We all get to do a Jarvis now, but few can pull it off like this. Lesson to service providers? Don’t piss off musicians.

It’s not all cuddly kittens and exploding Coke bottles out there. We are in the age of mass self expression.

Hat tip Ze Frank

If you Google or Bing the book’s title you end up with Al Reis’s opposite theory so he needs to get his optimisation sorted out too. And as for his promotional video……

Yesterday’s Times had a good piece on Chris Anderson and Malcolm Gladwell’s books and the fact that Anderson charges for a book called Free: The future of a radical price, in which he claims that any service that can be found online that charges much above this price will struggle.

Similarly in his great book, What Would Google Do, Jeff Jarvis devotes many words to explaining why in extolling this new business model, he resorted to one of the oldest and least like Google - a publisher and a book printed on paper.

And to be fair and consistent, Martin and I did not use many Crowdsurfing or sourcing techniques to write Crowdsurfing either. Maybe my next book will be Do As I, Not As I do: Hypocrisy and the business book.

But as I am banging on about books, do go buy What Would Google do. Jeff is a great writer and polemicist (in the best possible sense) and there is much to learn for PR folk in it.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/sir-allen-stanford/5639673/Sir-Allen-Stanford-handcuffed-billionaire-pleads-not-guilty.html

Today’s pictures of Sir Allan Stanford in the classic orange jump-suit with contrasting silver wrist manacles highlights yet again how the US gets these things right and Europe gets them wrong. Trust in business is at record lows and I for one think it will be difficult for them to properly recover if justice is not seen to be done at least where people have broken the law (or allegedly still in this case). When was the last time you saw a British businessman in similar attire (Ernest Saunders?). Once in a while it happens in Europe but not that much. Do we assume that no British or European businessmen break laws or that they do so less than US businessman? I think not. In Europe we have in the past been happy to usher offenders towards the sideline quietly, often with their pensions in tact. But long term, this is wrong if trust in business is to be rebuilt. It’s not just about the economy it’s about accountability.

Which brings me to UK politicians. I wonder now given the expenses scandal coverage and the likelihood that tax laws have been broken whether trust in MPs and the political process in the UK can propely be rebuilt without at least some of the worst offenders facing charges? And if they do should they face a US style perp walk?

More proof that Mark Earls is right and that crowd behaviour can often be explained by our herd mentality and the human instinct to copy other people. If you have not read his book, then shame on you. Hat tip to my old friend Paul Walker for this hillarious video.

Back in November last year, Hugh MacLeod did his ‘famous’ ten questions format on me and Crowdsurfing. He seems to do it to books he reads and wants to review. So given his recent publication of Ignore Everybody, available here and a damn fine read, I thought I would return the favour. So here are my ten questions and Hugh’s responses:

1. In a nutshell, why should someone read the book?

Like it says in the very beginning of the book, “So you want to be more creative, in art, in business, whatever. Here are some tips that have worked for me over the years.” I don’t claim to have any special insight in the nature of creativity. However, it’s something I put a lot of thought and effort into over the last few decades, so I have my opinions. I’m just sharing what I know, for what it’s worth.

2. You say, “The more original your idea is, the less good advice other people will be able to give you”. How do people who work for organisations and companies deal with this?

The same way any one else does. Patience, tenacity and good timing.

3. Does the “ignoring everybody” lead to loneliness?

Yes. It’s the price you WILL pay. Only you can decide if it’s worth it.

4. Is the book your social object?

I consider my cartoons my social object. The book, however, allowed me to present them to the world in way I found compelling.

5. By coincidence, I am reading David Ogilvy’s Confessions of an Advertising Man, and your style is somewhat reminiscent of that book which became a kind of handbook to running an ad agency. Is Ignore Everybody a handbook and if so, for who?

I love that book. The introduction where he wrote about working in that high-end restaurant in Paris in the 1930s is probably one of my favorite pieces of writing, ever.

