Sean Maloney (left) just wants people to buy things. "The last six months, people everywhere have been scared about what's happening in the world," says Maloney, Intel's chief sales and marketing officer. An ebbing tide--and moribund electronics market--grounds all boats: Intel's first-quarter revenue was $7.1 billion, down 26% year over year.
In addition to our breakfast meeting, Maloney was in town to launch the Nehalem chip (more formally known as the Xeon 5500 microprocessor family) that was targeted specifically to financial services firms. "Think Wall Street is dead?" Maloney told a group of reporters at the relatively upbeat launch part at the NASDAQ market site. In spite of the economic downturn, financial service companies are processing significantly more information than ever. "The volumes aren't going down. In fact, the biggest volume in years was in November," which was a terrible month for the market.
But he says, if there are fewer transactions being completed, but more data being electronically generated while financial services companies look for a buyer or seller, then "faster" becomes an essential tool. "Each trade is now more important. That means you need to run more computer cycles to see what the best angle is going to be. Under almost any scenario, the more computer cycles you are able to run in the tiny fraction of the time you have before you have make a trade decision, it can be very important."
This speaks to Maloney's broader point, that spending is essential in a downturn, especially if you are in a business that relies on technology of your own making, as financial services firms do. In an attempt to get ahead of the game by the next upswing, Intel is doing some spending of its own. After closing some smaller plants, it announced earlier this year that it would invest more than $7 billion upgrading its factories in the United States. "We doubled down on manufacturing," Maloney says. "People said, 'You're insane!' " But Intel's entire competitive advantage--its ability to keep pace with Moore's Law and even exceed it--is in its manufacturing processes. "All our heavy-duty stuff is internal R&D on manufacturing," he says. "We lost that in the '80s and nearly went bankrupt, so it's a fairly fanatical focus for us. Never again."
At the same time, Intel is changing its development model to be more inclusive of customers and their needs. "We make transistors smaller and smaller in 18 months' time," Maloney says, "but we have almost no idea how to do it five years out." That's where customers come in, collaborating with them on chip development. As large institutional clients hired microprocessor-server specialists and started asking for very specific capabilities, Intel responded. For example, the Nehalem EP chip is expected to allow one server to replace nine existing ones and pay for itself in just eight months. "Our job," Maloney says, "is to give them something so wonderful that they'll spend money again."
To read about how Cisco, Corning, IBM, and Intel are weathering the current economic storm, read "Through the Fire" from our June issue.
When the running joke is that what's left of your money is better off under your mattress, how, exactly, is Schwab wooing
customers? Talk to Chuck.
People are gravitating to the comfort that apparently only founder and CEO Charles Schwab, who looks like the last guy who'd spend $15,000 on an umbrella stand, can provide. Becky Saeger, Schwab's CMO, has used a souped-up version of the "Chuck" campaign--the same one that helped resuscitate the company in 2005--to win new, albeit nervous, customers. "We're feeling like we're on the front line with our customers and prospects," says Becky Saeger, Charles Schwab Co.'s CMO. "But everything that we're doing today comes from our experience of cheating death during the dot-com bust."
"In 2004, 2005, we had to reassess what we were doing," Saeger admits. "Focusing on the customer, our value proposition, what our brand means to people. We needed to be true to that while we brought a level of discipline to the business along with cost management." That soul-searching led to the decision to bring Chuck, literally, back into the mix with customers. "He really is the ideal brand expression, and from that we can be both strong and consistent in our strategy."
On Schwab's site and in conversations with
representatives, reassurance is a hot commodity. "Beginning with the steady slide of the market last September, "communications have taken on a great role," Saeger told me. "People want more analysis, opinion, and market information," Saeger says. And they have lots of questions. "If you'd told me that people were going to want to know what holdings were in their money-market funds, or whether we were financially stable, I would have said you're out of your mind." Saeger has worked quickly to find the right tone. "This is a nightmare for people. We had to strike a balance between not bullshitting people, but also giving people some reason to be optimistic."
The wild swings in the national mood have forced Saeger to perform customer service at lightning speed. "We're now saying, in real time, 'What do our customers need to know from us right now?'" she says. When anxiety is high, for example, Schwab markets products that speak to safety, such as high-yield checking. "We want our Web site to reflect our responsiveness to what our customers are going through," Saeger says. "We are trying to be very current, giving them different kinds of products that emphasize safety and cash. We built a real-life retirement center for people who are close to retirement and are worried about how they're adjusting their lives."
The effort has not been lost on customers and prospects, who are now talking back to Chuck, thanks to Saeger dipping her toe in the water of online communities and social media. "We have to be very careful about giving advice in an open forum, but it hasn't deterred us," she says. "We have a community of active traders and they're all customers. You can't see the communities as a prospect, but we're watching very closely how our online community is evolving, how people interact with us, where the engagement is. In fact, in just one little piece of the community site, we're seeing people spending twenty minutes at a time, which is higher than we anticipated in terms of engagement."
