I’m against these measures for 2 reasons, and it’s not about being able to pirate films, music or books. In all honesty, I can’t remember the last time I consciously attempted to download pirated content – I’m too busy to spend time worrying whether my laptop is secure enough to be safe and locating a decent copy when I can generally pay the ‘lazy man’s tax’ and download from a legal site. Generally many of the acts, artists and authors I enjoy tend to be aware of and use Creative Commons licences anyway.

The reasons I’m against the attempts by large media companies to shore up their moribund traditional business practice by funding politicians to bring in laws are simple:

• I believe that a free and open internet provides far more benefits to the whole of society than it damages, and that copyright is an incentive for creation which is meant to serve society as a whole, not restrict innovation and ideas in the service of extending profits for large corporations.
• I’ve enjoyed the benefits of a free and open internet which allows me relative freedoms of self-publishing and self-expression, which has enabled me to continue to build a business and career based on creating content, training journalists, and helping companies to connect more effectively with their customers. All of this will become more difficult due to the lack of understanding shown in all new bills and treaties proposed so far by people who have little empathy with the users of the world wide web.

And there’s an additional reason why I’m standing up against these proposals with more strength than ever before – my son. I don’t want him to grow up in a world where the greatest tool for access to knowledge, community and enabling basic human rights is castrared by large media companies because they haven’t evolved and want to keep doing business the old fashioned way.

After almost 4 years, I still occasionally feel surprised and amazed that I have responsibility for another human being – looking after a cat and a rabbit were stressful enough, let alone remembering to eat healthily and get enough sleep when I’m working hard. But as a parent I share what I presume are normal concerns – worrying my son might get ill, hurt, be unhappy, etc. As a geek parent I also have two concerns specific to technology:

• I want my son to benefit from education and access to the tools to be able to take things apart, modify them, and create with them to build his own inventions and ideas, whether that’s hardware, software, art or ideas. I don’t want him to be a passive consumer forcefed applications and content which is so protected that it can’t be examined, played with, and learnt from.
• I want my son to benefit from a free and open internet which allows him to potentially connect with a global network of people who may share his ideas, beliefs, and passions. He may turn out to be the most popular kid in his school, but he may also have interests which aren’t shared by everyone else – the internet is an amazing tool for establishing other people share the same problems or hobbies, and reducing the isolation which can be a symptom of being a teenager in particular.

With my limited knowledge of politics and finance, I have little hope that the current administrations and electoral processes will change enough to stop the constant challenges to our digital evolution. So it’s my duty, and yours, to stand up for the things we want to preserve, for ourselves, and for our children, family, friends and everyone else.

If you’re in Europe, contact the relevant MEPs now – the questions being raised over ACTA have led to positive signs in both Poland and Germany, and there’s no reason why we can’t make a change in other coutnries if we all act. I have no doubt that eventually an open system will prevail no matter what laws are passed, but lets not allow the current generations of teenagers and children to have their potential wasted while that happens.

So if you’re interested in attending, send a tweet to @DPiPboro or add the event on Facebook to give us an idea of numbers, please.

Oh, and DPiP is also on Google+ if you’d prefer to keep up with events and news there instead.

By contrast, I was on the edge of my seat during the Ireland – Wales match in the Six Nations Rugby today. And [spoiler alert] being a passionate Ireland supporter (The two manifestations of my Irish ancestry are in rugby and whiskey), the end result was a bit of a kick in the teeth.

Chatting with a friend, I was struck by the difference between the ‘fan of a game’, as I am with the NFL, and he is with rugby, and the ‘true fan’ of a team. Watching a match as a fan of a sport can be quite relaxing, as you can enjoy an entertaining game without investing your own emotion. Watching as a fan of a team is a stressful rollercoaster of emotions which often ends in disappointment.

In fact, even when your team wins, it can be so stressful than you have little memory of the event, which was certainly true when I watched Chelsea win the 1997 FA Cup Final against Middlesborough, which was the first major victory for the team in 27 years, and the first in my lifetime. As I walked home from the pub after watching the game and people asked about it, I could remember the score, but not even who had scored. And that’s including a goal after just 42 seconds which remained a record for 12 years!

