“What the Heck is That, Mr. K?”

I haven’t posted here in a long, long time. Obviously.

Mostly, I have been living my life, my real life. I’ve not been engaging in social media in particular, but that extends to most things online and device-driven.

I’ve also been teaching. I started teaching second grade in August, 2019. When the pandemic hit, we went to distance learning. To keep students engaged, I held twice-daily check-in sessions. These were at 8am and at 1:30pm, so as to mimic the “regular” school day and provide routine and stability for my students (and their families).

I also quickly realized that keeping kids engaged — and not letting them slip into a de facto early Summer Break — would require some extra work. So i came up with a game, “What the Heck is That, Mr. K?”

I bought a simple digital microscope and snapped images through it of everyday things — fruits and vegetables, desks and pencils, salt, my beard, my phone case… you name it.

During our online sessions, I would have these images ready to go, and then share them with the students when they needed a break or when we were transitioning between subjects or modalities. The microscope cost me about $30, I think, and it took about 5 minutes, each, to shoot, label, and prepare images. The results were priceless. As a “brain break,” it felt like a good leveraging of technology in a distance setting, yet very much like something I might have done in class as well. It kept students guessing and thinking and engaged.

Distance Learning, all of a sudden and in the early stage of the pandemic, was far from ideal despite the best efforts of the district, admin, and teachers. There were students who were not well-served by circumstances or family dynamics in that version of distance learning, and there were a myriad of issues that cropped up, large and small, unforseen and predictable.

One of my personal goals during distance learning was to make sure the students still felt connected as a class, to make sure they knew they were not going through this upsetting time alone or isolated, to bond them to one another as closely as possible outside the classroom, and to have them be able to come back together at some future date with shared, common experiences, stories, and memories.

Sometimes, a small thing helps make a big thing happen. I am very pleased with the results of my experiment with “What the Heck is That, Mr. K?”. In the big scheme of things, it was really just a drop in the bucket. But that drop rippled through the lives of most of my students in a very positive way.

Yes, This IS Who We Are – At Least 17 Dead in Florida School Shooting

There have been more than a dozen school shootings so far in 2018 (CNN). Each time, like there’s a template for these things, there’s a candlelight vigil, lots of talk about how the community comes together and the inevitable hashtag meme, [city name]STRONG. And some minister or mayor or congressperson will say, “This is not who we are.”

According to CNN, 2017’s 90 US mass shootings are nearly one-third of the 292 such attacks globally for that period. While the United States has 5% of the world’s population, it had 31% of all public mass shootings.

This is who we are.

But this is not who we should be.

We need to stop telling this lie: “This is not who we are.” In fact, the frequency of mass shootings and school shootings practically defines the US and sets us apart from other countries.

What we should be saying is, “Why are we this way?”

I Bought a Purple Cow

I skidded to stop when I saw the purple cow. Wow! It really stood out.
So I backtracked bit and pulled into the farm’s lot. I discovered the purple cow was pricier than regular cows, but, well, it was just so incredible I had to buy it.
I got the cow butchered with no issues. But then things started to go badly. Turns out the meat is not purple. Apparently, it was just the hide that was colored. I went back to the farm and told the farmer I felt ripped off. Why, I asked, was the cow so expensive when the meat was the same as other cows?
He explained that coloring a cow is actually difficult and expensive. He had no choice but to charge more. So I headed home. I was unhappy about he cost, but didn’t really didn’t feel I could ask for money back as that would just hurt the farmer. He was just trying to sell a cow, after all.
So I headed home to have a nice steak dinner. That, I figured, would be pretty nice and make the whole experience seem better.
But the meat tasted different. That, I later discovered, was from the chemicals used to make the cow such a vibrant purple. The chemicals, it turns out, contaminate the meat. And they’re carcinogenic.
It’s been a few months since I bought the purple cow. I got back from the doctor today and the prognosis is not good. I probably won’t live to see the conclusion of my lawsuit against the farmer. It’s going slow because the farmer is also suing his marketing firm. And the marketing firm is suing the chemical manufacturer.
I wish I’d never seen that purple cow.
—— — — — — — —
I know the story above is heavy-handed, but marketers really need to get past Seth Godin’s stupid Purple Cow idea.
Sure, screaming gets attention. But it’s a bad strategy for actually communicating anything. And everyone screaming gets us nowhere.
But the worst part of Godin’s idea is that making a purple does not improve the cow. The cow is a cow, and it’s just fine being not purple. Making a purple cow is, however, costly. And that cost has to be added somewhere…  So, added cost. No added benefit.
Building great products and taking them into the marketplace to go toe-to-toe on the virtues of the product should be the goal. That’s how honest and clear-thinking marketers should operate. If painting it purple will make it a better product, fine. If it will just add cost and only temporarily differentiate the product (on a superficial and ultimately unimportant factor), then don’t.
The challenge shouldn’t be to get noticed, regardless what you have to say or sell. The challenge should be how to best communicate the passion, skill, and quality you’ve poured into your product.

Getting to Friend Zero™

I’ve been in pursuit of “Inbox Zero” for some time now, and things are getting better there. But, in my quest to pare my life down to what is most valuable and essential, I’ve also decided to pursue what I’m calling Friend Zero™.

