Below the Fold

Social Media, Super Bowl Edition: Be a Community Quarterback

2012-01-26T09:05:34-08:00

Now is the time of year when thoughts turn to matters of the heart – and no, I’m not talking about Valentine’s Day.

I’m talking about the Super Bowl, where we see the heart of a champion. And Super Bowl parties, where we see lots of heartburn from eating foods even Paula Dean would consider out of bounds.

So in the spirit of good sport – and to distract me from the fact that I’ll never win the office betting pool – I’d like to rethink the phrase “social media community manager.”

Although intent and execution are up to the individual and can transcend a word’s definition, words still matter. And the word “manager” in a social context is flawed.

“Manager” refers to someone who “controls” or “manipulates.” It conjures feelings of authority and distance. You can “manage” something without being truly involved or invested in what you are managing.

We don’t need Community Managers. We need Quarterbacks.

A Quarterback’s job is to get the ball to his teammates and let them get into the end zone. You can call your own number sometimes too -- just don’t be a ball hog. Get everyone involved, and as you understand your players better, the whole team will succeed.

A Quarterback’s relationship with the team is rooted in and built on trust. The team trusts that the Quarterback will call the right plays, and in return for that trust, the team will protect the Quarterback from getting sacked.

Social media is a team sport. You can’t bark orders or call plays from the booth, you need to be on the field with your teammates – listening to them, working with them, going to battle and supporting each other in a common purpose.

Don’t be a manager, be a leader. Be a Quarterback.

Memories Lost and What They Leave Behind

2012-01-05T20:53:17-08:00

I'VE SAID BEFORE, and I almost believe it to be true, that losing my memory after my dad died was the best thing that ever happened to me.

After all, you can’t mourn for something you never had. My mind created the ultimate defense against loss: The inability to recall every having lost in the first place.

This was my parting gift, my consolation prize. Memories lost can’t hurt you, can’t haunt you. They become pieces of dreams, raggedy shards of flotsam sloshing through the back roads of your consciousness.

But nothing is ever completely lost. For me, not remembering my father was the easy part – understanding how to be a father was much harder, if not impossible.

It was as if the lost memories buried themselves into the pores of my personality, only to manifest years later as a mental barrier to fatherhood. I went from someone who couldn’t remember his father to someone who didn’t know the first thing about parenting or what children require.

Anyway, this is nothing new for me. It’s not some grand revelation. But I’m thinking about it now because of another loss, this one very recent and in some ways, surprisingly, more painful.

Victor Klein was a friend, a leader of our Synagogue community, a classic ad man and wanderlust-filled adventurer who died of a sudden heart attack. No health problems, no warnings, just there and then, not there.

Victor conned me into joining the Synagogue Board of Directors (he could be very persuasive.) He was always kind, always a fighter for what he believed in. He was your friend whether you wanted him to be or not.

But most of all, during some of the most important years of my daughter’s young life, he was a father figure. He was, quite simply, what I too often was not.

Time and again I would come home to find my daughter on Victor’s lap while he and my wife worked on the Synagogue newsletter. The scene was much more grandfather and granddaughter, very innocent and sweet.

I was building a business back then. I traveled, I worked late, I had mountains of stress. Of course I told myself that the sacrifices were all for my family, and it was largely true.

But now, hindsight being what it is, I wonder whether what felt true then is a pile of crap now.

I had no reference point for how to be dad, so I wasn’t. I couldn’t face the pain of what I lost at age 8, so I didn’t. Besides, I had people like Victor to pick up the slack, so I could be free to chase the ghosts of fortune.

I’m trying to make up for lost time now. I still travel, but I try to be more present when I’m home and more connected when I’m away. I find it easier to be a dad these days – not because I’ve accepted my role or that I'm learning anything new, mind you, it’s just that my daughter is now a teenager and, well, let’s just say I have a lot more experience being a brother.

And I don’t resent Victor, not in the least. He was there for us without being asked, and died without ever knowing how important he was to our family.

That, I think, is the real tragedy. It may be a cliché but it’s true – don’t wait to tell people what they mean to you.

Tell them, today, and let that be the memory that never fades away.