What brands need to know about their true fans

Here’s the important point for brands, and it isn’t about pricing season tickets, or how to sell hats and scarves. It’s the fact that the majority of fans will continue to follow their team with passion and enthusiasm despite the fact that they won’t win. Statistically, 99% of the teams in any competition will end up losing at some point, and will have lost the previous year, and the year before that, and potentially for many years before.

Brands always want to portray their best side, hiding flaws and imperfections in the belief that this breeds success, rather than some kind of marketing uncanny valley.

The belief has always been that brands need to portray themselves as perfectly better than their competitors to attract customers, and because any flaw leads to complaints.

But that’s not the case – it’s how you react to any problems. The main complaints about brands via the internet are not that they screwed up – it’s that they don’t respond, react, or solve their screw-ups.

If you’re brave enough to talk about your problems, failures and mistakes with honesty and how you’ve solved them, it works. Talk to all the community managers who meet with their communities and find that explaining the reason behind common issues results in those communities becoming staunch defenders of them.

There are fans in the world who have spent decades following teams in lower leagues and divisions with extremely little chance of success, and will make great sacrifices to support them day-in and day-out. Wouldn’t you like customers like that?

But around the age of 11 or so, I read the amazing Walking on Water by Andy Martin. Like me, he grew up in England, and didn’t become a professional surfer – but due to his fascination and obsession with it, he did spend time in the water, and the book covers his journey to Hawaii to speak to the leading stars of the early 90s and to cover the world championship at the time.

What really hooked me was one passage, in which he describes being stopped at airport customs and asked what the purpose of his journey was. Having been hired to do some freelance reporting on surfing for The Times, he pulled out a busines card stating ‘The Times, Surfing Correspondent’, and that allowed him to carry on his journey. (I’m writing from memory as I suspect a previous loan of the book led to it never returning to my possession).

It’s followed by amazing writing, characters and stories as he gets to meet all his heroes and surf Hawaii, but the key thing that stuck with me was this:

You can be an expert, earn a living, meet your heroes and be utterly absorbed by something as a writer, and sharing that can be as powerful as actually doing it for a living.

Suddenly I realised that I might never be paid to race cars or bikes, but I could earn a living by sharing my obsession and knowledge of motorsport and all things with an engine.

Having applied that approach to motorcycles, cars, technology, and writing itself, I’ve had the enormous good fortune to be published by leading publications in their field, visited foreign countries, had amazing experiences and spoken with a number of my childhood heroes. Less than 1% of racers will ever get to legitimately be in the MotoGP paddock, for example, but as a journalist I was able to experience it, which I’ll always treasure.

And there’s another key lesson.

You might think that ‘those that can, do, and those that can’t, write ‘ (to adapt a hackneyed quote about teaching). But many top sportsmen and women can’t explain what they do and how they do it. It’s not their job. They have to concentrate on whatever it takes to get to the top and stay there, and not consider anything else. It’s why quite often the most talented people are the worst instructors, because they have no idea what it was like to be an untalented beginner!

That’s why it’s our job. And why it’s my passion and obsession to share the things I love in a way which could inspire the same passion in others.

It’s so often the case, particular with larger companies and the relentless need to show immediate ROI that even when someone understands the concept of earning what they want, that they succumb to the temptation of just diving straight in with the request, because someone has insisted they need to show results in the next day or week.

(Incidentally, Gary has released two books, Crush It! and The Thank You Economy. Both are well worth reading).

It’s why I’m been sharing this article by Michael Ellsberg on the Forbes website – a recommendation from one notable blogger did more for the success of his book than national broadcast television or newspapers. But the flipside is that he’d built that relationship up over a period of years, rather than days, weeks or months.

That’s also potentially a great reason to use freelance resources, which is something I intend to expand on. If you’re a new company or you’ve never tried earning coverage and referrals before, then it can take a long time to build those relationships. Whereas I’ve tried to work on them every day for the past decade, which is why I’m able to survive via word-of-mouth referrals and work via previous clients, colleagues and friends.

Assuming 0.25% of all content being uploaded is great content, that’s 3.6 hours of amazing videos every day. That’s 25.2 hours of great content per week, with the average TV viewing in a UK household somewhere between 20 and 30 hours per week.