Saeger hopes to learn more about how her customers share information around their financial lives with others, and tap that for a deeper dive into a larger pool of prospects. She says that being clear about who Schwab is in the marketplace is the first step. "You gotta trust your brand. You have to be so consistent about who you say you are as a brand, and then you trust the community."
To read about how Cisco, Corning, IBM, and Intel are weathering the current economic storm, read "Through the Fire" from our June issue.
Facebook's most political co-founder has found his next gig.
Chris Hughes has joined General Catalyst, a Boston based venture firm, as their most recent entrepreneur-in-residence. The firm has a portfolio of 65 companies--Kayak and Brightcove are among their bold-faced names--and some $1.8 billion under management. "We closed a fund of $715 million* about a year ago," managing director Neil Sequeira told me by phone. "We’re actively investing. And very excited to have Chris on board." The firm will make the official announcement on its website tomorrow morning.
Having spent the last few months interviewing Hughes for Fast Company's April cover story, "The Kid Who Made Obama President," it was clear that Hughes had been actively soul searching, looking for the right next step. "I’m the kind of person that needs to think things through," he told me more than once. "But when I know what I want to do, I really know."
Though he helped transition MyBarackObama, the online organizing component of the Obama Campaign (it’s now the DNC run Organizing for America) he was not excited about a job in government. "It’s about as far from a start-up as you can get," he laughed. But he hasn’t given up on progressive causes altogether. Earlier this month Hughes confirmed that he’d joined the DC based communications outfit GMMB, a firm he’d become familiar with through their work on the Obama campaign. "I’ll be advising some of their clients a few hours a week," he told me, emphasizing digital engagement strategies. Clients have included the Save Darfur Coalition, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the United Nations Foundation. But his main gig will keep him moving in start-up circles, giving him the entrepreneurial upside he also craves. Hughes will be based in New York, where he settled after the election, and will be actively working with existing portfolio companies as well as looking for new ideas. "It keeps me active in both worlds," he says.
When I talked to him last week, Hughes sounded relieved to have found the right mix. He’s thinking typically big. "I’ve been in the business of building technology that networks people and makes it easier for people to do ‘x’," he says. "So far, it’s been to communicate and self organize. Depending on what I do next… it may be to learn about the world around them."
After helping to co-found Facebook with Harvard dormmates Mark Zuckerberg and Dustin Moskowitz, Hughes left the growing company in 2007 to help build the brand of another unlikely break-out star, Barack Obama. The inside story of Hughes’s work with the Obama campaign can be found here.
First published in 1995, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, is Barack Obama’s moving account of his life as a mixed race kid in a complicated family, and the development of his racial identity. The now famous story recounts how his Kansas mom came to marry his Kenyan dad, and takes us through his chaotic youth, his partying phase at Occidental College, his serious phase at Columbia University, his early work years before Harvard Law School, and his decision to visit Kenya in search of answers. Obama is a remarkably candid and skilled storyteller, recounting conversations and events that were key touchstones on his way to figuring out where he fit into a world that has never had an easy time with race. The book went into reprint after his 2004 Democratic Convention keynote, and became a best seller. It’s an amazing read, and I highly recommend it.
But the Grammy Award winning audio version is turning out to be even more fun.
Obama has one hell of a speaking voice, and does a really good job with the many characters who show up in the book. He recounts with future Presidential seriousness some pretty salty talk—typically speaking the words of others—which is starting to show up in remixes all over the interwebs. And uh, *damn nigga, if this shit isn’t entertaining* - I don’t know what is:
Obama was always an audio pioneer, he did more than 40 podcasts as a Senator. Jim Brayton, Obama’s former Internet Director (cute title, eh?) recently told me how naturally the Senator took to the format. “It was just him and me, a really great set up. He took to it very quickly, it was just an informal conversation about whatever the topic of the week was, what he was working on in the senate.” Brayton calls it his biggest new media accomplishment while directing Obama’s Internet, since it gave constituents real insight into what their Senator was thinking and doing. And the book helped. “He’d already recorded the audio version of his book, which was a big project. So, he really got podcasting.”
Senator Obama on iTunes (The files were removed but at least you can see the podcast titles.)
As uncomfortable as it may be for some folks to hear the President speak this way, I find it refreshing—and so far, the remixes sound more like artistic tributes than anything else. (And if it didn't? I prefer a world in which data is shared, mashed and remixed more than a world in which data is not.) Not only has Obama consistently been willing to talk openly about some of the most vexing issues facing us—from race to families in crisis—he's often done it using himself as the narrative thread and in vernaculars of many hues. That sort of openness takes guts and skill.
This all bodes well for new ways that the government can be more transparent, but more importantly, will no doubt yield some killer health care policy dance mixes.
I'm less worried that impressionable youth will now suddenly start throwing the "n-word" around like the Prez, and more worried that middle aged folks like myself will start spontaneously Obama -rapping and trash-talking, making ourselves look stupid. Unlike the Prez. Frankly, this shit's getting way too complicated for me.