In Search of the “News Particle”

2011-12-19T16:28:09-08:00

Scientists this month said they are a step closer to finding the Higgs boson, commonly referred to as the “God Particle,” which is widely believed to be the key building block of, well, the entire universe. The God Particle is what allows matter to have mass – in other words, what allows matter (and us) to exist at all.

Confirmation won’t come until 2012. In the meantime there is another search underway, certainly not as grand as the key to matter itself yet perhaps just as important to our existence.

It's the search not for matter, but information that matters. It’s the search for relevance and originality, for order in a flood of chaos.

I call it the “News Particle.” It’s comprised of curiosity, direct questions and cogent thinking. And while it’s not completely disappeared it’s nevertheless endangered.

Before news can be curated, aggregated, fed or tweeted, it must be reported. Truly reported, not regurgitated from a press release. You have to talk to people and find the News Particle that separates a real story from just another pebble in the stream.

This is not about “old” media vs. “new” media, or a plea for more idle times. In fact there has never been a better moment for news or the news business (I’m in the minority here, but history will bear this out.)

Moreover, community participation in the news gathering process is critical and welcome. We need citizen journalists as well as “journalist citizens” who speak for and are involved in their communities. Journalism, at least the best of it, has always been social.

But being able to shoot mobile video and use a social network doesn’t make someone a reporter any more than giving the police information about a crime makes someone a cop. Reporting and police work require something more, not the least of which is patience.

The more we move away from paying journalists to do their jobs, the more we stop bloggers from getting at the truth and exercising their First Amendment rights, the more we tip the balance away from true hunters of news to and toward simple gatherers of information. The News Particle ceases to exist.

An old Society of Professional Journalists ad campaign once asked, “If we don’t tell you, who will?”

We are now finding out. And the answer is not good, for any of us.

2012 Prediction: Paper Will Be the Next Disruptive Technology

2011-12-04T17:10:04-08:00

There’s a little-known scene in the movie “Star Trek: First Contact,” where Lt. Commander Data, an android, observes Captain Jean-Luc Picard touching the hull of an historic spacecraft. The captain smiles and taps the ship with his bare fingers, to which Data asks, “Sir, does tactile contact alter your perception of (the ship)?”

“Oh yes,” Picard says. “For humans, touch can connect you to an object in a very personal way. It makes it seem more real.”

Data then touches the ship himself, and says,” I am detecting imperfections in the titanium casing. Temperature variations in the fuel manifold. It’s no more real to me now than it was a moment ago.”

Data’s reaction is similar to how many of us interact with both objects and information today. More and more, our “things” are trapped under a layer of glass. We can “touch” but we can’t always feel. We live our lives from screen to shining screen.

It's a digital world – and overall, it’s a far better world. But digital should enhance physical experiences, not replace them or separate us completely from what makes us human.

This is why I believe it’s time to make a place for real objects and real connections. It’s time for a truly disruptive technology to bring us back to our senses.

It’s time for paper.

No, I’m not joking. And no, I’m not just an old journalist pining for the days of picas and ink-stained fingertips (okay, it’s true I’m old, just not insane.) There is a place for paper in a digital world, because although all information will soon be converted into bits, human beings are still made of atoms.

Our sense of touch and its emotional resonance is unique from other animals. Paper transmits feeling in ways screens can’t begin to deliver. Paper is far from perfect, but it’s more than ready for a renaissance.

Despite the meteoric rise of e-books, the largest growth is in the print-on-demand sector, increasing 169 percent in 2010 and even greater in 2011. Lulu.com, a leading print-on-demand press, expects $40 million in revenue this year, up from $34 million in 2010.

And investor Warren Buffet’s latest purchase? The Omaha World-Herald, a newspaper. Said Buffet, “I wouldn’t do this if I thought this was doomed to some sort of extinction.”

I’m being a bit overly persuasive – of course paper will never be what it once was. This shift to digital didn’t start with the iPad or Kindle either, remember LexisNexis in the 1970s?

But we have reached the point where paper is again disruptive, and when incorporating paper or print into communication can set you apart as an innovator rather than make you appear old fashioned.

