Tell the whole world the truth is back

Image via Wikipedia

I've spent the last couple years talking about intent in various guises. Sometimes related to marketing, sometimes to business, but always, always at the heart of what anyone is doing. It has become an intrinsic part of what I write about, as anyone who has been with me for a little while will attest.

In February 2008 I penned a piece looking at Facebook's advertising ecosystem (things have changed dramatically since) and referenced a piece by your friend and mine Doc Searls on The Intention Economy. This phrase showed up again in a presentation I did called Digital Strangelove, and I realised just today, after stumbling across Doc referencing that presentation (tremendous honour and incredibly humbling) that despite spending a long time making sure the appropriate references were in place and credits given, I had not tipped my hat to Doc and his original article which clearly made an impression on me.

Thankfully the medium within which we work allows for easy retraction, correction and re-dissemination of correct information - if we choose to take advantage of it. I have updated my deck with a link to Doc's original piece in the credits, and wanted to take the time to acknowledge the source of that phrase. Additional credit I can only add by stealing from Sir Isaac Newton: if I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.

Thanks Doc.

On the road again

Cover of On The Road

I have had Jack Kerouac's On The Road given to me a gift to keep at least three times. I imagine some combination of traits my friends spotted in me (wannabe-philosopher mixed with restless-and-easily-distracted) focused their attention on this book. When people visit, they remark on the copies that line my shelf:

"You liked it enough to buy it twice?"

"No. I ignored it long enough to be given another."

This is not about that book though. This is about perception (and a little intent).

Your friend and mine Mark Earls referenced a piece from Lynne Truss in the UK's Sunday Times in which she states:

...I like to see what other people are reading on the bus or the train; how far they’ve got; whether they’re enjoying it. It seems to me that such information needs to be public for the good of us all and I’m sad to think of reading in public places ultimately becoming so private...

Lynne was lamenting the arrival of E-Readers and the disappearance of actual book and magazine covers from the parks and cafes and public transport systems of the world, along with the loss of a shared look or a fleeting conversation about the work at hand.

Lynne Truss' worry stems from the removal of social identifiers in public spaces; it seems we don't just judge a book by its cover, but the reader as well. I smile whenever I see another grown-up reading Harry Potter in public, because I remember being consumed by those books and also embarrassed to have them out in public without an 8 year old in sight. We use these things (and clothes, iPods, cars and holidays) to signal via the perceptions we assume others will have. My intent given my office wardrobe today of boho-cardigan and falling apart at the seams (but limited edition John Varvatos-collaboration) Converse sneakers, is to signal something true about myself; unfortunately that truth is little more than the clothing equivalent of the never opened copies of Kerouac's masterpiece, or as I wrote in Everyone 2.0, you're unique.

Just like everyone else.

I have friends (they shall remain nameless because I love them dearly) who have taken great pleasure in displaying tomes they have conquered in the name of enlightenment. These friends drew more pleasure from others seeing they had read (or at least bought) the appropriate books than perhaps they did from the work itself. On The Road is a book a selection of my friends feel I am supposed to have read, and as anyone who knows me will tell you, something someone says I am supposed to do instantly defaults to the thing I am least likely to do. Their intent is to help me appear a culturally astute and well-rounded individual; my intent is the equally pretentious attempt to thumb my nose at convention simply for the sake of it.

Now, my favourite magazine is British GQ as its collection of columnists is a veritable who's who of the UK's newspapers. They are regularly funny and insightful and it pains me when the publisher stoops to putting a scantily clad woman on the front cover, partly because the writing is better than that suggests but also because I then feel the need to explain to others, much as the joke about Playboy goes, "I read it for the articles." Perception reveals, or so we would assume, intent. Perception is also said to be reality, and so given the option of tangling with the looks I imagine women might give me on the subway in the mornings, I opt for Wired and instead leave Heidi Klum in her various states of undress on my coffee table for next Sunday (sorry dear, you know how it is).

