I get Twitter now – finally

About two weeks ago we saw one of the longest running threads on an ASAE listserve topic – about 4-5 dozen posts regarding Twitter. It was fascinating to watch and be a part of. It’s why I’m an ASAE member. As that discussion was starting I was sitting down to write an article to explain why I didn’t ‘get it’ and why I’d stayed away from the ‘stupid, silly, time wasting fad’ for more than three years.  A few weeks later, with some 250 ‘followers’ hanging on my every word (yeah… right), I can honestly say that I now ‘get it’ – and thought it might be useful to share what this ASAE member now ‘gets’.

First thing worth mentioning? I have no way to prove this, but I suspect that more than a few readers of this infrequently updated blog have just bypassed this post because they saw the word ‘Twitter’ in the subject line.  I did the same thing for three years. Twitter? Not interested. Nothing there for me. Nothing to see here. Move along…

Pity.

First? It is perfectly, totally, 100% true – there’s a lot, an awful lot, of banality on Twitter. There’s a fellow I know – a rather good cartoonist and podcaster  – who’s on Twitter. Follow him (ie. Subscribe to his Tweets (ie. Postings)) if you want to know what flavour ice cream his kids have dropped on the floor, what colour T-shirt he’s wearing or whether or not he arrived at the Mall yet. I Followed him for a day or so, had a small brain freeze as a result, and then removed him from the list of people I was following (you can do that – it’s allowed)…

Why mention him if I’m trying to build a case for an association getting involved with Twitter? (and yes, that’s what I’m doing here) Well, for starters, as many Assns would like to have,  he has a ‘personal’ and a ‘national’ brand… each month he has about 50,000 people download his podcasts. Raise your hand if 50,000+ of your members (you have 50,000+ members… correct?) download your Assn podcast each month. (You have a podcast… correct?)

Of those 50,000+ people, 6,899 (just checked) people follow him hourly on Twitter.  Why do they follow him? I have no idea. All I know is that they do. They get some value from this – he benefits from that. Seems like a reasonable deal all round.

One of the perennial questions posted on the ASAE listserves is, “How often should we be e-mailing/contacting our members.” Because we’re concerned that sending them mail ‘too’ often (more than once or twice a month) might be problematic in some way. Yet? There is a segment of our membership, and our potential membership (more on this in a second), who are ready, willing and able to receive information from us continually, every hour of the day… And our ‘stretch goal’ is to bump our frequency of communication to once a week?

Sometimes, not always, solutions to existing problems stare us in the face as we blindly step over them.

Another perennial concern shared by most, not all, associations is declining membership. We’re getting older and the retirees at the top aren’t being replaced with youngsters at the bottom. Add to this, the effect of a shaky economy (is it okay to say we’re in a full blown recession yet?) and we have a recipe for ‘interesting times’ ahead of us. Two questions are always on the table, “How do we attract new members?”, and “How do we communicate with the alphabet soup of Generations?”

Who’s on Twitter? Mostly 18-24 year olds… mostly college and college grads.
Google {Demographics of Twitter} for a slew of recent sources for detailed stats.

Who were we looking for again to join our organizations?

One of the most fascinating (to me any way) uses of Twitter, that’s directly applicable to Associations of all shapes and sizes – is how it’s being used in conferences. People are blithely Tweeting away the nuggets of ‘wisdom’ that sometimes fall from the mouths of speakers. They’re also creating a strong sense of community and a ‘Wish you were here” mentality — what’s THAT worth in future attendance numbers?

I can immediately hear some objections to this. A) How could we charge for this? B) How do we restrict this flow of Assn generated content to Assn members? C) How do we control this?

Short answer? We can’t. – But we can be more active in our participation of this phenomenon. Want REAL feedback about your conference? Want to build community? Want an organic way to encourage people to be more of a part of what’s going on? Encourage Tweeting.

The thing is… Tweeters are already doing this at the conferences of Associations who want nothing to do with this new fangled way of communicating – gosh darn it! And while you’re at it? Get off my lawn you young Whippersnappers… The things kids get up to these days… why in my time we used to…

Hmm…

If you’d asked me a month ago what I thought of Twitter – I’d have told you. You know me well enough to know I would not have pulled any punches in my assessment that Twitter was an absolute waste of a professional’s time. I would have been perfectly, totally, 100% wrong. That happens from time to time. I find those occurances educational and informative. Even useful.

Truth is, Twitter, like all tools, is what we make of it.

Cheers
@pdejager

Why to Write

Writing serves many purposes – here are some of the reasons why I write (even why I participate in list serves)

1) It helps you think.
If you can put an idea down on paper then you are inevitably deciding, from one word to the next, what is important and what is not.

Since writing is sequential, since you can’t say everything at once, you have to impose an order on your thoughts. As a speaker – this is useful, but it’s useful to anyone in any endeavor.

2) It’s practice.
As a speaker, I’m essentially a word smith. My primary tool is the English language, and writing allows me, and forces me, to play with words, phrases, cadence and meter. Since I’m always writing to an audience, I am in a sense, always presenting.

3) It’s advertising.
I DARE you to contact the advertising department of any publication and ask them what it would cost for you to run a full page ad describing your services. Be sitting down when you do this. Yet… a full page article is far more powerful a means to demonstrate your ‘power’ to a potential client. And sometimes, if you’re lucky, they’ll pay you for the privilege.

**Note… keep all your copyrights. It’s your work – unless it’s a ‘work for hire’ – keep your copyright – you want to be able to use your own work in perpetuity. Give them the right to use your work… but keep your copyright.

4) It’s marketing.
Marketing isn’t advertising. It’s just general exposure. Write enough and people will ‘SEE’ your articles in publications that don’t even know who you are. They’ll insist they know you… when they’ve never met you.