The Most Influential Women in Technology story was a collaboration of the most inspiring kind -- the bits and bytes we pieced together about these women tell a bigger story about the history of women technologists, and the futures they are laboring to create. (It was also the first time that women writers from both the Fast Company web and magazine staffs collaborated to create a print story, which was more fun than I just made it sound.) To do the best possible job in an imperfect format, we wanted to include women who were in a position to influence some largely unseen areas of our daily lives, like defense. But like all lists, it becomes as notable for who just missed the cut – Carol Bartz! – as it is for those whose names follow.
So in the spirit of collaboration -- and yeah, sisterhood –- we thought we’d let the women introduce the package themselves. What follows is a series of short posts from the makers of technology and tech history, about life, hard work and the pursuit of venture capital, among many other things. We’ll be adding more as they come in. At the end of the exercise, the women themselves will have breathed additional life into a list that we hope will inspire anew -- and help us get closer to the day when a list like this will no longer be necessary.
I got to DC right before the big crowds started to arrive, in time to watch the jumbotrons and bleachers get ready for the masses, and the vendors kick themselves for not putting Obama's face on more crap. (Oh, we're all having fun with it. Even our art director is making "baracklava" for the Fast staff to eat while we watch the inauguration.) DC inspires a certain amount of awe on a normal day, but when the buildings trot out their best party clothes, it's hard not to be filled with a sense of pride.
And this time, it really is different. Cute kids, regal wife, oh yeah, did I mention they're black?!? -- and Facebook basically elected him. Could it get any better than this?
Although the new president seems to have won, for now, the BlackBerry battle, he has not yet begun to fight the technology war ahead. I've been spending some time thinking about the accomplishments of the Obama campaign for a follow-up to my cover story, The Brand Called Obama; specifically wondering how the lessons of the campaign are going to be applied to the new task of governance. More on that in future stories and posts.
There's a big difference, evidently, to being a private citizen running for office, and an elected official subject to reams and reams of outdated restrictions: My sources close to the new media wing of the Transition Team say that there is already a lot of head-shaking going on at the madness that is federal bureaucracy. They are definitely not in Iowa anymore.
I used my visit to DC to catch up with Joe Trippi, of Howard Dean Campaign fame, and Chris Hughes, Director of Online Oranizing for the Obama Campaign, who were both on a panel at the National Press Club titled Ideas for Change in America. The audience was filled with non-profiteers, bloggers, activists, business folk and some MSM. The mood was earnest. The panel, though polite, had some important points to make about the dream of a true open source democracy.
Joe Trippi got down to business first. As exceptional as the civic engagement has been, things are going to be different now that the campaign has arrived at its destination. It's a matter of money and design. "Government is not going to be replaced, even with Barack Obama in the administration, because the impediments to the way the government works are still in place. And that change will have to come from the people themselves."
His point is partly about money -- it will take awhile for elected officials to become weaned from the teat of lobbyist cash. They don't know how internet fundraising works, and even if they do, cannot trust that it will work for them. (Congress only got permission to post videos on YouTube a few months ago. Headslap.) "The reason that members of Congress don't want to make the move [to the internet, for fundraising] is because they can't say no to lobbyist money or they'll get beat," he said simply. "They're not sure that the citizen base will be there." Big money donors, he says, lead to a transactional form of government, people expect to get what they pay for. But the problems we have -- climate change, terrorism, the economy - are not going to be solved by transactions. They're just too broad. "That's the hope of a transformational government, which we don't have yet." The implication: Good luck with the transformation if you're dealing with a government full of quids who are there to deliver a pro quo.
Hughes, the impossibly fresh-faced online organizing guru, agrees that technology is not going to be enough. "Just because you have a lot of tools out there, and people who are starting to be thirsty again for civic engagement...is not enough. That only sets the stage of actually what' s going to be possible." The first challenge, he says, is one of leadership, in which the Obama administration must maintain the ideals of the campaign while the structure of the government struggles to catch up with the modern world. And he'll need to staff up. "The tools don't mean anything if you don't invest heavily in the people and the infrastructure to support them."
Trippi agrees -- but points out what should have been obvious. "Past budgets of the White House are not set up for this," he says. "The way a member of Congress staffs his office, there is no budget for new media support." The government itself is in no position to move at internet speed. He tells a story of having to file donor lists to the FEC during the 2000 Dean campaign. Deluged with small donations, they wanted to feed the momentum, and be more transparent, by making the donor list public more quickly. But the FEC rules required that the information be filed with them first - on paper. Previous campaigns, with their big money donations, wouldn't have killed so many trees, but the Dean campaign was unprecedented. "We found the smallest women who worked on the campaign we could find, and had them wheel these HUGE hand trucks over," he laughed. Things, he says, haven't improved much. Political theater aside, the Obama administration will be facing similar impediments in many ways -- from information processing to vendor selection -- everything an administration would need to maintain its start-up speed. Death by a thousand red tape paper cuts.
