This afternoon I attended my first City Council hearing. Frankly, it was my first time inside City Hall. Today’s hearing was related to a topic that is known to be near and dear to my heart: the city support of the so-called “creative economy”.

I found out about this event, as most people did, last minute. And my desire to attend was minimal, chiefly because I have a strong distaste for the types of meetings that end up being mostly masturbatory: if I don’t leave a meeting with some sort of actionable item besides having another meeting, I’m usually pretty unhappy with the use of my time.

However, I was drawn to this event because a number of my peers, notably some that I have a pretty large amount of respect for, had been invited to present on panels to the hearing board. That group included Blake Jennelle, Philly Startup Leaders founder, and Matt Fisher, President of Night Kitchen Interactive and long time member of PANMA. I knew that these particular leaders shared my views of the local scene, shared opinions about the strengths and needs of our community, and were extremely capable of vocalizing these messages succinctly and effectively. If nothing else, I would have an educational experience in how a city council hearing is conducted, and support my friends. The only guaranteed loss was being indoors on such a beautiful spring afternoon.

As I was walking into City Hall, I decided that it would be interesting to live-twitter my experience. Not only for record keeping purposes…but sort of an experiment to share my at-the-moment opinions (as heat-of-the-moment as they were) with my followers.

So it began. I quickly learned that there was a video feed (which I’m working on finding an archive of), and others were watching from afar. And before I knew it…my twittering turned my timeline into a back channel for the Philadelphia City Council Public Hearing on the Creative Economy.

I’d be very surprised if this was actually the first time a government event had a backchannel…but what was interesting to me was that it ended up proving incredibly valuable. For a number of reasons.

First, as my original thought was, for record keeping. If you look over my tweets in chronological order, the hot-topics were tracked in twitter forever. Sweet.

Second, was me opening my brain. Not that I wouldn’t have done that anyway, but instead of passing notes or whispering in my neighbor’s ear, and being disruptive…I got to put my disruptive behavior to good use.

Third, and most interestingly, it engaged a number of people who could not be in the room do to prior commitments, or lack of notice. I’m lucky that I don’t have a boss I have to ask if I can take the afternoon off to go do something. Most people aren’t. Did all 1500+ people that follow me care about the contents of the hearing? Of course not. But a number of them certainly did. And some of them cared enough to chime in on the conversation. And thus, the backchannel was born.

Whats most interesting about the people who cared, is that not all of them were even in, or from, Philadelphia. One of the really important parts to remember about all of the creative economy and city branding initiatives that we’re involved in is that they are, at the very least, two-fold. There’s the need for better awareness inside our city limits, but just as valuable, are the external perceptions of our city, its economy, its workforce, and it’s general contributions to the rest of the world. So when people started listening, and better yet, chiming in from places like New York City, Kansas, Austin, and LA…the message was being spread MUCH further than the city council ever could have anticipated. And the best part about this message? It’s showing the rest of the world, not only that we’re doing something…but we’re looking to them to reciprocate in many of the potential relationships we’re creating.

Its worth noting that I only have a limited scope to this online backchannel…my own tweets and the tweets of the people I follow. If someone said something and I wasn’t following them, I missed it. If someone responded to one of the people I was following, I likely missed that as well. So the message may very well have gotten even further than I’m aware. And that’s freaking rad.

There are a lot more thoughts I have about the contents of the event. Some of it was intensely, intensely positive. Some of it was intensely, intensely frustrating. I’ll save those thoughts for another post as my mind starts weaving things together. Most notably, though was some really really glowing support for the things I care the most about: Indyhall, of course, but also P’unk Ave and their Junto, Geoff DiMasi in general, and iSepta (a new app thats sprung up out of some really awesome organic collaboration between some IndyHall members). IndyHall, P’unk Ave, Geoff, and I were mentioned by no less 3 separate panelists. If the city didn’t know about us yet…they sure do now.

In the mean time, today was the day I realized the value of live, citizen journalism.

Today was a pretty important day.

