11-12-10

Reflections on Lan.2.0

I’ve been beating my head around the crowdsourcing element: how does one crowdsource advice without it being a yahoo answers sort of trainwreck? Then I realized…isn’t an advice column ultimately about crowdsourcing questions, not answers? The questions themselves act as a solution to a problem: the problem of content and community engagement. That is what made AL so successful: advice columns and editorial columns were the original crowdsourced information. Strike that, maybe not the original but definitely an application of the idea in old media.

I am imagining that crowdsourcing isn’t something that magically happened over night with the dawn of the intertubes. A lot of the “magically appearing social theories” that have been rolling out since the dawn of the digital age aren’t exactly “new” as much as “improved” or just “now with a digital bonus!”.

Take for instance farmer’s markets as an exercise of crowdsourcing. It’s not a digital platform, but the call is put out to find a solution to the consumer’s need, in this case “the best bananas”. Farmers from miles around bring their produce (including bananas) to the farmers market and the winner is chosen by the crowd. Votes are monetary, the best bananas speak for themselves. Capitalism free from monopolistic restraints are applications of crowdsourcing. Amateurs compete with each other using tactics the big dogs use to position themselves above their competitors, the most appealing product (Like the proposed “Gap’s a Bitch Contest“) or the best messaging or the the most sells…you get the point.

11-10-10

Intellectual Property

SD: i asked him to read it again because (I did not send) the original email. Then i told him to not talk down to me blah blah. office politics rule.

Shell: i think sol does that in her class. Did you use “I feel” statements?

SD: uh no. i guess i should have.

Shell: “I feel like ass when you talk down to me, could you kindly be passive aggressive about it and do it behind my back like everyone else in the world? Please. Thank you.”

SD: mind if i copy/paste that so i remember it?

Shell: actually it’s copy written, so don’t go posting it around n’ shit

SD: damn.

Shell: sorry, just working on protecting my intellectual property. Get your own “I feel” statement.

11-09-10

Dear Abby,

Dear Madness,

So today…today it kind of hits me. The whole phone call yesterday. Yeah. It’s sinking in.

Luv, Shell

11-09-10

Madness in the Air

“Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature…. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.” ~ Helen Keller

If you were in the Beaver Library last night, you probably saw a girl who looked relatively frazzled. She was aimlessly wondering the stacks pulling books, flipping through the table of contents, re-shelving with meticulous OCD, moving to the next book. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. She collapses in front of the vintage Dear Abby and Anne Landers books, gets up looking white as a ghost as she looks for a connection between the archaic advice columns and web 2.0. She moves back to the business books. On to the self help books. The children’s books. Rushing frantically around looking for a lost notepad and proposal on the shelves somewhere. Fidgeting at a table, staring blankly ahead at the gorgeous river surround by hills of fall foliage struggling against the winter breeze. Looking for answers amongst the shelves has always been a favorite past time of mine.

I wasn’t looking for myself this time. I found her. You just have to get really, really lost to find some really neat things. I was looking for patterns and inspiration. I was looking for structure. The shelves became the new host to my inspiration raid. It was delicious. Harrowing and delicious. Stick around the Madness for some interesting news in the future. More travels, more trouble. Just how I like it.

11-06-10

Play on Playa’

Dear San Diego,

I do enjoy watching you squirm.

Luv, Shell

11-03-10

Finding Voice

Dear Shell,

You need to embrace your inner douchebag and write like one. You do it on me all the time. If it’s not fun to write, it’s not fun to read.

Luv, Madness.

11-02-10

Not All Those Who Wander…

Sitting here, the idea of traveling around with very little possessions seems appealing. Seeing places, meeting people, trying new food. Excitedly, I began planning for next year, when it warms up to start moving around and seeing what I could see. But as I really started thinking about it, I realized that it didn’t matter: the planning for the future. I was already there.

I’ve been wandering around aimlessly for the last year. It started when my life cord to my garden was severed. The plants died as life crashed down around me and a chapter closed as I was pressure washing mud off of the patio. Game Over.

Since then I’ve been around: Orlando, Philadelphia, Gettysburg, Pittsburgh, Danville, Bloomsburg, Volant, Cranberry, Beaver, Sebastian, Vero Beach, Miami, Cassadaga, Sandy Springs, Atlanta, L5P, Panama City, Columbus, St Augustine, Daytona, Savannah, New Brighton, Greenfeld. And by the end of the year: Delaware, San Diego and Houston.

I didn’t think Tolkien’s “Not All Those Who Wander Are Lost” referred to me. I was holding my breath waiting for it to, waiting for the day I didn’t feel lost yet still wandered. In retrospect, however, I was and am very un-lost. I think this is as close as I get to home, to my black rock. This is home: this living life to the fullest thing.

Dear Madness,

Not All Those Who Wander Are Lost. Thanks for hanging in there with me.

Luv, Shell

11-02-10

So Much for Silence

Dear Madness,

So much for the silence. I’ve been writing in you for just a few weeks and I am already getting ready to exceed the readership I had to begin with. Why are you all here? Is it really that interesting? Who are you? Why do you stalk me? Fine. C’est la vive. I’m not sure I want to be silent anymore. Fine, fuck it, I’ll tell you what you are all here to hear.

So here it goes:

I remember working at the subsidy publisher out of college and looking at my boss like he was insane when he said his goal one day was to write a book. Why the hell would anyone want to write a book after rolling around in the trenches of subsidy day after day?

The girl who has helped published 700 of the worst books on the planet hangs her head in shame. Here I am, 7 years later: Hello, my name is Shell and I’m writing a book.

I’m writing a relationship self help book since that is what most of you come to me with questions on in the first place, not marketing, not branding: dating. But the irony is, most of the answers to your questions come from what I’ve learned in marketing anyway. So I’m writing it all down: every last delectable secret except for how many “friends” I am actually up to at this point. (I’ll never tell). I’m just tired of you guys telling me I should.

All I can envision in my head is my query letter winding up on SlushPile Hell. What if I end up inducing the kind of nightmares I had while working at the publishing house on someone else? I shudder remembering the mental day I took where I spent the whole day hallucinating in a fever on my sofa to visions of potential “best sellers” that might have hit my desk in the near future. I think one of them was How to Touch a Dead Body. I can still see the cover in my mind. <*cringe*>

To fend off the spins of “what if” induced nausea, I keep repeating “Best Seller. Best Seller. Best Seller” to myself in some sort of neurotic OCD Tao exercise. I can do this, if only because I never have.

Luv, Shell

10-30-10

Dear San Diego,

The madness loves our only viewer. You are, however, insane.

Luv, Shell

10-30-10

10:40

10 minutes late. Intuition takes over, the warning signs boil over and I begin to type. My thumb on the “send” button, the phone rings. I stand up and move away from the computer resigned, making it to the phone in time to miss the call for the interview.

“No,” I say out loud “Initial response goes, play it where it lands.” I run back to the computer and hit send as the phone starts ringing again. My email notifying my potential marketing employer I am no longer interested in the position hits the intertubes and is lost in space.

I made a decision, something I haven’t done since I left Atlanta. That decision is the first decision of the rest of my life. I am no longer a Marketer. I am a writer, first and foremost. Let’s see where the rest of this journey takes us, shall we?

Dear Madness,

Play it where it lands and enjoy the ride…in faith.

Luv, Shell

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