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Meta Moment in Time, for the New York Times

cjames@cat-strat.com — 2010-05-02T11:09:09-04:00

As we reflect upon the “then” the “now” and the “future” [especially through the lens of our .smart .simple .mobile (SSM) project]... this brilliant New York Times LENS project caught our eye. What is it?:

People around the Globe were invited to submit a photo... at a certain exact time. That time happened to be 11 AM Eastern, Sunday, May 2, 2010. The basic idea: Share a Moment & connect. Visually. Globally. The project: New York Times Moment in Time

Soon, the ‘Times will sharing their super-duper montage-mosaic of thousands of submitted images representing that global Moment in Time.

We had to do *something* with it. Hereswhatwedid: We created a “MetaMoment”. What’s that?

I took a photo of Sue video-ing me:

Sue video-taped me + the moments surrounding the “Moment”... viewed here:

Should you not be able to view the video above, here’s the link to: YouTube

THEN:

Sue submitted our tri-podded photo - of both of us - doing the above-mentioned...

Thanks for sharing our sharing of a great Moment!

Best,
Sue & Craig

Could Cancer be treated and Cured Side-effect Free?

cjames@cat-strat.com — 2010-04-25T18:42:24-04:00

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With your help Kanzius can win $250,000 from the Pepsi Refresh Project. In order to receive this grant, we have to be ranked as the number one or number two idea.

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DKMS Americas – a NYC-based organization in the $250k category that is creating a national registry of bone marrow donors for leukemia patients. To learn more about their work and offer your vote of support, visit http://www.refresheverything.com/votedkmsrihanna. Rally Foundation – an Atlanta-based organization in the $50k category that is creating a fantasy baseball tour for children with cancer. To learn more about their work and offer your vote of support, visit http://www.refresheverything.com/voterally. Sent by Scrooge.com – an idea in the $50K category that is focused on bringing Christmas wishes and dreams to kids with cancer. To learn more about this idea and offer your vote of support, visit http://www.refresheverything.com/sentbyscrooge. Together, our organizations can assist one another in creating more awareness of the work that we are doing and offer much needed votes in an effort to receive funding for our ideas.
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Making an a** out of you and me... might make meaning, maybe.

cjames@cat-strat.com — 2010-04-22T18:33:03-04:00

Sue and I are in Michigan today. There’s a town called Petoskey, not far from a place where we’re staying for a bit (thanks to some dear friends). We’re retreating & writing... looking to find a little insight - - and hoping to provide some.

For a break, we popped out and walked around Petoskey - Had a cup tea - Talked - Watched people... and worked on the “architecture” of our Smart-Simple-Mobile living concept.

We went into a local store to pick up sundries and some food for dinner... As we were walking out, my peripheral caught something; Bounty Basic paper towels. At first - - that’s all they were... paper towels...

But then, I-we giggled out-loud (GOL) as a funny combination of letters seemed to appear.

I had to snap a well-positioned iPhone shot:

As we walked out of the store, we laughed like two teenagers walking out of homeroom. We were fueled by the energy of laughter during a moment obviously “not appropriate” for two mature adults.

On the drive back, it got us thinking; Should we text this silly little photo to a friend for a laugh - - or should we tweet-it-out broadcast-style to our followers in Twitter. Of course we decided to (initially) text it to a singular friend (You know, in that safe, mature, conservative way... worried that otherwise would tarnish our “brand” “out there”).

That got us thinking. Maybe we shouldn’t worry so much.

We ended up evolving into an overly-sophisticated deep conversation about the use of social media, text, IM, email... and the rest. What’s right for what when? What’s appropriate - or not?

We pondered many things including how Net-based virtual games, communities and alternative currencies could foster our mission to help people discover meaning, mission & purpose in their lives -- to live simply... mobile... and uncomplicated by their “stuff”.

Other ideas blossomed.

(Heavy enough for you yet?)

...Funny how a silly moment in a discount store can “turn-on” a certain brain-function.... perhaps more valuable then one would ever imagine.

We had a laugh... we were productive - - and we captured created some “IP” for our new venture. Not bad for a trip to a discount store for some food & stuff.

...Do we allow ourselves to be silly?
Playful?...
...and adolescent in our daily lives?

Maybe we should.

It might be the most important thing we do.

Murphy's Law: Small Space - Big Screen

cjames@cat-strat.com — 2010-03-18T14:07:10-04:00

Here in NYC at the Architectural Digest’s Home Design Show on Pier 94 one (me) discovers unique opportunities... like the chance to chat with acclaimed Furniture Designer Dakota Jackson.

I asked him his thoughts Re: the trends, innovations (and opportunities) in view of our recession-battered early 21st Century. What’s our new relationship with space & place? What are the new approaches to modularity, reuse & smart-small living?