The last few weeks have been VERY good to IndyHall and some of our other grassroots creative friends. One of the leaders of those groups, Blake Jennelle, asked me about the response from press. He asked if the recent spot on CBS Morning News, or the Philadelphia Business Journal piece, had yielded a lot of phone calls or inquiries with interest.

Frankly, they haven’t yielded much more than a bunch of congratulations from friends and family who were excited to see us recognized. And it’s something to keep my mom off my back about my lack of finishing my degree. All of which I’m EXTREMELY appreciative of. It’s ridiculously humbling to get this kind of credit when it’s due to way more people than just me. It’s also validating that the work we’re doing is being seen by a more mainstream audience. I’ve said before that I think coworking is about much more than just what we do at IndyHall, and what others do at their coworking spaces…it’s not about where people want to work, it’s about how.

But that’s not my point. At least not today.

So, what is the point?

My point is, a little spot on the email newsletter Daily Candy actually gave us WAY more response from new interested parties. Like, a lot. Tripled our highest traffic day on the blog, and more than a handful of phone calls and visits from new people who read about us and were interested in spots.

I’ve got a couple of theories why this somewhat “counterintuitive lesson in niche marketing”, as Blake so eloquently put it, occurred.

Link Love? Not here.

First is a basic fault of mainstream press, and one that I’m hardly the first to note: mainstream press does not link. Period. They keep eyeballs on their own sites, and have ZERO interest in sharing link love. It’s absurd, but it’s true, and eventually as the they’ll catch on, or they’ll die off. Either way, the problem will be solved, and nothing we do is going to change them.

Net Fishing vs. The Heavy Artillery

The more important reason, I think, simply has to do with the niche we market to, and who viewed the pieces of press. Both the CBS news, at 7:30am, and the Philadelphia Business Journal, are NOT primarily consumed by work-from-the-couch indies. So again…lots of eyeballs, little audience relevance.

It’s the difference between casting a net, and harpoon fishing. It seems that the Daily Candy piece, however, was like having a multi-harpoon-launching-fishing-gatling-gun.

We still love mainstream

Theres an immense amount of value of getting the coworking message to the masses. Ultimately, this movement is (I hope) going to shape their futures, and they should know we’re coming. Also, some messages need the attention of the masses. Mainstream press isn’t going away, don’t think that for a second. I’m just saying that in some cases, it may not be the place you should put your focus first.

If you want people to care, you have to show them that you care, first. And freaking mean it.

But apply this to your business, organization, or idea: rather than cast a net of press releases, think hard about your target(s). Casting a net takes a whole lot of energy with very little yield. Diligent and clearly targeted messaging, however, yields much greater results with the same amount of energy.

So next time you’re trying to get your idea out there, chew on this: try finding thought leaders in that target audience, and get friendly. Give them the attention they deserve. Read up on them. Hand craft emails. These people deserve your attention, since you’re asking it of them. Sending them a canned message is going to fall into the pile with all of the other canned PR. It’s worthless. It really is.

If you want these people to care, you need to prove that you give a shit about your own message. And I’m sorry, but a canned press release doesn’t scream “I care”.

Even though your target for making your message reach a widespread audience are “influencers”, because they can change winds, thought leaders tend to be more approachable, and guess who the influencers turn to for their next “big thing” to influence.

You got it. The thought leader that you planted a seed with.

Focus.

Bursting out to the masses with every little move you make, if you think about it, kinda turns into a ‘boy who cried wolf’ scenario. What happens when you actually DO make a move that’s notable.

That’s not to say that you shouldn’t share your every move. I do it on twitter. I do it on the IndyHall blog. I do a fair amount of it here. But those are all opt in messaging, and the people who receive it are people who want to. If I’m lucky, some of those “followers” are thought leaders and influencers, and…

I guess that’s how we ended up in mainstream press in the first place.