5) It’s your PR ambassador. And it works forever… for free.
Write ‘timeless’ articles – articles that will as useful 10 years from now as they are today. That isn’t always possible or desirable… but it’s a goal to follow when you can. You want your work to speak for you when you aren’t there. Once you’ve written what I classify as a ‘keeper’ (this posting is a self referential example of that I hope) then it gets saved… and then passed around. And literally becomes a personal employee and PR agent.

6) It’s multipurpose.
I’m the world’s laziest man. Anything I produce, must carry several loads. A good article is all of the above, and it’s a potential presentation at the drop of a hat.

7) It’s plastic.
As in… any well written article can be tweaked and twisted to generate at least one more significantly different article, if not half a dozen. Hmm… this ‘article’ was first posted to an online discussion… it’s morphed already, and will again!

8 ) It’s something you’ll learn from.
If you don’t write much – then you’ll likely not even believe this one… if you do write a lot, you might know what I mean. When you write… and then read what you’ve written later… then you’ll learn stuff you didn’t know you knew. I can’t really explain this, but I’m a smarter, more insightful person when I write. I often come up with ideas as I’m writing that I literally did not know I knew.

9) and finally? Writing is calming. Well… sort of.
If you’ve got writer’s block? Well, you’ll just have to shoot yourself – it’s the only real cure. BUT when the muse takes over, and the words begin to flow like water across the page? Then it’s the best thing going to boost your spirit and your ego.

Now… go break a pen
Peter de Jager

Six Billion Nation States

When Archimedes said, “Give me a lever long enough, and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world”. I’m sure he knew he was right in theory only; that his vision of “world moving” was forever beyond the physical reach of individuals. Yet he was perfectly correct in another sense. Individuals, by applying the right technology in the right way, can move the world.

In many ways this is an observation of the obvious, or at least it should be. The category of human achievement we label as “technology”, is nothing more than a collection of tools leveraging every aspect of human ability: Cars, trains, planes and ships, leverage our ability to move; Microscopes and telescopes leverage our sight; Hydraulic pumps leverage physical effort; Computers leverage every aspect of the mind, from reasoning to memory … The list goes on, yet people are continually and genuinely surprised when individuals achieve what was once achievable only by corporations, industries and Nation States.

Technological progress continually increases personal ability. It makes us more capable than those who went before us. Even more powerful than the companies, infrastructures and governments they erected to increase their capability.

A transportation example: I’ve visited more than three dozen countries, crossed the Atlantic at least 200 times, and traveled a great global circle twice. A century ago, I would have been the envy of Presidents and Kings. Today this achievement is practically without merit. I barely qualify as an elite frequent flyer.

Immersed in capability, we lose sight of what technology has made possible. Constant acquaintance with the amazing, immunizes us against awe.

Familiarity doesn’t breed contempt; because contempt requires conscious recognition. Familiarity breeds apathy, even ignorance of the wondrous. Once upon a time, only governments and big business could send a message around the world. Today the most disadvantaged of us, the homeless, own cell phones. Ho hum.

Because of this dramatic increase of leveraged ability, individuals can now compete with corporations, even industries. The almost exhausted example of Napster… an application developed by two students in a dorm room on a personal computer, placed the multi-billion dollar music industry at the edge of a precipice in less than a decade.

Even the loosely organized Fourth Estate is challenged by an individual’s ability to communicate on a global scale. Matt Drudge and his Drudge Report was as much a legitimate news source during the Clinton scandal, as the New York Times or the Washington Post. Personal Web Blogging by individuals has awoken and is considered as much a reasonable source of news and opinion as the major distributors, by a generation disenchanted with these traditional media channels.

This ability to leverage is not restricted to the domains of commerce. The world’s largest military machine is at war with an individual and his relatively small network of like minded ‘ associates’. Paul Rogers, Professor of Peace Studies at Bradford University, and author of “Losing Control – Global Security in the 21st Century” (Pluto Press), acknowledges this shift in power when he recognizes: “the capability for relatively weak groups, whether states or sub-state actors (italics mine), to be able to exercise political violence against advanced urban-industrial states.”

There is a growing awareness that through their increased ability to wage war, individuals can demand equality with the Nation State. Given the current world stage, it is difficult to argue they haven’t already succeeded.

Our shared fear is that these individuals will gain control of WMD. This acquisition immediately elevates them to the status of world powers. The military experts have even coined a perfectly appropriate term “Asymmetric Warfare”… while it was meant to describe those situations where smaller forces apply their strength against the weakest defenses of stronger forces, it aptly describes any situation where governments must devote their full attention to the attacks from what were once considered gnats.

Nor is the ability to wage war totally dependent on mere acquisition of ready made WMD. We now have the ability to create WMD in the back room. Specifically the weapons of biological, and chemical warfare. Germ warfare has always been an option, it’s nothing new. Poisoning a well, contaminating a food supply or distributing infected blankets are all low tech, historical versions of modern biological warfare, accessible to anyone with malicious intent, but technology has once again, raised the ante.

A team of researchers, at the University of New York, led by Dr. Eckard Wimmer have assembled a viable Polio virus from tailor-made sequences ordered from a supply house. Their ‘blueprint’ came from the Internet. According to one of the researchers, Jeronimo Cello, “It was very easy to do.” While the more dangerous viruses we know of are more complex, and therefore more difficult to assemble, the researchers admit that constructing such viruses is a distinct possibility.

As stated in the beginning, none of this should surprise us; these developments merely echo the trend of democratizing political power. Kingdoms once concentrated the power to shape and change the world in a single individual, now all individuals can move the world. Today we’re all Heads of State.

Archimedes’ lever, much to his eternal surprise, is now a common reality.