Access to information should not be confused with connection to that information. Commander Data from Star Trek was able to access information about the spacecraft, but he couldn’t connect with it in the same way as Captain Picard.

The key question we must ask ourselves is should traditional mediums transition to digital, or should digital technology serve to enhance and improve traditional experiences and interactions? Can we live a life under glass, or do we need to get out once in a while?

On Thanksgiving, No One Should be a Stranger -- Or Alone

2011-11-23T08:39:41-08:00

(The following post originally ran Nov. 21, 2007, and has become a Below the Fold holiday tradition of sorts. For those who have read it before, please pardon the repetition -- and for those who are reading it for the first time, I hope it serves as a reminder of what this holiday, and being human, is all about.)

LOS ANGELES IS A CITY of fragments, pieces loosely joined yet bound as if against nature. Most people only see L.A. through a windshield – the observer protected behind glass, the observed seen in glimpses if at all. Los Angeles is a place apart and in parts, where everyone lives but no one is from.

It is into this concrete dichotomy I drive several days a week. I’ve done this for nearly a year with no regret, save for the occasional Sigalert that slows traffic even more than the usual crawl. Once this happened by the Staples Center, forcing me to watch the video ad for “American Idols on Tour” more times than should be considered humane.

Almost every day, before joining my fellow commuters on Interstate 10 and 5 for the long slog to Orange County, I see a homeless man by the freeway entrance. Always smiling, always pleasant, and always with a hand out, as if he’s the operator of an imaginary toll booth. I give when I can, when the stoplight cooperates. This means lowering the window, a risky proposition in a place where people lock their car doors while they are still driving.

For months I saw this man – and then, a few weeks ago, he was gone. Maybe it was the weather, both turning slightly cooler and for a long while heavy with smoke and its unhealthy remnants.

He could be anywhere, doing just fine, but nevertheless I worry and wonder – whether he is safe, whether he found a better onramp, or whether he melted back into the jigsaw world of Greater L.A., another face in another windshield. This is the time of Thanksgiving after all, a time for holidays and families and desires for human connections. So I wonder, I worry, and wait.

The Day after Christmas
This man – and next time I see him, I promise to ask his name – reminds me of another man I met in Atlanta, exactly 17 years ago Friday. He, too, was (at least to me) homeless and nameless, a regular character at the CNN Center. I wrote about him in my book, and the following passage tells the story of our brief encounter:

“Where are you from?” The question came out of nowhere, as did the man. He looked 40ish, wearing a purple long-sleeved shirt, a green jacket-vest, a black hat, and a beard grown from neglect rather than purpose. As we talked, he would continuously sip from an empty Styrofoam cup. I wanted to tell him there was nothing in there, though I’m sure he knew. I just stared at the cup rising and falling from the man’s lips with mechanical precision.

I don’t know what was in the cup before, but based on our conversation, I got the feeling it was more likely vodka than coffee. We talked about life on the streets and how being homeless is a lot like being in prison – except that in prison you get three meals a day and a warm place to sleep. But that wasn’t the worst part.

“It’s the loneliness,’ he said, taking another imaginary sip. “All the time, loneliness. All of my friends are either dead or gone.”

I was going to tell him how lonely I felt that Thanksgiving, but decided against it. Here was a guy who has endured the same ugly feeling for six years, and I was depressed about one day spent in a warm hotel room with the people I love a phone call away. His cup was empty; mine runneth over.

“The day after Christmas,” he said. “A business is made or broken by how well it is the day after Christmas. Everything is defined by where you are the day after Christmas.”

We had been talking about Thanksgiving, but I wasn’t going to argue. This was his conversation. I was just along for the ride.

I gave him some money as I got up to take my tour, which he accepted but don’t think expected. When I came back downstairs an hour later, I spotted my friend talking to a couple of other street people. He waved to me as I passed.

He still had his cup and it was still empty. And I felt bad, really bad, because I knew that on the day after Christmas, he would still be there.

I never looked at people or a place the same after that. Everywhere is home for someone – every place has its own ecosystem that functions often despite itself. No matter where we live, we can connect.

Yes, Los Angeles is a city of fragments, the people fragmented. But while the pieces don’t always fit, they do, eventually, come together.