I didn’t have a demographic or a “function” in mind when I wrote the book. But I did think that there were a lot of people out there who, like me, aspired to do something more “creative” with their lives, than what was expected of them. And I thought there’d be no harm in sharing with them what I had learned the hard way, over the years. The premise was really no more complicated than that.

6. What was the motive behind writing the book? I mean I know how little money these things make, but do you want it to help other people better their lives or is it just another evil plan?

I certainly didn’t expect to make any real money from it, and how much it would “help” other people is pretty debatable. But sometimes in your life you have these defining moments, where you draw a line in the sand and declare to the world, “This is who I am, this is what I believe, this is what’s important to me.” I think we all need these moments at some point, to make us better understand who we really are. Writing a book is a good way to force these moments to the surface. That was really the key driver, here.

7. You name some obviously creative people in the book like Picasso and Bob Dylan but in the hard commercial world where you spend part of your life, who are the people who have managed to stay creative that have most impressed you?

I’ve always been most inspired by small businesses that could have been a lot bigger, but the owners decided to say small, because they didn’t want to commodify something that was very dear and special to them. Thomas Mahon over at English Cut, or Amy’s Ice Cream in Austin. But that’s certainly not my only criteria. Doing what you love AND getting paid for it at the same time is actually a really, really hard trick to pull off. Most people can’t do it, but if you can, yeah, you will have earned my respect.

8. You seem to have a love/hate relationship with advertising and advertising thinking (as do I). What’s with that?

The trouble with working in advertising is that you’re basically paid to perform miracles, by people who actually don’t believe in miracles. And the fact that most of the stuff being produced is boring, noisy and obnoxious doesn’t help, either. That being said, when it works, it works REALLY well, and creates a lot of value in a very short period of time. Like all advertising and marketing folk, I just wish the latter happened more often.

9. Creativity and technology have in the past been seen as different worlds but you seem in this and in other work to really enjoy the combination? Why?

It’s not really about the tech per se, it’s about the people. Like yourself, I like smart, driven, passionate people. The tech industry seems to be a place where these people often congregate. So it’s an relatively easy place to hang out in, an easy place to meet interesting folk with interesting ideas.

10. So what are your plans for the book and what next?

I’m toying with the idea of writing a second book, albeit with some trepidation. When asked why she never wrote a second book after “To Kill A Mockingbird”, Harper Lee answered, “Because after that, there was nowhere to go but down”. I can certainly relate!

Being a book author is not important to me. Neither is being a blogger or a marketing guy. Drawing cartoons is important to me. I know that if I keep on drawing the cartoons, interesting things will come out of it eventually, so my plan is to to just keep focusing on that.

Edelman works for Microsoft. Hat tip Mr Clayton.

Like you I normally delete unread those spammy email ‘funnies’ and here I am re-producing one on my blog. But I wonder if this explains the actions of so many companies in the age of the empowered consumer and stakeholder? Way longer than the brand promsied 60 seconds by the way. Hat tip our own spammer Jackie Cooper.

The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That’s an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used? Because that’s the way they built them in England and English expatriates built the US railroads. Why did the English build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that’s the gauge they used. Why did ‘they’ use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.

Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England, because that’s the spacing of the wheel ruts? So who built those old rutted roads? Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (and England ) for their legions. The roads have been used ever since.

And the ruts in the roads? Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing. Therefore the United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot. Bureaucracies live forever.

So the next time you are handed a specification/procedure/process and wonder ‘What horse’s ass came up with it?’ You may be exactly right. Imperial Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the rear ends of two war horses. (Two horse’s asses.)

When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank.. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRB’s. The SRB’s are made by Thiokol at their factory in Utah . The engineers who designed the SRB’s would have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRB’s had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains, and the SRB’s had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know, is about as wide as two horses’ behinds.

So, a major Space Shuttle design feature of what is arguably the world’s most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse’s ass.

And you thought being a horse’s ass wasn’t important? Ancient horse’s asses control almost everything… and CURRENT Horses Asses are controlling everything else.