To anyone who’s ever asked me why I “bother” to hand code everything instead of work with a WYSIWYG, I’m finally validated by the NY Times design director:

It’s our preference to use a text editor, like HomeSite, TextPad or TextMate, to “hand code” everything, rather than to use a wysiwyg (what you see is what you get) HTML and CSS authoring program, like Dreamweaver. We just find it yields better and faster results.

But really the browser-to-browser consistency that you see (and I have to admit, it’s far from perfect) is the result of a vigilant collaboration between many different groups — the visual designers and technologists in the design team that I lead, their counterparts in our technology staff, and the many, many detail-oriented people who come together to make the site a reality every hour of every day.

Via Boingboing, via Slashdot (which I finally stopped reading).

While I’m sharing link content relevant to hand coding methodology this morning (since this blog has taken a turn for the philosophical recently), make sure you check out the <em>Confessions</em> of a CSS Developer. Some of my favorites (and own confessions) include:

• Everything before IE6 is dead to me
• I passionately use the * {margin:0; padding:0} rule. Sometimes I feel rebellious and add border:0
• I will seriously cry when all browsers fully support CSS 3

In light of the first half of this post, I’m willing to overlook confession #12 for the sake of the humor/accuracy in rest of them.

Moments after reading the inspiring post by 37 Signals post about why NOT to be in San Francisco, I got this Facebook Message from Dave Troy (of the highly addicting Twittervision) regarding the upcoming SocialDevCamp East that excites me very, very much. So much, in fact, that I wanted to share:

Subject: The Revolution Begins in Baltimore

Hey folks,

As we gear up for SocialDevCamp East in Baltimore on May 10, one of the things that we’d like to highlight is the diversity of Web 2.0 talent available here on the east coast.

The conventional wisdom today says that to make it as a social startup, you should a) move to San Francisco (preferably East Bay or SOMA), b) meet a bunch of cool people (natch), c) get funded (cake!), d) get featured in TechCrunch, e) build your startup to 500,000 users, f) get snapped up in an early acquisition by Google for $90M, g) repeat.

For lots of reasons, the odds of this working are low and getting lower. Why? For one, this is the conventional wisdom; everybody’s doing it, why shouldn’t you? Loads of ditto-heads are creating a glut of ideas. They all can’t win.

Second, VC investments are often a trailing indicator of successful business sectors. VCs follow what has worked previously, which leads to persistent failures at the end of a business cycle. Why else do you think they need to rely on outrageous 100x returns? To make up for their last round of losses.

Why do you live where you do? Family, a partner, school, friends, or do you simply love where you live? There are countless talented people who have made the same choice as you, and they’ve made this choice not as a runner-up to a life of glory in the Bay area. They’ve made the choice as a matter of personal identity and conviction.

As I meet members of the tech business community along the east coast, I hear two things consistently. One, that the Bay area is getting weird these days, and that they are “all smoking the same air.” Second, that the “VC community doesn’t get it here,” and that it’s hard to get funding and launch a web-based startup on the east coast.

Sorry, but we can’t have it both ways. We must choose: do you want to live in the Bay Area and sustain the vagaries of that echo-chamber culture, or do you want to grow where you’re planted and build viable businesses here?

The fact is that we can’t expect to improve the tech startup climate on the east coast if we don’t come together and make it what we want it to be. And that means we need to stop looking over our shoulder at the west coast and start building businesses here and now, using telework, co-work, or traditional workspaces.

The 37signals blog covered this topic today, and reflected many of my opinions on the subject:
http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/987-are-you-sure-you-want-to-be-in-san-francisco

This is part of what we want to address at SocialDevCamp East. If we want to have a thriving startup culture here, we need to build it — one relationship at a time.

Best,
Dave

Ironically…I found out about this event from the guy who seems to always be hooked into everything in San Francisco…and still manages to keep on enough of the pulse on the East Coast to be one step ahead of me. Thanks Chris. Someday, I’ll know about something before you do. Someday.

Last week, I asked a bunch of my twitter followers, “What does creative mean to you?”