Pretty amazing, and also why the follow-up attempts to enact laws such as SOPA and PIPA will occur with regularity in the U.S, and the influence of the U.S will be increasingly felt on every country around the world which might be encouraged or persuaded to enact such laws.

It isn’t about piracy. It’s about copying, creating and the disruptive effects we have all had

But what happens when the stars aren’t human, but characters in a story which has become immensely popular and adopted by millions around the world with their own passionate interpretations and fandom? OK, so we should probably be used to this by now, judging by the way this particular story has been used, exploited and hollowed-out for every possible revenue stream, but still…

So the character whose entrance into a rebel ship inspired fear and nightmares in generations of people is now a middle-management consultant to a chain of average computer retailers.

And then this happens…

If you remember all those strange people around the world who declare themselves as a Jedi whenever a census appears, a reasonable percentage of them aren’t doing it entirely as a joke – there’s enough evidence online of the Jedi mindset being compared to a more recognised religion. Without debating the merits of each religion, this is essentially like seeing the head of whichever version you follow decide to start pimping themselves out for commercials.

I’m done with Star Wars…

I don’t remember the first time I watched Star Wars, but I do remember a friend actually having a film projector at an early  birthday party to screen The Empire Strikes Back. And whilst my collection of toys was sold by my father without my knowledge when I was a teenager, thus destroying a potential retirement fund, I’ve since discovered that my Star Wars lunchbox still survives in a dusty corner of the garage. And I do have the original trilogy on VHS just so I could show my son that Han fired first, just as it should be.

But that’s balanced with the fact I don’t expect every piece of entertainment to be an artistic statement, the history of merchandising and utilising the Star Wars world to extract every last penny from it, and the fact various adverts have appeared in the past with some of the characters – I’ve discovered Yoda apparently also picked up a cheque for a Japanese advert a while ago, like so many other stars.

I’m in my 30s, I’ve worked in the publishing and entertainment industries for 10+ years, and I know how all this works – and yet I feel a sense of loss with the resignation. One of the guiding stories of my childhood, which I wanted to share with my son as he grows older, has now lost any magic it had. It’s no more meaningful than whichever animated feature will be on the side of Happy Meals next month.

Marketing with listening and meaning:

If you’re one of the growing number of companies embracing the approach of standing clearly for a defined purpose, then you might believe you’re above this risk.

And if you’re just in the business of churning out a product, perhaps an unexciting one, then you might believe it doesn’t matter.

But the important thing is that I don’t think George Lucas and everyone else involved had set out to make a serious artistic statement which could spring into a belief and support which has last 30+ years. He made some films, and realised that there was more money to be made around them than directly from them – particularly pre-VHS, DVD and Streaming.

The meaning and experiences came from the people who watched,shared, discussed, and believed – would you know if the same thing was growing around your brand? Are you not only monitoring but paying attention, analysing, listening and shaping your future in that context?

Store 1: Uniqlo:

I’ve heard various things about Uniqlo and browsed their stores, but this was the first time I’ve intended to make a purchase, having seen numerous mentions of their selvage jeans (Selvage refers to the method of stitching, if you’re not a denim geek). And the level of service was great – first someone was able to help me find the one pile of the right jeans amongst the masses on display, and also explained that they offer a free alteration service when I struggled to find the right leg length.Then the young lady manning the fitting rooms was also friendly and helpful when arranging the alterations and pinning the jeans, and the till staff maintained that. After 40 minutes I came back and my jeans were ready.

Store 2: Ed’s Easy Diner:

I’m a big fan of good burger joints and Americana, so Ed’s should have been perfect. But it was average for various reasons. Partly the quality of food doesn’t quite justify the price (the bacon on my burger was burnt and rock solid, the strawberry milkshake was mainly vanilla, and the chips were undercooked). And partly because the three waiting staff between them were disinterested at best. Having invested in something slightly overpriced and with a hefty amount of competitive restaurants nearby, seeing our food and drinks slammed on the table or being ignored when we tried to pay the bill really didn’t make up for the food. Especially when I’ve experienced alternatives including the constant favourite Byron Burger in London (for example).