All this is going to make Obama's own site - MyBarackObama.com - even more important. The community that elected Obama raised more money, held more events, made more phone calls, shared more videos, and offered more policy suggestions than any in history. They also delivered more votes. Hughes' last great act for the campaign (he's not joining the administration) has been to help them decide what to do with their own network. In mid-December, house parties were held in 2,000 cities to discuss how the many would carry on -- some 86 percent of Obama supporters surveyed said they want to continue to help Obama by championing his legislation -- through grassroots support. Then just two days before his inaugural, Obama sent this video, announcing Organizing for America, a community organizing infrastructure on steroids. If the only way to change the government is from the outside, then this is the way he's going to do it.
A terrific guide to other ways to connect with the Obama Administration can be found here.
Later that day, I stood shivering outside The Warner Theater, and listened to the rehearsals for the BET Honors scheduled for the next day. The music was wonderful. People stopped to share the moment with each other. There we were, a hopeful gathering of strangers, taking in the joyful noise of our own excitement. (And, we thought, Mary J. Blige.) Will we be able to keep up the good feeling, and the hard work, when the music stops? As long as we don't expect Congress to lead the way, I expect we've got a shot.
The Department of Labor released its grim jobs report today, cueing teeth-gnashing from market watchers and other pundits.
It’s hard not to gnash right along with them. Nearly two million people lost jobs this year. November was a particularly bad month, with another 533,000 jobs vanishing, the largest monthly loss since the early 70s. Unemployment now stands at 6.7%, the highest level since 1993.
(For those of us in vulnerable sectors like the media, the gnashing has been going on for awhile. I read the freakishly prescient tweets from @themediaisdying through my fingers. Oy.)
Given the news, a bailout for the automakers seems all but assured.
But another bailout of sorts has been on my mind lately, along with another vulnerable sector - America's cities.
I’m all about cities thse days, partly because I just finished a long reporting process for the story on Community Enterprise Partners, in our Dec/Jan issue. The original inspiration behind the story was the data - this extraordinary organization has collected a treasure trove of usable data on which design techniques, construction materials and appliance choices can make the biggest impact on energy consumption and health within a home environment. Because they are experts on affordable housing, the story had an even more appealing social enterprise angle. But as my reporting chugged on and the credit crisis began to heat up, the story pivoted to become a dramatic tale of cities in crisis, forced to the edge of their resources due to the housing mess.
From the story:
"Back in January, newly minted [Community Enterprise Partners] CEO Doris Koo warned the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs that looming foreclosures were going to hit cities hard. "The Center for Responsible Lending has estimated that 44.5 million homes adjacent to subprime foreclosed properties will lose value," she testified, "and $223 billion in neighborhood wealth will be lost."
Cities have gotten a bit of relief, largely as a result of Enterprise's lobbying efforts. But now the American mayors, working in remarkable lockstep, are preparing to make the case for their own survival.
Last month The Conference of Mayors published a great infrastructure manifesto, the “Ready to Go” Jobs and Infrastructure Report, attempting to dispel a persistent belief that infrastructure projects, though good for the economy and job creation, take a long long time to get up and running. Their first pass (attached) makes a pretty heady claim: Some 154 cities in every part of the country, have identified a total of 4,649 infrastructure projects that would create more than a quarter of a million jobs - all of which can be started or completed in 2009. The price tag? Just $25 billion, much of which already appears to be part of the normal appropriations process, ie - not a bailout.
No fancy suits, no contrite auto execs, just real projects offering real jobs in ways that make all our lives better. Oh, and directed to a sector that accounts for 86% of jobs and 90% of GDP. After the $700 bailout directed to Wall Street, $25 billion seems like a very big potential (and easy to track) bang for a pretty small buck.
These are high profile, good works projects that matter to communities - public safety jobs, energy projects, wastewater management, highway and bridge repair, school upgrades and rail projects. Next monday, the mayors will be announcing the second “Ready to Go” Jobs and Infrastructure Report, which will identify even more projects.
Jerry E. Abramson, the popular mayor of Louisville, KY headed to Capitol Hill in support of what the mayors are calling their Main Street Stimulus Plan. He makes a good case on what it would mean on a local level.
Now I'm a city girl through and through, which is probably why I'm eager to get started on one of my next projects, our annual Fast Cities package. But I'm also a believer that a good city manager is one of the best problem solvers around. If they need help to solve problems, we should give it to them. If we're going to get our acts together economically, figuring out how to keep cities humming smoothly seems like an awfully important priority - and not a bridge to nowhere.
The big three automakers submitted their restructuring plan yesterday, asking for some $34 billion in loans. For GM the news was quite grim - they indicated that they could fail in six weeks if not given some immediate help. With bankruptcy off the table, at least according to a scolding Nancy Pelosi, it looks like the chastened executives will end up getting their cash.
Perhaps a trip back to the future, and then the drawing board, is in order.
A few years ago, I had the pleasure of interviewing Jack Telnack, the former global vice president of design at Ford.
Telnack was the guy behind the ‘79 Mustang and the 83 Thunderbird, among other signature models. But the subject of our call was the car that saved Ford the last time around - the incredible true story of how a radical change in both design and workflow revived an automaker who seemed doomed to go belly up.
