My Cognitive Surplus: It's Time To Shout & The Story Of Elana Waldman

The last six months has been probably one of the most life changing periods of my life.

I’ll try the abbreviated version. I saw a video on Facebook of a friend of mine’s wife, Elana Waldman. Elana was talking about the fact that she had Ovarian Cancer and the reason that no one really knew about OC is because they’re were so few survivors.

For some reason, I couldn’t get the video out of my head. It actually bothered me. So one day I woke up and had an idea. If the awareness was low because there were so few advocates, then what we should do is get all the people who are alive right now affected by OC to put their stories up in one place – a living collective and memorial to speak for all women who have and might have ovarian cancer.

Elana and Mark loved the idea and www.itstimetoshout.com was born.


But the story doesn’t end there. At the time I had suggested this concept, Cancer hadn’t really touched my life in a fundamental way. But two months into the development of the project (with a whole lotta help from all my amazing friends), my own father got a diagnosis of Pancreatic Cancer. Five months later, and about two weeks before our site actually launched my father died.

Bruce Mau has a quote, “Let Events Change You” and that is exactly what happened to me. It was a life changing, stop you in your tracks kinda life moment. A 32 year old woman who has a husband and a two year old daughter gets Ovarian Cancer and is fighting for her life. A seventy seven year old Doctor who happens to be my dad gets Pancreatic Cancer and five months later I am next to his lifeless body and saying a final good-bye.

Life my friends, is very short and can change in an instant.

My friend Lianne asked me if this got me thinking more about death and in fact, it hasn’t. What it’s gotten me thinking more about is - LIFE.

What do I want to spend the next forty years (Gd willing) doing with my time?

And that brings me to Clay Shirky’s new book Cognitive Surplus that I recently finished reading. Ok that’s certainly more weird timing. It’s a book all about our free time, what we choose to do with it and how we connect that to what we share of our lives. Not only as individuals but as a society and culture as a whole.

As he puts it,

“The cognitive surplus, newly forged from previously disconnected islands of time and talent, is just raw material. To get any value out of it, we heave to make it mean and do things. We aren’t just the source of the surplus; we are also the people designing its use, by our participation and by the things we expect of one another as we wrestle together with our new connectedness.”

I love the fact that Shirky doesn’t just skim the surfaces but makes the work readable all the same. And while I think he probably meant this as a business book, I think that anyone who is looking to use social technologies to further social change should really take a look.

As for me, I’ll take a number of lessons as we do our next phase of outreach for It’s Time To Shout. Twitter has been an incredible platform for us and it’s not just about the number of “followers” we’ve managed to connect with having only launched a few weeks ago (over 150) or our Radian 6 reach (over 550,000).

It’s about the conversations and connections between Elana and the community of people who are touched by Ovarian Cancer and what our movement can mean to all of them.

For more on our project please go to visit our site to see Elana’s Story at:
www.itstimetoshout.com

Follow us on Twitter at
www.twitter.com/itstimeoshout

Check out her video blog on Chatelaine.com
http://blog.en.chatelaine.com/category/time-to-shout/

And for Clay Shirky’s new book check it out on Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Cognitive-Surplus-Creativity-Generosity-Connected/dp/1594202532

Living The Artists Life

When my daughter was in grade two she had a dance performance where the kids were told to dress like rag dolls.

Cee asked me to help her do the costuming. For her make-up I gave her big lashes in the forms of black painted lines of the top and bottom of her eyes. Her cheeks were cherry red circles that matched with her exaggerated fire engine red lips. To top it off we took black string and weaved it into her hair to create bangs and funky looking rag doll braids.

She looked amazing. She stood out. And as you can imagine, being in grade two, that's not always an easy thing. Her best friend Jessica was less than impressed and proceeded to laugh and make fun of Cee as sometimes kids do and encouraged the others to join in.

Cee came to me with eyes streaked with tears not understanding why everyone was laughing at her.

Here's what i told her:

To be a great artist means that people will either love you or they will hate you. But worse than that, the very worst worst thing for any artist is if people have no reaction at all and don't take any notice. You should be proud that you stand out and while it's not always easy, it means that you are an artist!

It's with that context that I read the Seth Godin Quote that Jted posted (by the by haven't had a chance to read Linchpin yet) below:

"I don’t think success is showing up, doing what you’re told and then going home and watching television… I think many people in [advertising] aren't artists, actually, but people working hard to do a job or please a client. Artists do more than that. They inflame critics and they make change and they do things that makes themselves and others uncomfortable."

It's funny because Jted said that it lit a fire to his soul, while our friend Dondy in the comments fell into the "we don't create art" camp. But I don't think we are talking about art here (in the Rembrant or Andy Warhol kinda way). I think it's about how you chose to live your life and make decisions every day.

And that's what i was trying to teach Cee. People sometimes forget to tell their kids how hard it is to be different. What struggles and stresses there can be when you chose to live your life thoughtfully (hopefully) challenging the status quo. But I don't think regardless of those challenges, that I could strive to live my life any other way.

By the way, in the end, I asked my daugther if she wanted me to take off her make up all together. In perfect and classic Cee style she looked at me with her beautiful blue rag doll eyes and said

"well not all of it, but maybe Mommy if you don't mind, maybe could we take off just the cheeks?"

Changing From The Inside Out

Peter was telling me this morning about a Agency that was trying to make significant changes in how they work and their go to market strategy. And I've heard a bunch of these more than usual lately because of the panic about where dollars are shifting.