Back to the Kindle, on one hand I like where we're heading as I could potentially just read A.A. Gill's column without wondering if someone's nipple is slipping out on the other side for the rest of the train to see.

On the other hand I'm envisioning a birthday not too long from now, where a gift arrives as a download along with a note "Didn't see it in your "Read Items" list on Amazon and thought to myself David is supposed to have read books like this!!"

The identifiers are perhaps moving out of the physical world in some ways, I doubt however this will have much impact on the intentions we have for everyone else's lives.

I've got big ideas, I'm out of control (Commented on "A VC")

Fred Wilson has an interesting short piece up this morning on failure. After reading it, I left the following comment:

I was doing a review of a (young but brilliant) guy on my team recently, and as we were discussing the feedback he said to me "You know, the thing I worry about more than anything is making mistakes."

I looked at him blankly and said "That is like fretting that the sun might come up tomorrow. Guess what? It's going to happen! Don't worry about making mistakes, worry about things you can actually have a positive impact on. If you spend your time worrying about the possibility of mistakes you're not going to get anything done."

Now, being Australian (living in Canada atm), there's a fair amount of a "no worries" attitude that is ingrained in us, but Fred I think you hit on something really crucial about the States - the fact that success is rewarded and if you fail you are encouraged to give it another go; as fortunate as I feel to be from Australia we don't have the latter as part of our psyche. I've benefited from tremendously from growing up in Hong Kong among other places, and I think a willingness to get it wrong is one of the best things any society can have in its DNA.

It's probably also the reason I'm a long way from home right now :)

Originally posted as a comment
by davidgillespie
on A VC using DISQUS.

Now, I adore Australia and it will always be home. We do have an odd relationship with success and failure though, born no doubt from a myriad of cultural sources others I'm sure have written long and eloquently about, and which I don't want to get into right now. Instead I'll just say, as I did the other day when someone asked me what this blog was about, I said "big ideas".

"Are they the right ideas?"

I laughed and said "That my friend, was never the point."

So, here's to the big ideas today. Wherever they lead us.

You're invisible now

I was going to title this "Princess on the steeple and all the pretty people" but that was too obscure, even for me. 5 bonus points to the person that picks the song without using "The Google".

So my motivation has been a little lacking lately (alliteration = triple word score), and try as I might I hadn't been able to rekindle it. I chatted long into the night with your friend and mine Matt Granfield who pointed me to his recent piece on sourcing the appropriate place to express a particular thought. I read it and it rang true, though it uncovered another thought of mine, that being a general wondering how long we will maintain digital identities we segment into neat boxes as if our own lives existed in a similar fashion.

And that's when it occurred to me that something had recently clicked inside my head, and all of a sudden I realised that even using the word "digital" felt utterly redundant. When it permeates so much of what we do on a day to day basis it ceases to make sense in drawing any distinction. Having an afore-mentioned neat little box for it has worked until now, because for a long time it existed in a way we could separate and escape from. Now however we're in a place where it no longer makes sense to segment it, and to not include some sort of digital element to a campaign, a product, a service, whatever is to commit commercial suicide (extreme viewpoint I know, prove me wrong!).

While this thought was buzzing around my head I swung by TIGS, as Faris had posted plenty while I'd been sunning myself in France. He, of course, had gotten here a little bit before me but along the same line of thinking, having said

Increasingly I'm finding the work 'digital' more of a hindrance than a help. It's too broad to mean anything.

in the same post he linked a great Slideshare presentation from Helge Tennø, Strategic Director of Screenplay, an Oslo, Norway-based agency. Helge's presentation is simply titled "Post-Digital Marketing", and while I'm loathe to attach a new name to it, it seems to make sense. Have a look at the deck, it's really quite lovely.

[slideshare id=1700217&doc=137postdigitalmarketing2009-090709062105-phpapp01]

Of course Iain Tait beat us all there, telling me early in '08 "digital is not a thing anymore". I didn't get it at the time, but I do now. My only concern is having canned UGC, social media, and now "digital" itself, I'm going to need to invent some new things just to shit on them.