It was the utterly charming Ford Taurus, the three billion dollar jellybean on wheels, that both surprised and delighted a public that was used to the big box cars that their daddies drove. The wind-cheating Ford Taurus was instantly more fuel efficient, and its dramatic curves, flush glass, and wide stance set off a buying frenzy shortly after it rolled off the manufacturing line in 1986.
It came just in time. Ford was sputtering the early 1980s - high fuel prices, foreign competition and internal bickering had driven their U.S. market share down to 20%, a near all time low. Ford senior management bet the farm that a dramatic new design would keep Ford alive. (Cue menacing music.) But to reinvent the wheel, Ford would have to reinvent itself.
Any of this sound familiar?
“Ford was in the serious trouble in Detroit,” the now retired Telnack told me. “We were looking for a new approach, a new direction. We needed a breakthrough design.”
Enter the Taurus.
“The idea started in Europe, under Lew Veraldi. We started exploring the new, aerodyamic look – everyone was doing very boxy, square, angular. It was a very unique strong statement, very contemporary. Aero was on its way, but we were convinced that we could do it in a next step. It was a real risk. I think others were nervous. Even those in the company – the design was that far out there.”
But not only was the design a breakthrough for Ford, the way they built the car was equally revolutionary.
“We’d heard of teams before,” said Telnack, without a trace of irony. “We’d seen them work in Europe. We decided to try it because we really had to move fast if we were going to pull off this design.” Telnack created an utterly cross-functional group, bringing together for the first time disparate flavors of professionals who typically worked on a single project in a design vacuum – passing their work product “over the wall” to the next group.
Telnack's brought engineers, designers, stylists, modelers, sculptors, technicians and marketing people, often in the same room, and set them free to debate, reiterate and create.
It was an extraordinary re-ordering of the status quo, which had all but eliminated the messy chaos of the creative process and emphasized instead the swift execution of ideas filtered down from on high. Since “on high” seemed fresh out of ideas to swiftly execute (again, sound familiar?) it instantly injected a dose of inspiration throughout the entire company.
Telnack humbly credits Veraldi, but does say, “I’ll take credit for selecting the right team. I am very proud of the group I assembled. The good working relationships with engineering, other mechanicals, literally hundreds of people – all in the same room, working together. Design, sculptors, modelers – once we were in agreement on the basic concept of the car, we could get to work on it fast. Think about it – there is flush glass around the sides. A very wide stance, and an unusual placement of tires. We couldn’t have done that without engineers working out all the turn characteristics, working closely with metal stamping and manufacturing… it all had to be right in on the ground floor.”
The team also had the full faith and support of chairman and CEO Phil Caldwell and the senior management team. And they weren’t kidding. “They pushed us,” said Telnack. “The chairman would come by the studio and asked if we had reached far enough – which he’d never done.”
He also recalled with nostalgia the end of the focus group, at least for that project. “That’s what they do today – focus group things to death. But we wanted people to be a little uncomfortable with the design.” Yeah, they did market research and they listened, but, he said, “if we listened to closely, we wouldn’t have had a breakthrough car. Average people give you average ideas.”
“We had what we call early adapters, who understood design, and understood what different was and why it was special. They’re input is invaluable. We knew by tapping early adapters - from Silicon Valley, designers, architects and fashion people, that we were hitting trendsetters. We had to filter research within design. And it did make the marketing people nervous." Always a good sign, as far as I'm concerned.
Ford has sold nearly 7 million Tauruses worldwide, making it the fifth best seller in Ford history; between 1992 and 1996, the Taurus was the best-selling car in the United States. After a brief (boneheaded) attempt to retire the car in 2007, the company seems to be planning some sort of design comeback for the car in 2010.
That's cool. But it seems to me that what the automakers really need to do is take a history lesson, then take some real risks.
I cried in the voting booth yesterday. Like so many others, I had barely let myself believe that this could really happen--a woman and an African American, serious contenders on a national ticket.
President-elect Obama has run an extraordinary campaign, harnessing powerful social tools that came into widespread adoption just in time to help "a skinny guy with a funny name"(as he puts it) become a symbol of a truly democratic America, where anyone can in fact become President.
It is slowly becoming clear what this means to the world, but what it means for governance remains an open question. I spent election night with my friends at Current TV and Digg, who partnered up to bring even deeper engagement to the passive act of watching--or in the case of last night, screaming at--television. But it was Digg CEO Jay Adelson who caused me to choke up yet again with his confession that not so long ago, he simply wasn't sure what would happen when people actually had a voice. "You believe in social media, what it can mean when people can truly participate…but will they use it? Will they do the right things? I wasn't really sure." Now he's a believer. And not just because his candidate won, but because people actually showed up, online and IRL, and did the right things.
Now what? Adelson describes the ultimate risk that any marketer now takes: By opening themselves up to the social web, they are giving up a lot of control. Transparency and immediacy can have terrifying ramifications: Damaging rumors can spread like wildfire, destroying best-laid plans, reputations and livelihoods in the process. Of course governing involves grappling with the kind of huge challenges--national security leaps to mind--that make marketing a soda, or a candidate, look easy in comparison. Yet the promise of social media, where good ideas spring up from unlikely places, and an informed, supported citizenry fully engage in the messy business of governance, is more than worth the risk.
