Perhaps that’s a metaphor for living a good life. If you actually took a moment to reflect, pause and care about what you were doing or even just be aware of it, you could do more good things instead of doing great things (to understand that distinction check out this article by Umair Haque).

Most of the time we’re not faced with the deep moral quandaries that perplex philosophers (e.g. having to choose between our child and our village; go watch the last episode of M.A.S.H.) but we still manage to mire ourselves in short term thinking couched in the language of reason or rationality (which are better described as excuses and rationalization).

It’s easy to tell yourself you’re doing the best you can, making things work with what you have, but are you actually doing the good thing? The action or course of actions that leads to a better world for iteratively more and more people?

But perhaps that’s the problem, that we don’t value a world that it is more vibrant and robust than when we started, or where more people are included in the dialogue to live in that vibrant and robust world.

The Hobbesian notion that we are first and foremost individuals whose lives are “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” in need of social contracts to police our brutish tendencies has pervaded social, political and economic theory for a couple centures now. Yet contemporary research into neuroscience and psychology emphasizes that at our heart we are not brutish and individualistic. Instead we are social and communal creatures driven by a need to connect and empathize with others.

Empathy, not rationality, is our greatest strength.

Why is it then that we still glorify rationality and individualism (particularly in the U.S.)?

I don’t get it. We are not distinct agents disconnected from others and powered by our rationality to succeed or not by our own hand. There is no blank slate, no reset button.

This kind of thinking has done considerably more harm than good to the world on all levels, yet it gets perpetuated over and over again because it achieves great things. Things that are perhaps wondrous and effective yet to what end?

If you’re not doing the good thing, who cares if you’re doing great at it.

Creating a clear and powerful explanation that moves people to engage with you and your content is an entirely different beast that can only be unleashed by talking to people. Your first words about your services or products are a first draft and like any good performer, your content needs to perform in front of people to get real feedback.

Start explaining what you do to anyone who asks.

In launching Pardon My Content, I’ve been pushing myself to explain what the hell content strategy is and more generally what the hell am I doing these days to make the bills go away (other than ignoring phone calls). As I discuss with friends, associates and potential business partners/clients my language is streamlining. I’m discovering the turn key words that make the metaphorical lightbulb click on.

Having a business and selling your services is not about what you do, but about what problems you solve.

To reach potential clients that may need your services but don’t know it, your pitch has to hook them on the problem they have. Mainline content should be solutions and problem solving oriented, not tactics and methodology oriented.

It’s so easy to get caught up in the geektastic jargon, tools and tactics that you and your colleagues enjoy, but your clients want to hear how you can help them, not how you can spend eight hours on taxonomy or curation methods.

Take time to explain your work and services to people who have no idea what you do; it’s the notion that developers are the worst people to test for User Experience, they’re too ingrained in the domain to know how to use it like a normal person.

Business should be about service, good fucking service that solves problems and takes care of people.

Sometimes we forget we are artists, that we are creative and curious at heart.

I was lucky as a kid. I had a grandmother who was a musician and a painter, a father who was a woodworker and a physicist, a mother who was a painter and teacher (they were and are all more than that but labels are convenient).

I learned how to create things with my hands, to build shanty tree houses and go karts, to climb and run, to explore my world in three-dimensions. I learned to paint and draw and work in a garden. I learned how to learn and how to dig my heels down and get to work.

In 5th and 6th grade I spent one day a week in a trailer dedicated to solving problems in future scenarios. We had legos hooked up to computers, a room to rend and mend ideas, and city models laid out on full sheets of plywood.

I traveled to gifted summer camp and drafted cars and buildings, delved into perspective and structure. I had a drafting table and sets of fine pencils labeled HB to 7H, straight edges and protractors.

I grew up an artist, creating. Then along the way it went into remission through high school and even through parts of college. I didn’t draw, I didn’t create. I eventually discovered dance and found a piece of art through that.

Nearly 10 years after high school, I find myself paint brush in hand edging a wall in my apartment with Japanese Fern Behr paint and it hits me. Maybe I was meant to be an artist this whole time and I just forgot.

Painting and working with my hands for a few days brought out that enjoyment that I had as a youth. It’s a realization that as children we imagine the best things we can be and then we forget that we once imagined ourselves doing amazing creative things.

Perhaps Picasso had it right:

“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.”