And I'm quite OK with that. And I'm OK with not writing about "digital", in fact I'm excited about it.

"You're excited by a blog ostensibly about nothing?"



Yes.

Show me the way

From the "I-have-too-had-girlfriends!" department, Japan's Information Architects released and delivered straight to my door their latest Web Trend Map, an ongoing series mapping the Internet to various public transport systems. Version 4 which has just been released is the Internet mapped onto Tokyo's Metro System. If I'm at Wired and I want to get to Digg, I have to take the News Line to The Huffington post, get on the Domain Train to Google, then switch onto the Filter Line to wind up at Digg.

One part document of how far we've come, one part time capsule for us to look back and say "Remember when...?", the poster is shipping now, and even the most laid back of hipsters in the agency have swung by my office, stood back and said "...that's actually quite cool."

At just under 3' by 4', it is a fine addition to, well, any surface you care to put it on.

Get yours today.

Let's give them something to talk about

So while waiting for Toronto's subway system to get its act together this morning, I caught Clay Shirky's latest online lecture, given as part of the TED series. The title, "How Twitter, Facebook and cell phones can make history" does a lousy job of conveying the depth of information and the ideas contained within. Back in November I touched on issues around social media and the gross misunderstanding of what was important in this new revolution, making the following statement:

It is a period that will forever be known as a time where it became as easy to create content as it was to consume it. THAT is the important part of what is going on.

Now, I'm on the record as being a fan of smart people agreeing with me, and in this case, Clay's latest talk is bang on the money.

The moment we're living through is the largest increase in expressive capability in human history.

He says it far more eloquently than I, granted, and the rest of his talk is loaded with fantastic insights and examples of how technologies, once ubiquitous, develop interesting uses (and not the other way around). The TED Talk is below. Enjoy, then go change the world.

[ted id=575]

Standing on the rooftops, shouting out

I think I need to start a competition amongst readers to see who can pic the song each post's title is from. Here's a hint:

[youtube="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5pmwhd_MfA"]

Anyway, your friend and mine Tim is fond of saying "To understand change, you have to be part of it." Now, he perhaps didn't come up with that himself, but I am always reminded of him whenever I think of it, which is as good an exercise in branding as you'll find.

With this in mind, I have spent some time this morning trying to bring my own silos of conversation together. My marketing self tends to exist only on this site, but my musician self is spread across Facebook, MySpace, iLike, YouTube, and God knows where else. Oh, not to mention another website of his own. Now, I do my best to keep my two selves separate, but bear with me for the purposes of this conversation.

It goes without saying that nobody working full time has the means to update all of the above sites, let alone engage the way we all insist we should. On top of that, there's a requirement for authors who establish these sites to get a little more versed in the nuances of the technology than they're otherwise compelled (or able) to do. What it means is more time spent tweaking the various underpinnings of a site or service and less time doing the things you started a site for in the first place. Cue frustrated creators and audiences in silos.

David Jones (a person, not the store) is a guy I've come across here in Canada. I spotted him tweeting one day "Don't tell me what you would have done, tell me what you did." - and that really struck a chord. Talk of best practices is all well and good, but evidence of how you've implemented it for yourself and others is much better. For the time being, until the big players in this space decide to make their platforms talk to each other, we all get to take part in a zero-sum race to a dead end.

Now I can understand each platform's desire to control the artist dashboard, as the eyeballs are currently what gives them value. The reality however is if the smaller players don't make it easier to pick up syndicated content, they're going to see a reduction in usage.

I want to make it easy for people to consume my content in whatever manner best suits their existing habits. Turning that into a reality however currently means an ultimately unsustainable adjustment to my own. Something's gotta give.

Blood on blood

I don't bleed much these days, not like I used to. In high school I would run myself ragged at lunchtime playing basketball, the hot asphalt beying for the blood of anyone who didn't quite manage to land right. A couple spills I took are fresh in my mind, one in particular had me going head over heels, and arms, shoulders and knees all took a beating, those scars are still evident if you know where to look.