But rather than collect my thoughts on this, I collected yours. I reached out on Twitter, Facebook and the interwebs, and asked for your thoughts on how Government 2.0 might fulfill its promise of a truly engaged citizenry. Here's some of what you sent me:
1) Mark Silva, Principal & Founder of Real Branding (on twitter @marksilva) takes on the idea of risk directly: I grow stronger each day in my faith in the citizens/community to self-regulate and police. I'm a big fan of access and literacy to make us more connected. I believe the upsides of a connected citizenry far outweigh concerns.
In fact, as Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff point out in Groundswell, "Social Media amplified by Social Networks have changed the game where people now source from each other what they used to through corporations. That means the ignorance or the arrogance of power is now accountable to the collective intelligence. As we look back five years from now, I believe our analysis will tell us that this is what ultimately changed the tone and tide of these elections. It made smear politics more difficult. It made previously silenced voices heard. And it gave candidates unprecedented access to constituents, influence and even funding."
"I think you can safely say that no matter the way in which Obama used the technology in the elections or may in fact continue to use it in governance, the newly born networked public sphere will continue to rise and demand a seat at the table of political decision making and render the days of top down, back room, sound bite, and tear down politics, useless for a new generation of Americans coming of age.
The reason we can be hopeful for a more open, wired, and engaged democracy is because one of the bi-products of the technology is the fact that people are realizing how interconnected we all our, not just in this country, but around to world. This technologically advanced humanity is creating new responsible world citizens who understand that they can't just demand that their leaders solve the problems of the world by voting every four years, but that they too have to take a roll in changing behavior, holding government accountable, and help solve problems through creative solutions and working together."
3) Josh Bernioff, one of my favorite thinkers on the matter, blogged this:
"I call on president-elect Obama to create a community of committed Americans to discuss the solutions to the problems that face us. I call on him to designate a US Community Manager, with a small staff, to moderate and harvest those discussions to solve the country's problems. Forget polls. With a few million people in my.america.gov, Obama will be able to tap into the world's largest focus group. Communities are cheap, compared to most of what the government does. Create a space for the brightest people you know; use them to attract the best ideas. And better yet, use this energized community to sell those ideas to America."
4) Sam Ford, the Director of Customer Insights for Peppercom and a research affiliate with the MIT Convergence Culture Consortium, framed a very specific challenge in an e-mail:
"The president-elect now faces a communication crisis: he has marketed himself to the audience increasingly using communications platforms (the Web and mobile) that the ultimate product (our national government) does not use well.
"Citizens have been able to find out what both candidates were doing all along the campaign. The Obama camp has not only given us a constant feed about what's happening in their campaign and what they're thinking but constant ways to participate in the process as well.
"Now, the president-elect faces a dilemma: he will be chief executive of a large organization that is behind the curve in innovating how digital tools are used. For instance, the White House's current interactive page features a Q&A section last updated on March 26, 2007, answering the "pressing" question, "George W. Bush is what number as President of the U.S.?" The political machines surrounding candidacy have demonstrated a savvy with digital tools that does not reflect from the government they will take over."
5) Bentley University Professor of Government Christine Williams, has been studying the use of social media in campaigns, and contributed this:
"A social networking website is potential means to influence the agenda by rallying support behind legislation that gets communicated to the legislature (Congress). Ultimately it could change how governing is done by putting citizen based groups on a level playing field with organized interest groups.
"The challenge: It creates a possibility that is so large, it's almost impossible to keep up, to keep it fresh, and maintain the urgency around issues and people's desire to remain plugged in. Chief executives cannot interact and respond to comments generated through these tools on a regular basis, so the value is in creating advocacy and issue support groups at the grassroots. Those groups will not necessarily stay on the administration's message and will have much more diffuse priorities."
6) My friend Jennifer Fader, Vice President, eMedia, Rogers & Cowan sees reason for hope, because there's no other alternative:
"It's amazing how the election process has brought previously 'fringe' social media tools to the mainstream. Much as the social web has empowered consumers (think: Comcast sleeping cable guy on YouTube, exploding Dell computers, the ascendance of blogs like the consumerist.com), the same tools will help the people create a more accountable governing body.
"This is open source democracy. Legislation, one of the most glacially paced institutions in our culture, will be forced to become more agile in its ability to serve society's new people-powered dynamics. What's working on the social web - namely crowdsourcing, mechanical turking and microkarma payment marketplaces will return democracy its roots--the power of many to create a unified vision.
"Law is code and so one would hope that social tools will help accelerate the iteration process--just like with great software.
"What will keep this audience engaged? Meaningful social nets that aren't echo chambers but organizational catalysts to real change--I would hope that savvy entrepreneurs are helping to build platforms that help mesh social problems with willing participants in the process who are willing to construct change."
Thanks, oh network, my network. Keep 'em coming.
One final, personal note.
