoming fear, and fighting ego.

Thanks to Reside for making this a reality!

http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/

minnesota cup-http://www.breakthroughideas.org/page/1/high-tech.jsp

Corey Sax @ Pizza Luce – RP/Net Neutrality

adagogo & doapps.com

http://www.startupshoppe.com/index.htm