The blood gets drawn from diving into a situation too enthusiastically, it seems like the older we get the better we are at avoiding the scrapes; I'm more likely to cut myself with a kitchen knife or shaving than I am from a missed lay-up. And the cuts and bruises we used to wear with pride get hidden away in shame instead of laid out for the world to see as the badges of honour they once were.

As I am fond of saying, we should jump for the sun. We may not reach it, but at least we get off the ground.

Get out your battle scars, and go in search of more.

Give me gin & tonic

[caption id="attachment_612" align="alignright" width="300" caption="A Most Unusual Gin..."][/caption]

I'm not a big spirits guy, but I love gin. My favourite, Hendrick's, is by it's own admission "Not for everybody." This little booklet that comes attached to every bottle I adore. It is of course sperfluous to the gin, but extends the brand beyond a drink. You could argue it shouldn't be about more than the contents of the bottle, but that wouldn't help explain why Coke's market cap is valued at only $60 billion in assets, but $120 billion when you take brand into account (thank you The Brand Gap).

Hendrick's also back it up with a great product site, which moves over into something a bit more experiential with The Unusual Times.

I love this because:

• I already dig gin, so I'm predisposed and biased


• It doesn't take itself seriously, therefore digs into Mr. Ries' law of candour


• It makes itself a social object, and larger than the drink


• Like the Nike's and Apples of the world, it loves something above its product, in this case the peculiar, and expresses that in the form of a drink the Wall Street Journal named "Best Gin in the world" in 2003


• The story around the drink makes it tribal and is a clear distinction between those who drink Hendrick's and those who ask for Tanqueray or Bombay Sapphire. That connectedness is crucial in this day and age.

I think it's about G&T time...happy weekend everybody.

Treetop Barbie

On the subway this morning I was watching the below TED talk by Nalini Nadkarni on her work as an ecologist, studying life in the canopies of rainforests. It's a great talk which i recommend you check out, my favourite part though was her institution's appropriation of every girl's favourite doll, Barbie.

They buy them from thrift stores and other cheap outlets then hand-sew costumes for them and send them out. They're also available for purchase which makes me wish I had cousins who were young enough to get one for!

A few thoughts:

• I love the appropriation of a classic symbol, recast with new meaning in this day and age


• Is this brand-jacking? Maybe, but not in a way that casts the original in a bad light


• If I were Mattel I would be all over this. Nalini's group send a booklet out with each Barbie on the work they do, Mattel could release a whole line of eco-warrior Barbie, created entirely from renewable materials in a series of different guises. Sea-Rescue Barbie, Treetop Barbie...Ivory Coast Barbie? (ouch!)

I'm wondering about other campaigns, brands, products, services, whatever. Major symbols like Barbie that can be given new purpose in an eco-aware age. There's a lot of chatter right now on how green issues will be cast aside as people just try to hang on to their homes, I'm hoping initiatives like this might manage to keep it front of mind for people.



This post is also a special dedicatuion to Alex White, one of my best friends and a tireless eco-warrior himself. He gets married to an extraodinary woman (hi Fern!) tomorrow, a wedding I am sadly not in Australia for. Mate, I love you to absolute pieces and am sorry I can't be there to share your special day. I cannot wait to hear about it, watch the videos and catch up when I'm back home at the end of the year.

Postcards from the edge

I think this is what they call coming up for air.

So it's a little less than -10 outside, though the sky is blue and I am warm as I sit banging away on the keyboard from Cafe Latte, a cute little coffee shop run by an old Italian couple who emigrated a long time ago to teach sociology (him) and engineering (her) at a university in Edmonton. Funny how things work out.

In the rush to get off the island, I missed a few things which I need to rectify. I wanted to thank Julian Cole for a great time in Sydney, and for being the fine human being that he is. Scott Drummond who is one of my best friends and biggest sources of inspiration, because of rather than inspite of his incredible fro. Also the man who is primarily responsible for this little site of mine, Simon Chen, someone who was endlessly encouraging of my meager efforts in the space and who taught me a valuable lesson; that it was almost impossible to be too opinionated.