After my challenge with Andi over at Instigationology, I’ve been working in the background to setup a content strategy & design consulting firm and I’m proud to let it out into the world.

To give a brief summary of what content strategy can do for your business, I’ll quote from my first blog post, Content Strategy What?.

I work with your designer, your developer, your content writers, your brand managers, and other stakeholders to determine what kind of content you will have, how it will be presented and how it will be delivered that leads to a positive impact upon your business.

As I dig deeper into content strategy, explain it to peers, potential clients and friends, it appeals to me more and more.

I like getting my hands dirty with the difficult questions and content strategy is philosophizing about content; it’s a deep exploration into the structure, narrative and experience of content.

Dealing with content is messy. It’s complicated, it’s painful, and it’s expensive.  And yet, the web is content. Content is the web. It deserves our time and attention.

It’s not a trendy topic like social media marketing or SEO (although it definitely has something to say to those things) and it’s not as straight forward as editing or writing web content. It’s also not a fly-by-night business which sells ebooks to the masses so I wake up with more money in my bank account than there was when I went to sleep.

It’s challenging, stimulating and honestly I’m at the beginning of a journey with far more experienced people in the field to learn from.

Please take a look and share the word that Pardon My Content is out and ready for action, subscribe to the RSS feed if you are interested in learning more about content strategy and how it relates to your business, blog or practice as a web worker.

This year the project was aimed at educators in New Orleans who have one of the toughest jobs in the U.S.

To put education in New Orleans in perspective to the rest of the States and the world, a few statistics.

• The United States is falling behind other nations when it comes to the quality of our schools. Among 30 nations in a 2006 international study of student achievement, the United States ranked 25th in Math and 24th in Science.
• In 2005, Louisiana was ranked dead last in the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Within Louisiana, Orleans Parish was the worst performing school district in the state.
• Kids in the poorest 25% of the population successfully complete college at about 1/10th the rate of kids in the richest 25%.
• New Orleans was and is one of the poorest cities per capita in the nation – 93% of the students in the Orleans Parish School District receive free or reduced lunch.

To put it directly, New Orleans is one of the poorest cities per capita in the U.S. where the poorest kids attend college at 1/10th the rate of the richest, in the parish with the worst performing school district, in the state that is ranked last in the U.S. for education, in a country that is ranked near the bottom of industrialized states in International studies.

That means New Orleans was at the bottom of the bottom according to surveys and studies in 2005 & 2006.

Since Katrina, the state of education in New Orleans has instead of decaying even farther, become a testing ground for educational systems. It is, perhaps, the biggest experiment in education in the U.S. headed by the dedication of teachers, the rise of charter schools and an almost tech-like approach to incubating new schools and staff for success.

This agile take on education systems has kickstarted a dramatic uptake in scores that is unheard of in urban areas.

“Over the last five years, teachers, administrators, and community members have started an educational movement to close our gap. In 4th grade math, that gap has been cut in half. In 8th grade English/Language Arts, it’s closed by 10 points. This amount of improvement is unprecedented. No other city has sustained such gains for such an extended period of time.”

With a story and vision like this, it’s hard not to get behind this as a project.

We had a number of administrators, teachers and board members attend the beginning part of the day to help us brainstorm what they needed, how to tell their story and where to focus our efforts. We had around 60-80 attendees (content, designers, developers, etc.) who split into two groups (content & techies) to focus on different aspects in the morning section then came together in the afternoon to put it all together.

I had the intention of helping out with concept and design but after getting up and setting up a comprehensive site map to really work the infrastructure of the site from the top down I ended up taking on a project management/content management role.

Helping lead the discussion with Jen Schnidman of Drop the Chalk and Matt Candler of New Schools of New Orleans on what the main goal of the site was (supporting an passionate community), kind of content to have, how to deliver content, create taxonomy structures, layout and much more was an surprising and exceptionally rewarding experience. It reinforced that the path I’m looking down right now, content strategy, is one that I’m deeply interested in and capable of pursuing successfully.

I had not anticipated becoming a lead on this project and will be investing more time into it with Matt to help train, explore the pathways to create, manage and curate content, and help the community come together in the future.

So please check out Closing the NOLA Gap and spread it amongst your friends to share its exceptional story. At the very least watch the intro video on the landing page.

Also of note, I was brought on for a short little snippet on NewOrleansTech.net #bangitout podcast.