My dad fought in World War II in the segregated army, and came home to a country that barred him from voting. That, and the thousand daily indignities of being black in America, hardened him in some very sad ways.
Through the generosity of the GI bill, he became a lawyer, social worker and community organizer with one overarching responsibility: To keep his daughter safe in a world that was not welcoming to her. To become President was not an option for me; even as a kid I stuck with the much more attainable "fireman." He made sure that I knew exactly what I was up against--it was illegal to be a mixed race family in seventeen states when I was born, a fact which I've been reciting since I was six. We discussed the philosophies of Malcolm and Martin, marveled at the audacity of Muhammad Ali, who seemed to tempt fate with this taunts. We expected our heroes to be killed.
So, when I walked into that voting booth, using the same type of rickety machine that he used to take me in so many years ago, I thought of him, and marveled at the day that nobody thought would come.
I cried in the voting booth yesterday. Like so many others, I had barely let myself believe that this could really happen– a woman and an African American, serious contenders on a national ticket.
President-elect Obama has run an extraordinary campaign, harnessing powerful social tools that came into widespread adoption just in time to help, as he puts it, “a skinny guy with a funny name,” become a symbol of a truly democratic America, where anyone can, in fact, become President.
It is slowly becoming clear what this means to the world, but what it means for governance remains an open question. I spent election night with my friends at Current TV and Digg, who partnered up to bring even deeper engagement to the passive act of watching – or in the case of last night – screaming, at television. But it was Digg CEO Jay Adelson, who choked me up yet again, with his confession that not so long ago, he simply wasn’t sure what would happen when people actually had a voice. “You believe in social media, what it can mean when people can truly participate…but will they use it? Will they do the right things?” But now? He believes. And not just because his candidate won, but because people actually showed up, online and IRL, and did the right things.
Now what? Adelson describes the ultimate risk that any marketer now takes: By opening themselves up to the social web, they are giving up a lot of control. Transparency and immediacy have terrifying implications; damaging rumors can spread like wildfire, destroying best-laid plans, reputations and livelihoods in the process. But governance has a unique set of problems - national security leaps to mind - that make marketing a soda, or a candidate, pale in comparison. Yet the promise of social media, where good ideas spring up from unlikely places, and an informed, supported citizenry fully engage in the messy business of governing is more than worth the risk.
But rather than collect my thoughts on this, I collected yours. I reached out on Twitter, Facebook and the interwebs, and asked for your thoughts on how Government 2.0 might fulfill its promise of a truly engaged citizenry. Here’s some of what you sent me:
My friend Mark Silva, Principal & Founder of Real Branding (on twitter @marksilva) takes on the idea of risk directly:
I grow stronger each day in my faith in the citizens/community to self-regulate and police. I'm a big fan of access and literacy to make us more connected. I believe the upsides of a connected citizenry far outweigh concerns.
In fact, as Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff point out in Groundswell, Social Media amplified by Social Networks have changed the game where people now source from each other what they used to through corporations. That means the ignorance or the arrogance of Power is now accountable to the collective intelligence. As we look back five years from now, I believe our analysis will tell us that this is what ultimately changed the tone and tide of these elections. It made smear politics more difficult. It made previously silenced voices heard. And it gave candidates unprecedented access to constituents, influence and even funding.”
“I think you can safely say that no matter the way in which Obama used the technology in the elections or may in fact continue to use it in governance, the newly born networked public sphere will continue to rise and demand a seat at the table of political decision making and render the days of top down, back room, sound bite, and tear down politics, useless for a new generation of Americans coming of age.
The reason we can be hopeful for a more open, wired, and engaged democracy is because one of the bi-products of the technology is the fact that people are realizing how interconnected we all our, not just in this country, but around to world. This technologically advanced humanity is creating new responsible world citizens who understand that they can't just demand that their leaders solve the problems of the
world by voting every four years, but that they too have to take a roll in changing behavior, holding government accountable, and help solve problems through creative solutions and working together.”
One of my favorite thinkers on the matter, Josh Bernioff, blogged:
“I call on president-elect Obama to create a community of committed Americans to discuss the solutions to the problems that face us. I call on him to designate a US Community Manager, with a small staff, to moderate and harvest those discussions to solve the country's problems. Forget polls. With a few million people in my.america.gov, Obama will be able to tap into the world's largest focus group. Communities are cheap, compared to most of what the government does. Create a space for the brightest people you know; use them to attract the best ideas. And better yet, use this energized community to sell those ideas to America.”
But Sam Ford, the Director of Customer Insights for Peppercom and a research affiliate with the MIT Convergence Culture Consortium, framed a very specific challenge in an e-mail:
“The president-elect now faces a communication crisis: he has marketed himself to the audience increasingly using communications platforms (the Web and mobile) that the ultimate product (our national government) does not use well.
Citizens have been able to find out what both candidates were doing all along the campaign. The Obama camp has not only given us a constant feed about what’s happening in their campaign and what they’re thinking but constant ways to participate in the process as well.