I wasn’t just trolling for comments, I actually was curious what the notion of creativity or a creative person was to different people. As expected, there was some really great variance in the responses. The real answer (if there is one) that I was looking to glean from the responses was that variance itself. I was interested in the different definitions because of another concept that has a bunch of different definitions, as well as connotations: Agency.

I was introduced to some of these concepts, like many other things that I hold dearly, by my friends at CitizenAgency. I remember when I first read the story of how they came to decide on the name for their consultancy, which is almost entirely based around helping companies create opportunities to extend agency into their userbases. Into their citizenship. The notion of Agency in this case was philosophical, the ability to help your users make good choices and ultimately, feel empowered to kick ass.

I’ve always felt that the concept that drives CitizenAgency is incredibly special, and the results of the projects that Chris and Tara have been involved in speak to that. Recently, and leading up to last weeks question, I’ve been mulling over the combination of the two polymorphic notions of “creative” and “agency”, and the fact that many of my industry’s businesses consider themselves creative agencies. And while they may or may not be fulfilling one (or many) of the different concepts of creative that people contributed to my last post, the vast majority of them miss out on the agency part in a pretty big way.

Part One - Creative Agency for the Client:

The most typical project ownership that’s experienced goes something like this:

1. Client approaches firm/independent with project concept
2. Firm/independent fulfills request, with the end user of the project in mind

In some of the best cases, there’s a discovery phase in between to help the creators understand the client’s intent. What’s missed, more often, is client education. Client involvement. And most importantly, reminding the client why they hired the firm or independent in the first place: because we’re the experts.

My intention with that statement is not to be condescending, but the reality of the relationship is that we, as the creators, are responsible for leading the client just as much as we are leading the project and the result that the end user experiences.

My problem in this part one discussion is that so many “agencies” do at least one of two things wrong. They ignore client education, or even worse, they roll over to client whims for the sake of avoiding confrontation. Without naming names or pointing fingers, this was the number one complaint I had with both of my full time jobs with interactive firms. They lead and executed amazing production work. And maybe it was simply because of where I sat in the ranks, but I never felt like the client had involvement in the project where it counted.

In another one of my (ramblier) posts, I talked about the notion of doer-enablers, and creating an experience where a non-creative person can feel the creative process. In as many projects as possible, I’ve tried to put just as much focus on my experience with the client as I did on the experience we were creating together for their end user. And most importantly, I did a good job of engaging with clients who would be receptive to the education. I always let them feel that it was appropriate to push back on my suggestions, but at the same time, if I could take that push back and turn it into an opportunity to teach them something new and stand my ground, I would. Maybe I’m lucky to have had some really rad clients and partners. But I really think it was more about setting that precedent early and committing to carrying it forward.

Part Two - Creative Agency for the Talent:

The other thing I started to think about when I was analyzing “creative” and “agency” next to one another was the fact that most creatives are so busy “thinking outside of the box” (that one’s for you, Mike Propst) that they’re not particularly good at looking out for themselves. The horror stories I read on FreelanceSwitch about people getting taken advantage of blow me away. I understand that some folks simply lack the business savvy, but that leaves a big open hole for people really put focus on perfecting craft, which I have an immense amount of respect for. So what can we do for those people?

You’re probably surprised I got this far in a post without mentioning coworking, and here’s the part where I live up to your expectations. I look at the interactions at IndyHall and other coworking communities that I observe from a distance and think that we’re in a fantastic position to help with this other type of agency, the one that borders on the far ends of the philosophical version I spoke about before. The type I’m thinking about is more along the lines of talent agency, where someone with the business savvy that a creative might lack is able to represent, mentor, and advise the creative in decision making. The difference in this type of agency (which, in my mind, plays out a bit like the talent agencies of Hollywood, but without the likes of Ari Gold and his extreme antics) is that it puts heavy focus on helping and representing talent, and the client interaction mentioned in part #1 of

this post is the responsibility of the talent themselves. Think of it like an advisory board for hire.