As I move from the Australian marketing community and start to ingratiate myself with the Canadian one, I'm noticing a few things as I walk around town:

• Western culture is western culture.


• It's remarkable how different things aren't.


• It's not the thinking that is lagging in Australia, it is the clients (who are slowly but surely catching up anyway)


• The world over the problems are the same, we just pronounce the words differently.

I'm enjoying having the time to breathe right now, it's something I didn't do enough last year, though it's possible I was just waiting on the right air to breathe in. In the words of the great philosopher F. Bueller, "Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."

Happy new year everyone.

Break's over.

Strategy | Intent | Persistence (and tigers and bears OH MY!)

Digital strategy is a business decision, not a marketing decision. That doesn't mean your marketing team shouldn't be in the room, it means everyone else should be there with them.

Julian Cole wrote a piece a few months back saying "Don't trust an agency with your digital strategy." It does then beg the question (if I may, for a moment, speak client-side) "Then whom shall I trust in your festering cesspool of sharks, narcissists and hopeless egomaniacs?

Good question.

A single unit needs to own a company's strategy, and they need to be able to talk about each channel with authority. That sounds like a no-brainer I know, so I'm going to put this out there and see how it feels: you won't find it anywhere where the last name of an ad giant from yester-year hangs their name on the front door. That isn't because they don't have intelligent folk from all disciplines working for them, that is because their business models and internal practices will not permit the structural changes required to achieve genuine innovation and next-generation creativity for their client's businesses, let alone their own.

If anyone is hearing that for the first time, I promise I'm not the first.

I can't say I know all of the answers, or even any of them. But not enough people are asking the question. Or questions; you can phrase them in a myriad of ways, let's maybe start with something like this: why does Clemenger BBDO in Melbourne now have four people in its planning department, none of them digital natives? Tim, who worked there as a member of the planning team up until a week ago, had this to say:

I’ve been arguing for a long time now that as product, advertising, sales and service, all get closer together, advertising agencies really need to become creative marketing consultancies...some drastic restructuring needs to take place.

Drastic restructuring then did take place, though perhaps not along the lines he was thinking.

David Armano has talked about a move away from the silver bullet, much like Tim has. I took a personality test recently that told me I rated close to 0 when it came to perfectionism, but was a polar opposite when it came to creativity and a love of thinking. Call me biased (I won't argue), but that sounds like something very different to where we're currently at, and given that test it is no wonder I'm a fan of this new direction. I'm also a fan of offering substance, something advertising doesn't do very well at all.

I've talked a lot about intent, and I think this chart speaks to the heart of the same thing I'm on about. It is also the same thing Seth Godin means when he says the following:

Persistence isn't using the same tactics over and over. That's just annoying.

Persistence is having the same goal over and over.

My friend Michael Hewitt-Gleeson calls it SDNT: Start Do Notice Think.

I call it intent, and when I talk about it, I talk about constanty refining the work we're doing to ensure the outcome is matching the intent; if it isn't we change it until it is.

Intent is at the heart of everything we do, and the group that owns your strategy should have it etched onto their brains, directing nothing less than strategy that delivers the intended result tomorrow better than it did today. Starting here I'm advocating a move away from the single-minded proposition to the statement of intent; it is fluid and flexible, and it ensures the goal is forever just over the horizon. It will keep you and your organisation passionate and motivated and restless.

And that is how it should be.

Social capitalism

I have an obscene habit of opening tab after tab after endless tab until Firefox starts to resemble an attempt to learn about everything there ever was to know. People spend their time playing Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, I can get you from Miami Art Basel to Dave Eggers talking about after-school-learning projects (watch that by the way, it is amazing) to NASA's space imagery without currently needing to open any new links. I can get you there, but I can't tell you how I myself wound up on them in the first place.

I love teh interwebs.