Store 3: Soletrader:

The actual service in Soletrader wasn’t bad – reasonably quick, friendly and helpful. The problem is that they were totally hampered by the store infrastructure. I’ve received a voucher for the store, which can’t be redeemed online. I want a specific pair of trainers, which are never in stock in my size. And although I can order them to a physical store, I really wanted to try the two closest sizes to check the right fit. It’s the sort of problem which turns a normally docile and compliant customer into one who will cause any amount of hassle to get rid of his voucher and never go near the store again.

How about the social media marketing:

When I came back online, I decided to tweet about the 3 different levels of service – good, average, and hampered by store policies.

Interestingly, Uniqlo didn’t need to respond or acknowledge my recommendation, but various friends echoed the fact that instore it’s a great experience (Although apparently their email marketing can be pretty overwhelming). That’s fine as I’m quite happy to follow their Twitter account.

Ed’s Easy Diner didn’t respond which is consistently disapointing. I’d hoped to be reassured that my experience may have been a one-off, but can only assume it wasn’t.

But the most interested in the fact that Soletrader did get back to me on Twitter. I got an acknowledgement and an apology for the hassle, although yet again, someone attempting to offer service and customer care couldn’t actually provide a solution, although they did say ‘we’re looking into a way gift vouchers can be used online in the future’.

More effort needed:

Recent stats show that customers expectations of service and feedback via social media outstrip the expectations of companies to monitor and respond. That has to change, and it has to go just beyond monitoring mentions and passing on details.

I wouldn’t necessarily expect Ed’s to respond with any offers or compensation (though I wouldn’t have complained if they did), but at least acknowledging their was a problem with the service offered and finding out more about my experience may have helped them identify a way in which they could improve their business in a location with a high level of competing restaurants and a fairly captive market. It certainly wasn’t busy when we ate, and yet we still ended up on a table with a jukebox out of order.

And Soletrader really need to move more quickly to solve their infrastructure problems, or empower staff to sort a solution out. I hate to quote the Zappos example yet again, but it’s appropriate for a footwear company. If the marketing team on Twitter wanted to turn an annoyed customer into a loyal one, they’d just need to grab a pair of Onitsuka Tigers in blue/red in size 7 and size 8 – send them both to my home address and allow me to send back the pair which didn’t fit. I can give them the voucher code in advance, and they can deal with the hassle of it not being valid for an online order. But having checked the Soletrader site, it appears of 13 different shoes, they have 3 in stock in size 7 across the UK.

The financial risk would be the outlay on posting one reasonable sized box (About £10), and the risk of losing one additional pair of trainers (Retail £70, so under that). I wonder what their current cost is for customer acquisition, and what value they put on their marketing and advertising expenditure, but without being too engrossed in follower numbers, the fact that I personally have twice as many as their official account means that it would probably be a cost efficient exercise overall – and the fact that I also have a number of sneaker addicted friends (including a couple of sneaker collectors) would surely pay off.

Compare that to the knowledge that if I’d just paid for trainers I’d get free postage and returns to store. But by receiving a voucher which ties me into that store I lose all the benefits and service, and instead gain additional hassle.

First it was businesspeople talking about content as something to fill the empty space between adverts. Then those SEO types came along and messed around to game the search engines and fool users. And now there’s a growing army of marketing people talking about using artistic methods to power ‘content marketing’ and prostitute noble work even more.

Don’t they understand?

Writers, artists – it’s OK when people say ‘content’

I consider writing a massive part of both who I am, and also of my occupation. I’ve held editorial roles, and received payment both for writing, and using all forms of media as an integral part of marketing. And I have absolutely no problem with anyone using the term ‘content’, as long as they’re not assuming it magically appears and doesn’t deserve time, resource, effort and reward.

After all, words only have the meanings we infer on them, which is why I might apologise to a section of you still reading who may have been offended by the Lego imagery above. At the same time a section of you might have found it amusing, or just not cared. It all depends on the signification you get from the use of that particular word.

And yes, in a business and web development context, ‘content’ is often almost a dirty word, as if in retaliation against all the people who declared ‘content is king’ for so long in the past.