Now, the president-elect faces a dilemma: he will be chief executive of a large organization that is behind the curve in innovating how digital tools are used. For instance, the White House’s current interactive page features a Q&A section last updated on March 26, 2007, answering the “pressing” question, “George W. Bush is what number as President of the U.S.?” The political machines surrounding candidacy have demonstrated a savvy with digital tools that does not reflect from the government they will take over.”
Bentley University Professor of Government Christine Williams, has been studying the use of social media in campaigns, and contributed this:
“A social networking website is potential means to influence the agenda by rallying support behind legislation that gets communicated to the legislature (Congress). Ultimately it could change how governing is done by putting citizen based groups on a level playing field with organized interest groups.
The challenge: It creates a possibility that is so large, it’s almost impossible to keep up, to keep it fresh, and maintain the urgency around issues and people’s desire to remain plugged in. Chief executives cannot interact and respond to comments generated through these tools on a regular basis, so the value is in creating advocacy and issue support groups at the grassroots. Those groups will not necessarily stay on the administration's message and will have much more diffuse priorities.”
My friend Jennifer Fader, Vice President, eMedia, Rogers & Cowan sees reason for hope, because there’s no other alternative:
"It's amazing how the election process has brought previously "fringe" social media tools to the mainstream. Much as the social web has empowered consumers (read: comcast sleeping cable guy on YouTube, exploding dell computers, the ascendance of blogs like the consumerist.com), the same tools will help the people create a more accountable governing body.
This is open source democracy. Legislation, one of the most glacially paced institutions in our culture, will be forced to become more agile in its ability to serve society's new people-powered dynamics. What's working on the social web - namely crowdsourcing, mechanical turking and mircokarma payment marketplaces will return democracy its roots - the power of many to create a unified vision.
Law is code and so one would hope that social tools will help accelerate the iteration process - just like with great software.
What will keep this audience engaged? Meaningful social nets that aren't echo chambers but organizational catalysts to real change - I would hope that savvy entrepreneurs are helping to build platforms that help mesh social problems with willing participants in the process who are willing to construct change.”
Thanks, oh network, my network. Keep ‘em coming.
One final, personal note.
My dad fought in World War II in the segregated army, came home to a country that barred him from voting. That, and the thousand daily indignities of being black in America, hardened him in some very sad ways.
Through the generosity of the GI bill, he became a lawyer, social worker and a community organizer with one overarching responsibility: To keep his daughter safe in a world that was not welcoming to her. To become President was not an option for me, even as a kid I stuck with the much more attainable “fireman.” He made sure that I knew exactly what I was up against – it was illegal to be a mixed race family in seventeen states when I was born, a fact which I’ve been reciting since I was six. We discussed the philosophies of Malcolm and Martin, marveled at the audacity of Muhammad Ali, as he tempted fate with this taunts. We expected our heroes to be killed.
So, when I walked into that voting booth, using the same type of rickety machine that he used to take me in so many years ago, I thought of him, and marveled at the day that nobody thought would come.
Sean Maloney (left) just wants people to buy things. "The last six months, people everywhere have been scared about what's happening in the world," says Maloney, Intel's chief sales and marketing officer. An ebbing tide--and moribund electronics market--grounds all boats: Intel's first-quarter revenue was $7.1 billion, down 26% year over year.
This speaks to Maloney's broader point, that spending is essential in a downturn, especially if you are in a business that relies on technology of your own making, as financial services firms do. In an attempt to get ahead of the game by the next upswing, Intel is doing some spending of its own. After closing some smaller plants, it announced earlier this year that it would invest more than $7 billion upgrading its factories in the United States. "We doubled down on manufacturing," Maloney says. "People said, 'You're insane!' " But Intel's entire competitive advantage--its ability to keep pace with Moore's Law and even exceed it--is in its manufacturing processes. "All our heavy-duty stuff is internal R&D on manufacturing," he says. "We lost that in the '80s and nearly went bankrupt, so it's a fairly fanatical focus for us. Never again."
When the running joke is that what's left of your money is better off under your mattress, how, exactly, is Schwab wooing
customers? Talk to Chuck.
On Schwab's site and in conversations with
representatives, reassurance is a hot commodity. "Beginning with the steady slide of the market last September, "communications have taken on a great role," Saeger told me. "People want more analysis, opinion, and market information," Saeger says. And they have lots of questions. "If you'd told me that people were going to want to know what holdings were in their money-market funds, or whether we were financially stable, I would have said you're out of your mind." Saeger has worked quickly to find the right tone. "This is a nightmare for people. We had to strike a balance between not bullshitting people, but also giving people some reason to be optimistic."
The effort has not been lost on customers and prospects, who are now talking back to Chuck, thanks to Saeger dipping her toe in the water of online communities and social media. "We have to be very careful about giving advice in an open forum, but it hasn't deterred us," she says. "We have a community of active traders and they're all customers. You can't see the communities as a prospect, but we're watching very closely how our online community is evolving, how people interact with us, where the engagement is. In fact, in just one little piece of the community site, we're seeing people spending twenty minutes at a time, which is higher than we anticipated in terms of engagement."
Although the new president seems to have won, for now, the 