Anyway, one of the tabs open is a piece I've been meaning to blog about since it was posted, instead I'm just going to give you the link and tell you to go read it. It is from Tamir over at Frank Thoughts and it is to do with TAXI's 15 Below Project. When I bang on about experiences facilitated by brands but not about brands, this is what I'm getting at.\

Fantastic stuff.

Creative Is Not A Departure

(Yes I have been waiting to use that)

It is with great pleasure and some trepidation (along with a dash of in difference and a sense of humour) that I announce a shift of not the blog this time, but the person behind it (one of them anyway, you guys on the comments are doing brilliant work all your own).

11am on December 26th I will board a flight which will land 28 hours later in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Actually that's a lie, it will land 3 hours later in Auckland, New Zealand. Then it will land 12 hours later in LA before making me wait 5 hours to fly on to Toronto. But the point is, I'm moving, leaving an Australian summer for a Canadian winter, and along with it almost everyone I know on this Earth. I'd tell you al what the plan was, except that there isn't a plan, I just woke up and needed a change, so decided to change everything.

While the posting may become a little intermittent during the move, I look forward to getting it all back on board and regular when I've setup my North American HQ. At some point be looking for work so if you or someone you know is wanting to hire folk for their digital strategy offering, you should get in touch.

There'll be more time for goodbyes and reminiscing in the next couple weeks, for now it is back to business as usual though. We resume our regular programming in 3...2...1...

Draw a line

When making a decision, you can get there in two ways:

1. You can define what you want.

OR

2. You can define what you don't want.

Now, those two things are not the same, and one is far more limiting than the other. Take a look at the two, odds are your natural reaction will be the same as everyone else's. It's unfortunate for us, but human nature is to go with the first option and be blinded by what we want, as opposed to what we don't want.

Look at this image:



Here we have a visualisation - say the circle is the entire range of possibility. In the one on the left  we've nailed down exactly what we want, which is shown by being coloured in. In the one on the right however, we've nailed down exactly what we don't want and filled that space in. In the first diagram, the remaining space may as well not exist, because we don't consider it. In the second, while what we want takes up slightly more space, what is left over is nothing less than a far larger opportunity for success.

The next time you're working through an issue, a brief, a life-changing decision, try focussing instead on what you're not willing to accept, decide what you're not willing to compromise on.

Draw a line, and then revel in the opportunity left over. You might be surprised.

How to draw a car by Dave Gray

I adore this, so cute and simple.

[vodpod id=ExternalVideo.749479&w=425&h=350&fv=]

posted with vodpod

I'm finding myself increasingly drawing pictures to get my ideas across to clients, definitely on a bit of a visual-thinking kick (I've even created an Amazon wish-list... *whistles nonchalantly* Jingle bells, jingle bells...).

I am an atrocious artist, and can only claim to follow the Impressionist movement as justification for drawings that don't look even remotely like what I'm attempting. Watch this space for a story about a seahorse, which will be (poorly) illustrated by yours truly - thanks to Alysha who gets partial credit for having been on the other end of the conversation when I came up with the idea.

Creative Is Not A Digital Marketing & Media Summit

Never the less, I shall be there this Friday with my favourite partner in crime, Julian Cole. Also along for the fun will be Peter Wagstaff and Zac Martin, who will join me in assisting Julian in a somewhat unusual but hopefully engaging presentation.

And now to the good stuff.

After the summit, we'll be hightailing back into the city for drinks at Madame Brussels from 6pm. You don't have to attend the conference to come along for a drink, I've arranged for a special room, so upon arrival ask for (and you have to say it in the most sultry voice you can muster, lest Pearls, the proprietor of Madame Brussels not let you in!) "The parlour up the rear of Madame Brussels." Take my number --> 0404 078686 <-- in case you get into any trouble (knowing you lot this is bound to happen) and come out for a drink to kick-start the weekend.

I should also add our lovely location would not have been possible without the assistance of Michelle Matthews at Deck of Secrets who this week launched their own iPhone app. Entitled DRINK, it is a handy guide to the best bars in Melbourne, soon to be rolled out across all the cities her cards have appeared in. Go say hi. Go on, it's polite.