In some cases it's technical digital pure plays who want to become more creative and brand driven.

In some cases it's creative mass advertising agencies who want to shift towards the digital future.

What strikes me in all cases is how they go about it. A few thoughts on it.

You cannot buy change

Companies often try to buy the new vision that they have for themselves. Maybe it's a traditional agency buying a digital shop or a digital shop buying a branding shop. I can't think of one example where the 'buy' and integrate has worked to change the original company in any way, shape or form. I can however, think of many great places that ended up being destroyed by being purchased by a company that didn't understand the fundamentals as to why the company they purchased was successful in the first place.

You cannot hire change

The other strategy many companies look to, is to hire for change. I know, let's put a traditional marketing person as our Managing Director and that will change our production focused digital shop into a more integrated Agency. Or how about, we make our chief creative officer someone from a digital pure play and have all our traditional creative directors report to them? I've got one word for that. Oy.

You cannot rebrand your way to change

Changing a logo, and writing new brand values and promise will not change who you are unless you operationalize it. If you've redone your brand lately, ask yourself if anything else has changed? Have your HR policies changed? Has your new business approach changed? Have you changed your management style? Your language? Anything? Bueller? Anything?

You cannot process change

I recently had someone in my office who was telling me about a company that was trying to become more strategic vs. executional. The solution? Take a few of the strategic people, separate them out from the general organization and then have them try to re engineer the overall process and then mandate that to the rest of the group none of whom report to them. Oh dear. Recipe for disaster.

How does change happen?

Change happens from looking at your very DNA. You cannot change from the outside in. This is not a shallow exercise. It cannot be one thing. It cannot be top down. It cannot be about a colour palette. True change has to be from the inside out and has to be about actions and like i said just the other day, it has to be reflected in every decision that you make every day.

More on this later.

Calling All Slacktivists

Am i an environmentalist because I toss my plastic cup into a blue bin?

Do i care about the homeless issue because I give a loonie to someone begging in downtown Toronto?

And if i click on a join button to support a cause does this actual mean anything?

Apparently, if i think it does, than i just might be a slacktivist. What's that you ask? According to our friends at Wikipedia:

"Slacktivism (sometimes slactivism) is a portmanteau formed out of the words slacker and activism. The word is considered a pejorative term that describes "feel-good" measures, in support of an issue or social cause, that have little or no practical effect other than to make the person doing it feel satisfaction. The acts also tend to require little personal effort from the slacktivist."

My first experience of using technology for social campaigning, was my friend Jay's efforts with Greenpeace to 'fax the feds'. And one of the reason I've always loved the Web is its accelerated ability to ignite social causes.

This slacktivism thing has gotten me worried. I'm wondering if rather than having the effect of furthering social change, it's actually doing the opposite. It's allowing people to feel like they are doing something when really, they aren't at all. I'm glad everyone is feeling good, but I'm less glad that they aren't thinking more about doing good.

So that's my thought today, think more about DOING good.

Calling all slacktivists to join me....

ps. should i start a Facebook group???


photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/85853333@N00/2414018946/

Retrieval: Cultural Lost & Found

As I read my brother's very interesting post on the history of the leather jacket in modern culture, it reminded me of the importance of 'retrival' both in user-centric strategy and design.

Dave's take on the importance of the "hide":

"Why is a hide important as a concept? Hide implies and imbues all the earliest conceptions of what leather is. Leather is a skin; the skin of an animal. We are hairless, clawless, toothless beings who took the hair, claws and teeth of the animals we feared and revered most and through creativity, invention and respect fashioned our own hair, claw and tooth. Protection from the elements, animals and each other were fundamental to the fashioning of leather jackets. That paradigm stretches far into the 1970s, where North American made leather jackets arguably reach the pinnacles of the representation of those instincts. Where jackets run a perfect gamut of utility meets fashion."

If we look at one of the core quadrants to Marshall Mcluhan's tetrad of media effects it the notion of retrieval. What does the medium bring back that was previously lost? In David's case as he begins to create this new couture vintage leather business, he is deeply rooted in what drives our basic desires and needs to own leather.

One doesn't have to look further than this as a concept to understand why traditional market research fails to uncover deep insights and rarely predicts accurately change. The sum of the parts rarely becomes a meaningful whole. Instead, we must look to things such a figure and ground to understand not only what is visible but what lies culturally and socially below even our own daily conscious to provide a foundation for strategy and design lost and found.

A Different Take On Red & Blue America

"Leading churches in USA"

And as one person put it, clearly this diagram shows that up in Canada we are godless heathens. heh.

Public Displays Of Experimentation & The Digital Self

"Identity construction becomes a continual daily task"

- Jamal + Chapman 2008


I've got to think that the continual "status casting" and lifestreaming that is going on with the youth of today has to have an impact on identity construction in a more fundamental way than people are realizing.

Part of growing up is about taking chances. The Web to some extent has sped up that innovation and yet, on the other hand I wonder at what point the "public displays of experimentation" will have an adverse affect. Kids generally are experiential and telling them something is one thing - but something impacting them in the real world is another. Now, connected 24/7 they not only have their successes streamed live and in digital colour, but their failures as well. Their memories both good and bad are being digitally imprinted without the ability to hide them quietly as the time and distance of the event passes.

"Identities are not fixed by some core, singular, essential, universal properties. Rather they are contested, multiple and shifting and are embedded in cultural and historical practices"

- Bhatia, 2002

Except that the culture is being created at a lightening pace and the concept of history, before it is even understood, is already in the making.