His comments take us back + forward... in time. I learned that one of his designs revisits the Murphy bed, transforming living room - to bed room -and back... in an instant. Another is a nesting table providing modularity, multi-use functionality and beauty... all at the same time.

Maybe we don’t need so much space & stuff after all. Might “smart-small” be the new cool, I wonder.

The idea of a home office is not new, but even it is changing, Dakota explained, “Many consider their “office” simply a laptop - with increasingly larger screens”. The ergonomics and implementations of space+place are changing for all walks of life.

Some of Dakota’s designs are created for the young, living in their first apartment. He found that the same designs are of interest to their parents and the affluent. “So, demand for these new designs are cross-demographic?” I asked... His response was one word: “Absolutely”.

Craig James
Cat-Strat | MEDIA
NY NY 18 Mar 2010

Steve Jobs' Wisdom. Be Hungry. Be Foolish

cjames@cat-strat.com — 2010-03-12T16:51:33-05:00

This moved me:

Stanford Report, June 14, 2005

'You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says

This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

Tweeting "I just took a shower" will change the World

cjames@cat-strat.com — 2010-02-23T15:19:59-05:00

Here I sit at my corporate headquarters (i.e., a coffee shop) and work away.

I sit. I key.

In fact, I realize there’s a bunch of other people, sitting - and keying. I realized they’re super-connected with other people, elsewhere. Occasionally I catch familiar screen-shots: Facebook. Twitter. TweetDeck. You know the picture.

Just what am I observing?
Years past, socializing sounded loud. Mouths flapped. Sounds came out. People laughed. Today’s social language often consists of “clickity-click-click”.
What does all this mean? Maybe something. Maybe nothing. Maybe everything.

I’m prompted to explore the root meaning of the word “social”.
Wikipedia provided some clues. For starters, it points out that social is a “fuzzy concept” i.e., “a concept in which the content, value, or boundaries of application can vary according to context or conditions, instead of being fixed once and for all”.
Interesting. Even intellectually challenging. If the word social is fuzzy and variable based on context or condition… well then, today it must be super-duper-fuzzy since the context of socializing has changed so dramatically in recent history.

I read further: “Social” relates to the attitudes, orientations, or behaviors that take the interests, intentions, or needs of other people into account. Basically, “social” is about the other and our relationship with each other. It is the basis of many things in our civilization:

Still not satisfied, I search for more. Encyclopedia.com brought me this insight, referencing a gent by the name of Talcott Parsons, a sociologist who wrote The Social System in 1951. He certainly didn’t view Socializing and Social Systems as mere trite trivial tweets like “I just took a shower”. Far from it.
He defined a social system as “a mode of organization of action elements relative to the persistence or ordered processes of change of the interactive patterns of a plurality of individual actors”.

Ouch. My brain hurts.
I read further.
Parsons argued that a social system is faced by two major problems. One is the (external) problem of the production and allocation of scarce resources; the other is the (internal) problem of achieving social order or integration. This notion gave rise to Parson's famous development of four sub-systems, which respond to the external and internal ‘functional prerequisites of a system of action’, namely adaptation (economy), goal-attainment (polity), integration (societal community), and latency (socialization). This was defined as the AGIL model of the social system. These subsystems are connected by flows of inputs and outputs, which Parsons called ‘media of exchange’ (Economy and Society, 1956). These are money (A), power (G), influence (I), and commitments (L). The equilibrium of a social system depends on these complex exchanges between the various subsystems.
GORDON MARSHALL. "systems theory." A Dictionary of Sociology. 1998. Encyclopedia.com. 22 Feb. 2010 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>.

Super-ouch. My brain really hurts now.
So I ask myself, “What are the implications?”

Dunno. Maybe all. Maybe none. Most likely some combo.

Regardless, one can argue the following:

So consider:
As you type, tweet or text “I just took a shower”… it might feel trivial, but by default, you’re part of a global network that is collectively and individually changing the world, as we know it - and how we might know it in the future.

February 23, 2010
Craig James
Cat-Strat | MEDIA
Link: http://story-cast.com/

3 reasons businesses don’t leverage social media (and 3 reasons why you should)

cjames@cat-strat.com — 2010-02-02T15:04:08-05:00

I’m sipping coffee in a little coffee shop midst Cleveland’s Little Italy… pondering a colleague’s recent question: “Why has business taken so long to see the value of social networking?” I look around. The place is packed. Patrons are communicating feverishly – with people located somewhere else. Texting. Talking on mobile phones. Clicking on laptops.

Our technology tools have become an extension of our voice and ears, and Social Media has become part of our language.

Businesses want to connect with, persuade and sell to people just like you and me – right? Yet, so many companies fail to embrace the communication modes so many of us prefer.

Why?

1 – Fear (of losing power and control)

Consider the history of the U.S. Postal System.