One of the most exciting parts of my contributions to discovering the model we’ll be using at ChoiceShirts on our t-shirt designer community is this same concept: designers that not only work together, but support one another with their independent strengths. The model goes even deeper in the fact that ChoiceShirts itself will be extending its business, marketing, production, fulfillment, and distribution facilities to the artists it represents. This is creative agency, as I see it..

So how does coworking fit into this? Well, the problems in traditional talent agency models are, in my best estimation, rooted in greediness. Something amazing and empowering to me about the coworking community at large, and the culture it breeds, is how un-greedy it is. The contributory sentiments of all of our members at IndyHall, and nearly every interaction I’ve had on the coworking list or with members of another coworking space, lend themselves greatly to the concept of advising other creatives.

Generosity does not equate to poverty. William Hurley (Whurley, to friends across the universe) wrote some time back about how being an open source software developer does not, and should not, condemn ones self to a life of poverty. If we can apply those ideals (of give and take, and community moderation) to a Creative Agency for talent representation, we might be onto something special. And that’s the kind of “special” stuff I expect from my coworking cohorts.

Who’s game for watching one another’s back? Oh wait. We already are.

The crew at IndyHall was talking this morning about all of the different definitions of creative, and how they vary from person to person. This is leading somewhere, I promise. But I need some reader feedback first.

Quickie poll for the comments:

What does “creative” mean to you?

Tonight marks the 1 month anniversary of the evening before I left for Austin, Texas to attend SXSW Interactive 2008. In 6 days, it will be 1 month since I returned home to Philadelphia and began processing all I had learned and accomplished while at the conference.

I’m thinking about how much has gotten done in the last 30 days and what’s changed since leaving SXSW. While I’m making my own notes, I’d love to hear from other people how their last 30 days of reflection (and recovery) have gone.

So tell me:

What are you up to these days?
Who/what is inspiring you?
Who/what has changed your perspective?
Who did you meet that set you on a path of achieving awesome?
Who do you miss the most?
Have you been following through on the things you promised yourself you’d do when you got back from Austin?

I’ve been doing a bunch of video comments over at GaryVaynerchuk.com because, quite frankly, the dude is nailing it time and again and he knows how to get me fired up. So here we go: how to build a legacy through education.

Remember, the point of a legacy is that it cannot, and will not, ever die!

Tags: education, legacy, garyvaynerchuk, tara hunt, change the world

I’ve been in a funny spot for the last several weeks as I rock between my previous workflows of being wholly responsible for production work to being in a pseudo-management position and doing more advising, strategy, and writing. I’m still not entirely comfortable with it, mostly because I feel like I’m diluting the amount of the end product that I’ve actually “done”.

This is turning into a dangerous conundrum because every time I slip back to thinking that the only type of “doer” is the one on the production line, I get down on myself and upset about my contributions. Clearly, I know this is irrational. I’m still working. I’m working my ass off. But something felt out of sync.

Lets switch gears for a second.

Ze Frank. Internet performer (genius), educated thinker (genius), master DO-ER (mad respect).

I was introduced to Ze last year at the end of his run of producing “The Show”, his daily take on existence that he distributed over the internet from March 17th 2006-March 17th 2007. Having met Ze briefly before I knew who he was, or more importantly, what he was, seems to be a theme from SXSW Interactive 2007 (where we met at the Yahoo! Bartab). As tends to be the case, I researched him a bit after the fact and realized that I had just brushed shoulders with inspiration and didn’t know it…and that this inspiration would strike again.

And it has.

After taking a 1 year leave of absence from his community, Ze reappeared a few weeks ago on Twitter. Watching Ze emerge was kinda like watching an infant grow up over the course of a couple of days. He didn’t really understand the whys…he didn’t really understand the hows…he just asked questions, tried things, and waited for feedback.

Then he did something that was out of the norm of most developing children. He colored (PUNNY!) outside of the lines, with complete disregard for the ruler aimed intently on slapping his wrists.

Inspiration.