I’ve been thinking for some time that I should just bail out of Facebook altogether. After all, I’ve been saying for some time that “social media is the open sewer of american discourse.” But there are reasons for not bailing out altogether.

First, as a marketing and communications professional, I should be not only using, but well informed and skilled with social media… no matter how much I might think it’s become an albatross around the necks of many businesses. There is, for some businesses, legitimate value in some of the so-called social media platforms.

So a professional presence is not a bad idea. Besides, there are some professional connections that also matter personally to me.

But I do want to pare down the distractions, fluff, and time sinks in my life. I want to engage in more truly personal forms of communication and more authentically connect with the people I value. A social media account pared down to the “professional essentials,” and cleared of all personal detritus and distractions, that’s Friend Zero.

I know that I am still Facebook friends with some people I will never see again and would never pick up the phone and call. These seem like the obvious, low-hanging fruit of getting to Friend Zero. Looking at my friend list, I think, if I called them right now on the phone:

a) How much would I have to remind them who I am?

b) How weird would it be to be calling them? Would they be confused or creeped out?

c) When is the last time I interacted with them without a prompt from Facebook?

But, to pare things down to a strictly professional presence, I can’t simply bail out of Facebook altogether. Instead, I’ve have to cull my friends out of the platform and leave a skeleton crew of professional connections. That will be the ideal state of Friend Zero.

As a first step to Friend Zero, each time I️ get an email notification from Facebook, I’ll:

  • Contact that person, by phone or in person, if they are valuable to me. I’ll let them know I am moving from FB to “good, old fashioned” communications with them.
  • I’ll capture all the relevant information from the subject’s account — Their contact info, birthday, etc. (The stuff that used to go in an address book.)
  • Then, I will unfriend that person.

— OR —

  • If I don’t feel compelled to actually contact them, I will just unfriend them. It will be a judgement call each time.

The result, I hope, is only professional relationships on Facebook, and an account there the I can experiment with and learn from without the distractions of “real” interpersonal relationships. For my friends, it means a return to good, old-fashioned communications and, I hope, more fulfilling personal relationships.

I’ll regularly report my progress here. Wish me luck.

— Dan

Brace Yourself for Unboxing Videos, Trump-Style

I’m making a prediction here, one I’ve made to friends and family for a while now.

Next month, some of us will start seeing a bump in our paychecks as a result of the tax bill passed late last year by Republicans. Some of us will see increased wages (such as Starbucks announced today) or year-end bonuses (such as Disney announced recently).

I’m certain we’ll see a huge wave of “unboxing” style videos. We’ll see everyday Americans hold up their paychecks and say “Thank you President Trump!”

The wave will crest right before the 2018 midterm elections, I’m sure.

Democrats, inept as always, will writhe in anguish and fumble their attempts to controvert or debunk these videos. I’d call this a horrible strategy, but there’s no strategy involved, just reaction. These are Democrats after all. As if on cue, MSNBC will bumble around trying to discredit these videos and Rachel Maddow will devote several segments to debunking and seeking “what’s behind” them videos. Pelosi and Schumer will whimper and whine… And, while they fiddle, Rome will continue to burn.

I predict that Democrats, lacking any coherent philosophy or message, will fail to take the house, and might actually lose seats in the Senate. And Trump will solidify his shot at a second term.

The only real question is who will get the credit. Will people say, “Thank you Republicans”…? Or will Trump hog all the glory and credit? Oh, yeah…. it’s Trump. Forget I even asked.

What will we do with all our cars?

A recent article on financialpost.com, “All fossil-fuel vehicles will vanish in 8 years in twin ‘death spiral’ for big oil and big auto,” has some good, clear thinking on the subject of autonomous cars and the coming transformation in transportation.

I think the most salient quote, for me, is this: :

“The parallel is what happened to film cameras – and to Kodak – once digital rivals hit the market. It was swift and brutal.”

There are far more factors at work than the kind of large-scale economic ones at work in this scenario. There are a myriad other inflection points, and each will serve to further catalyze the others. For example, what happens when the DMV sees a 10% drop in car registration fees? Fine, now how about 20%? 30% When the writing is on the wall, they won’t want to be caught short; registration prices will increase dramatically, and that compel more people to opt out of car ownership – causing a feedback loop that which will hasten the process. What happens when insurance companies see car insurance revenue drop by 10%? 20% You get the idea. Insurance companies, repair shops, AAA, the DMV – none will want to be left holding the bag.

I think we will all be amazed to see, in the not-too-distant future, neighborhoods of new homes built without driveways or garages. Grandchildren of today’s Millenials will see a house with a driveway as nostalgic and old-fashioned, like seeing a house with a TV antenna on the roof today.

One can easily imagine a brief boom in converting garages to finished rooms and a resulting desire to demolish driveways. After all, wont’ it be an eyesore to have a driveway that leads into a wall?

I’ve said for a long time that this changeover to autonomous vehicles and transportation-as-service will only go slowly until it goes very, very quickly.

But let’s not forget what is truly driving all of this (pun unavoidable). When you get into your car nowadays, you are a driver. When you get into an autonomous vehicle, you are a consumer. This is the simple fact that is making all of this happen with such urgency. And it’s why data-centric companies are leading the charge.