Now get outta here.

Stephen Conroy boxes glacier, loses

See the below clip for Stephen Conroy being questioned on his Internet filter by Green's Senator Scott Ludlam from Western Australia.

[youtube=http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=OUohfIhFET8]

It always struck me that one of the best backhanded compliments you could give a person in public office was that they were an excellent policitian. The criteria for such a remark is generally an innate ability to avoid answering a direct and obvious question, and to finish speaking leaving your audience feeling somehow diminished for having listened in the first place.

With this in mind, Stephen Conroy strikes me as a masterful and utterly natural politician. My hat is off to Scott Ludlam for taking it to Mr. Conroy, Scott anything you need from the folk out here, just ask.

Calling Social Media Out

I've had enough. I'm done with social media and I'm calling you, you and particularly YOU out on it. I'm nailing it to the wall for the crock that it is. UGC was the first to cop it, social media is next.

I'm looking at what Jules is doing with The Population, my friend Matt's work with DP Dialogue, whoever else is out there. Yes, we have the Beersphere tonight, yes I blog, vlog, put music on MySpace, I comment, bookmark with del.icio.us, I use compfight to search Flickr for Creative Commons-licensed imagery, I discover new music via Last.fm and Pandora, and I Twitter. I do all that, and I'm telling you right now social media will be, in the great history of the web, hell in the great history of the next three years (if that long), the 2.0 equivalent of Pets.com.

And here is why.

First, we have to agree on something. You can choose to disagree, and I welcome that, but my stance is this: the web is inherently social. Not for everyone, particularly not for older generations, but from me back to the babies it is inherently, indiscriminately, and unavoidably social.

Next, we have to agree that the web is young. The web is still figuring out what it is, what it wants to be. You know movies? The name comes, need I remind you, from moving pictures. Photos that seemed to come to life, truth 24 times a second. Web 1.0 was moving pictures, we're now in the Talkies. Imagine if film had stalled when talkies came along and we suddenly found the actors had horrible voices?

That is where we are; social media is "the talkies" of the Internet.

Social media isn't anything special, it is just the Internet in its current form. All media is social - Julian says this himself. It is a period that will forever be known as a time where it became as easy to create content as it was to consume it. THAT is the important part of what is going on.

Not Web 2.0, not new media, not digital media, not post-media and certainly not social media. If all media is social, media must be inherently social and if we agree the web is inherently social then the Internet is, my friends, just a collection of media (we need to separate that idea from the business of media). We have created a new taxonomy in an attempt to somehow describe the "otherness" of this new space, which is itself not a recent development; we've separated movies and TV for years even though they showed us essentially the same thing (like FM radio and Pandora do now). Watching video online is no different, and soon we won't treat it like it is.

In fact, thank God (or Dawkins for the atheists) we're rapidly coming back around to a place where we're not stuck on discussions of platforms and mediums; there will only be one platform where everyone produces and, once again, content will be king. That platform is the Internet, and, dear client folk, if someone comes to you with a digital strategy that does not have a focus on creating 1-to-1 connections in your audience, then run for the hills. But do not be caught up in the myth of social media, that is just the interwebs as we know it.

As Iain Tait said much more succinctly than I, digital is not a thing anymore.

Now, let's talk about something interesting for a change.

**Update** I got the name of Matt's social media company wrong as he points out below. Apologies to him and the good people at De Pasquale.

Mission accomplished - SMS Coffee

It was a sweet victory for Hyde who will be opening the Dancing Goat Cafe on King Street in the city in two weeks, after having run a drive-through "cafe" from a caravan in Preston for the past four months. Half of his clients ordered their coffees by SMS.

I went along to the Victorian barista championships on Saturday to cheer on Talor Browne who makes one of my favourite cups down at Brother Baba Budan. She got to the finals, which is a fantastic effort for her first competition, I'm more so excited about theemergence of SMS Coffee.

Now that that's sorted, time to get back to saving the world.