From speaking to my buddy Erik Kastner (internet famous CSS3 Image Hider, FlickrSpell, Befuddler, his contributions to the creation of the acclaimed WineLibraryTV and supporting infrastructure at WineLibrary, and countless other bits of awesome. Clearly a doer.), his contributions to Ze’s latest project have opened his eyes to what makes Ze “tick”.

Ze, I don’t know you and can’t pretend to, but if I had to guess, the one common thread between you and I is our complete and utter disregard for the norm. In fact, I think it goes a bit deeper than that. We strive to break the norm, in experimental, observational activities.

You see, as Ze got his legs for the twitter community, his realization that norms had developed in the first place made him uncomfortable enough to say, “EFF THIS!” and only 4 days after exploding onto the scene, turn several thousand users (including a number of the twitter co-founders and employees) into active participants in a new construct that came completely from his imagination.

Ze colored outside of the lines by starting ColorWar2008.

I’m thinking about my own childhood, and education in general. I’m thinking about the activities that education tries to push on us, and at the same time, I can pinpoint a couple of educators I’ve had in my life that with one hand, imposed rules and regulations. With the other hand, though…certain educators would smile and half-encourage my misbehavior, believing in the fact that I wasn’t being destructive, I simply had a varied perspective. Coloring outside of the lines was my immature way of exhibiting that.

One more Ze-specific anecdote before I come back to my point:

In this video from TED 2006, Ze describes being in a perpetual state of “80%”. I agree and think that most creative people are as well, and really like being there. What Ze does that’s so freaking magnificent is his ability to extend that experience to people who aren’t typically the types to color outside of the lines. Who aren’t the kinds of people who think they can just “try stuff”. The reason I think people idolize Ze isn’t because he’s funny (and he is), and it’s not because he’s smart (and he is). It’s because he’s repeatedly come up with ways to invite people inside his vision, and then at the same time…gives up a good portion of the vision TO the new participant and lets them run with it. That’s inspiring. That’s awesome.

I’ve done my best to conduct myself in the last year to do similar things for my peers surrounding me. As I’ve written about before, by coming up with simple, basic tools to let people share your vision is about as close to a sure-fire way to improve the world around you as I can think of.

I’ve gone on the record before saying IndyHall was a self serving venture in the fact that I wanted it myself. I was able to find others around me, give them their own box of crayons, and tell them that it was OK to color outside of the lines. By doing that, I created the surroundings that I wanted for myself in the first place.

Back on point

Alright. I’ve rambled enough. What’s my point. I was talking about doers, and related, doer-enablers. If it isn’t clear from the lack of structure in this post, I’ve been feeling like I’ve lost a good deal of my focus.

Remember when I mentioned the “80% complete” feeling that most creative people thrive on? Well, once in a while, that feeling sinks and you find yourself stuck in a rut of “always 20% done”. With no light at the end of the tunnel, motivation drops, productivity drops, quality of work drops, and distractions become your biggest enemy.

I’m not longer sure which of my contributions to society are most valuable, both for me and for the people around me. Am I a better doer, or a better doer-enabler? And most importantly…can I make a living (or at least not run myself into debt) being a doer-enabler?

I don’t know the answer. I just needed to get this stream of thought out of my head and out into the world rather than cryptically being frustrated by my own hesitations to execute. I’m not a hesitant person. I don’t know why I’m hesitating now more than ever.

I still haven’t found the focus I’m looking for, but at least this clarity helps me reassure myself that I’m on a path to look for it. This post is an early step to opening myself up to new roads to travel down while searching for that focus.

Here’s to finding my 80% again.

UPDATE:

Another way to look at all of this is finding balance between two sub-types of social capital: bridging and bonding. As if by magic, one of my good friends and mentors, Tara Hunt began twittering about this balance right around the same time I made this initial post. See:
Tara on detecting bridge vs bond
Tara on balance
Tara on the exhaustion from balancing them
Tara on creating mentors

Thanks for accidentally pitching into the mindshare, Tara!