In the 1700’s, the British controlled the colonial postal system. By 1774, the colonists viewed the royal post office with suspicion. Shortly thereafter, an alternative inter-colonial mail service was established.

What’s the point? The inter-colonial mail service was the “social media”, the colonists were the “bloggers”… and those in power (the British) didn’t like it.

2 – Social Media has a bad rep (for business)

Consider the origin of Social Media. It didn’t start with computers, but it was born on-line… the phone-line that is. It was known as “phone phreaking”. Phone phreaks were techies tired of the telecom monopoly extending sizable charges for long distance calls. These early explorers built phone-system tapping devices that allowed them to make free calls and conduct virtual group discussions.

More recent Social Media ancestors include Limewire and Napster - through which music was shared.

A number of corporations, telephone companies and record labels look back on this history often sighting a different word; Stolen.

3 – What’s in a name? Everything.

The very term “Social Media” conveys images of idle socializing, gossip and misinformation. If it were referred to as “Critical Business-Advancement Messaging Networks” businesses would consider it more popular than the buzzword of the day.

This is where NING and others have an upper hand. Though the name may mean different things to different people; the design of the solution resonates with business-types. Like Sun Microsystems said back in the 90’s “the network is the solution”. That’s what NING conveys - a solution providing user-controlled networks for specific applications and communities of interest. It implies context and purpose.

So why should you (and your company) leverage Social Media?

1 – The people you want to hire use it – a lot.

Today, in the 21st Century, smart businesses realize that value-creation depends on ideas, creativity and collaboration. Social Media is the mechanism of choice for many of today’s talented creative innovators. Your company culture should be friendly to Social Media (unless of course you don’t want smart innovators on your team).

Have you hired anyone lately without looking at their LinkedIn profile? Do you know that the top talent is likely evaluating your company’s Social Media presence - as a qualifier as to whether they want to work for you (or not)?

2 – The people you want to reach (your customers) use it. Listen to them.

Angie’s List conducted a survey and found that 58 percent of their respondents use Social Media. They consider it a strategic tool for business development.

Social Media is a powerful listening system. Sure, you can ask customers what they want, but they may or may not tell you what they need. However, overhear them talking with each other - well then, now you’re getting the straight skinny.

Imagine: What if Toyota’s unintended acceleration issue was realized sooner instead of later via Social Media? The New York Times on February 1, 2010 stated that Toyota’s slow recognition of the issue puts to question the company’s bedrock principle.

3 – Happy employees = happy customers = revenue + profit
A report called Executive Insights into Enterprise Social Network Strategy indicated that Social Media was critical to providing a work-life balance for employees. Employees don’t operate “9 to 5”. Rather, they mix their personal and work lives. Sure, there’s the risk that promoting Social Media could cause distraction during the “work day” - but it also promotes “work” in the “off hours”.

One of our clients learned this lesson in at least one case. They proudly proclaimed that securing one of their new clients was thanks to an employee trading Facebook messages with a “friend”. Upon closure of that deal, management didn’t care if the exchange happened during the day, at night… on-line… in-person… in a suit… or in sweats.

February 2, 2010
Craig James
Cat-Strat | MEDIA
Link: http://story-cast.com/

Is Democracy being Reinvented?

cjames@cat-strat.com — 2009-11-24T15:38:20-05:00

As co-producer of a Conference called "Government 2.5" I can't help but continually ask questions like "What is government & democracy anyway?"

It's provocative to think that we may be living in an historic moment; not just technologically; but societally... on how we manage our lives, protect peace, operate daily, and inspire humans to lead productive meaningful lives.

One doesn't have to look far; Wikipedia (accurate or not) to build one’s prospective. Here are a few points on the "History of Democracy"

Democracy is a political system in which all the members of the society have an equal share of formal political power. In modern representative democracy, this formal equality is embodied primarily in the right to vote. The history of democracy - the history of empowering people by giving them a say in their political entities - traces back from its origins in the ancient world to its re-emergence and rise from the 17th century to the present day.
There is evidence to suggest that democratic forms of government, in a broad sense, may have existed in several areas of the world well before the turn of the 5th century
Primitive democracy is identified in small communities or villages when the following take place: face-to-face discussion in the village council or a headman whose decisions are supported by village elders or other cooperative modes of government

What are the consistent themes through time?

Members of society having a share of political power... and being represented
The right to vote
Having a "say"
Rooted in face-to-face discussion & debate

So, if Democracy is about discussion, debate, having a say, and sharing in the "responsibility" to govern; then how can Social Media be anything but central to how we define Democracy in the future? ...It increases the ease with which citizens can have their say... It is unfiltered... It's real-time... and it's global.

Food for thought.

....Be part of the discussion on December 14th & 15th Gov 2.5

Craig James; November 24, 2009