But it doesn’t have to meant that. All it means to me is a shorthand way to avoid repeating ‘text,images and video’, everytime I want to describe what I do, or what is meant to go on a page. And that’s all I hope it will mean to you in the future…

A Wordle for TheWayoftheWeb. Pleased to see how big 'People' appears

How your work can avoid being just ‘content’

Here’s the thing to remember – ‘Content’ refers to what’s contained in a box as defined by a dictionary. It isn’t how the people reading or viewing your work are going to refer to it, especially if you achieve something remarkable. Noone in the history of the world, even in business, marketing or SEO, has come home from a day at work and told their partner or family about the ‘amazing piece of content’ they saw. Instead they’ll share an amazing story, a stunning picture or a moving film.

Content as an adjective is about being mentally or emotionally satisfied with the current state of things (the Swedish have one of my favourite related words, ‘lagom’, which is translated as being ‘just right’ ‘not too much, not too little’ etc, and to some extent it continues to permeate Swedish culture). If you’re doing just enough to satisfy the search engines, or the need for some promo text, then why do you deserve to be refered to as more than ‘content’ anyway?

Writing, photography and film-making are not inherently more noble than serving fast food or working in a factory. There will be people who are far more passionate about serving the perfect burger up with good service than some writers are about churning through the latest press release to just get something up which might get a bit of traffic.

So instead of spending time and effort bemoaning how people could dare refer to artistic output as if it was just the result of someone working, just do three things:

1.  Create stuff that tears through any box it could be put in.
2. Share and reward the brilliance of others. Comment, tweet,like,donate,flattr,recommend to publishers/studios
3. Don’t settle for crap. Don’t be lazy and settle for something which is filling space for a brand or media company.

But possibly as a result of the title, a few people are using it as an example of why print is in some way superior to an electronic version.

And that’s rubbish, quite frankly.

There are two elements of books that elicit joy:

• What’s in the book
• What surrounds the book

None of that is inherent to print, eReaders, parchment, hieroglyphics or any other transportation medium.

What’s in the book:

Amazing writing and art will bring someone joy. I’m happy reading William Gibson books in print or on my Kindle, and if he decided in the future that he would only inscribe his work into the trunks of trees, I’d be trying to find a way to fund a private forest in my back garden.

As long as the typeface is legible, and the art is clear, then the transportation of it matters not a jot. Possibly my last line of resistance was comics and graphic novels, but even in this case I’ve overcome my reservations about reading them electronically when I’ve been borrowing an iPad. And as always, great writing and art works.

That doesn’t mean that there aren’t things that could be improved – reading a PDF on a Kindle can be frustrating when the text and font aren’t suited, but PDFs have always been the work of the devil regardless of how you’re forced to encounter them.

What surrounds the book:

Here’s where it gets more interesting. So the first aspect to transfer between formats is the social aspect. Reading to my son from a printed book or a Kindle doesn’t matter in terms of the benefit and enjoyment he gets from someone reading to him. Chatting about the book with other people isn’t diminished by a screen, and lending is a possibility now. In fact, electronically I can share Creative Commons books directly with friends around the globe, ensuring they can read the same ‘copy’ as me.

There are differences in the physical sensation. It’s not so much the turning on a page – the way buttons work to flick through a book on the Kindle is a pretty damn effective substitute. But particularly the smell of an aging book hasn’t been replicated electronically (Although it easily could). Not sure that’s a particularly great source of joy though – more an association that old paper quite often comes with great stories.

Then there are two tangible areas which reflect the hoarding of knowledge – the receiving of a book as a treasured gift, and resale value. The resale value of most books is negligible thanks to the massive inventory of mainstream paperbacks, so it really only applies to niche hardbacks.

And then we come to gifting – particularly if it’s a family heirloom or with handwritten notes. That’s the only area in which culturally it’s hard to put the same weighting on an electronic version, but that shift will undoubtedly happen to some extent, leaving either small inventories of the most popular gift choices in print editions, or print-on-demand for anything which isn’t in a classic gift choice.

Either way, the pleasure of the contents, the social aspect of sharing and discussing, and many of the other areas of enjoyment when it comes to literature are already present in electronic formats, and some of the others could be closely replicated. That’s why the joy is ‘in’ the book, not ‘of’ the book.