Significance

The fairly simple concept of the paradox of exclusivity, the idea that “people are perverse; they want to be part of a group but they don’t want to be another face in the crowd” (Howard 168) flooded my brain with all sorts of examples. I couldn’t help but think of Google Wave. A bit over a year ago, Google launched Wave, an online collaboration tool. And you could only join if you were invited. Naturally, at least among my colleagues the information professionals, there was a certain cachet to having snagged a Wave invite. And once you were invited, you in turn had some invitations to give out and were therefore worthy of courting. This part of Google’s plan seemed to work, but Google stopped development in August of this year. Perhaps part of the problem, as stated in this Google Blog post, was that Google wasn’t “quite sure how users would respond to this radically different kind of communication.” I suspect that they developed a product that was exciting to the tech crowd but maybe a bit too much for the rest of the Google universe. They attempted to generate buzz using exclusivity tactics, but ultimately couldn’t reach enough committed users.  They had the influence and mined the sense of belonging, but didn’t quite make it on the remuneration and significance fronts. In this case, we are also reminded that “name recognition doesn’t equal significance” (173).

I also appreciated the mentions of Stanley Milgram’s “small-world phenomenon” study in both Design to Thrive and Web 2.0 (even though Web 2.0 continues to remind me of a word-problem-only math text). Now I know how the “six degrees of separation” were determined. While I don’t have any way to base this in fact, my gut feeling is that there are fewer degrees of separation within a community of practice, especially when specializations are factored in. As a library professional, I fall under a fairly broad category. I know the librarians who work at my institution and few from school. However, within library science, the specializations lead to roundtables within the large organizations (such as the American Library Association) and to smaller organizations, some national and most regional. Once we get to that level, I can say a name (like Chris Prom) or an acronym (like EAD) and everyone will know what or who I’m referring to. And if I need an introduction to Chris Prom, I am probably only a couple of degrees away (I tried testing my theory on LinkedIn but archivists seem to stay away from that network). I don’t think any of the networks for archivists are invitation-only, though many do require a registration process and/or a membership.

Perhaps a better small-community example is the ceramic arts community. This community is very active, often because the artists are small business owners which means that they need to hustle to survive. They have professional organizations with members-only benefits. Even better, this is a tightly-knit community that is also exceptionally open. They tend to share glaze recipes, firing methods, access, studio space, you name it. Introductions are fairly easy to come by and many of the best-known artists use a combination of the techniques Dr. Howard described on pages 184-186 of Design to Thrive. My husband’s current favorite is Ayumi Horie.

 He’d seen her work in journals but then he saw her speak at a regional conference. Not long after that, she was part of a “booth” (the Artstream gallery and library) at a national conference. He wanted one of her mugs but didn’t get one, so he signed up for her email list so he’d know when they were available. This week he spent about half of his grad assistant wages on a new coffee mug (hey, we celebrated our ten-year anniversary this year by going out for coffee and decided to blow the budget on this) because he got an email about new work. Most of her work sold within two days, taking advantage of limited supply and a fairly passionate fan base.

Horie also has a once-a-year contest for photos documenting “Pots in Action”, free downloads of past postcards and the expected artist’s statement, links, gallery and so on. If my husband ever wants to know Horie personally or get himself listed on her website, he can probably just call her, but he is also only two degrees away from her since she has collaborated with someone he assisted at a workshop. In other words, the ceramic arts community is heavy on connectors, mavens AND sales people, with a large number of people serving as all three.

Archivists also have connectors, mavens and a very few salesmen. As a community, we could probably do with more connectors and fewer mavens, but it was fun to read Malcolm Gladwell’s definitions in both Design to Thrive and Web 2.0. I couldn’t help but place people I know into categories. Like I said, I know a lot of mavens. They’re the ones who respond to listserv questions almost every time one crops up. They’re usually great on listservs and less endearing in person. The connectors are a bit harder to find, and they are mostly the people who are interested in digital information and Web 2.0 implementations. They’re the ones who know just who you should talk to for specific questions. They may lead to the mavens and they may also be mavens, but they are best known for making matches in the community.

All of this is making me think about creating and nurturing connections. There are so many ways to go about creating a community that I doubt I’ll ever have the brilliant idea that gets me a $240 million advertising deal, but maybe someday I’ll be part of what makes access and communication of archival content more user-friendly.

Endless Possibilities

The readings for this class infiltrate my daily life more than any other assigned readings I’ve ever had, perhaps because they apply directly to things I see and do every day. Today I went shopping for new glasses. For big purchases, I’m a very deliberate shopper, at least, I like to think that I am. I check prices, examine quality, read Consumer Reports, check online reviews. It took me two weeks to figure out which tires I would buy for my car (happy so far) and more than a month to choose a digital camera (not enamored). But last night, I read about choices in Neuro Web Design and I can’t help but wonder if I should just make a snap decision about a $250 pair of glasses.  Chances are, I’ll be at least as satisfied as if I go to Greenville and try on every pair in every eyewear store in town. And if I do make a snap decision, will my shopping persona begin to change?

And the types of choices we make! Conscious, unconscious, influenced, not. I kept thinking about the “marshmallow test” that got quite a lot of web play a couple of years ago. There are several versions of the test (including parodies, of course) in which children are offered the choice of one marshmallow now or two marshmallows later if they can only resist the one marshmallow now. The one marshmallow that is sitting on a plate in front of them without any adults around to influence their choice. The general idea is that the kids who wait are more likely to be successful later in life because they can delay gratification and work for their goals. But if you watch any of the videos, you can actually see these kids thinking. One marshmallow now? Or two if I wait? I can wait because I want two. But what if I wait and don’t get two? What if I don’t get any?

And are they really making a bad choice if they eat the marshmallow?

Such a tough decision. In the coming weeks, as we work with Ripple of One, we’ll be examining choices very carefully. Our own choices, naturally, because we’ll be writing and producing a video, but we’ll also be thinking about how to influence the choices of the viewers. We want viewers to choose to donate their time or money to a very specific non-profit organization. Why should they choose this organization over any other? What will they get out of it? When people give, the question is not usually “what’s in it for me?” but “how will this benefit the world that I live in?” And in the case of Ripple of One, we’re working with an organization that is attempting to re-form the way some people make decisions by offering tangible benefits if they change.

I’ve been turning over ideas for this video ever since we heard about the project in class. And with every reading, I change the approach I want to take. My first instinct was to use statistics. I’m comfortable with numbers and they often mean something to me. But the Credibility segment of Made to Stick made me look a little more closely at statistics and how they’re used. Some numbers are going to turn up (I can’t help it!) but I’m going to attempt to make them familiar and friendly. When we watched the current Ripple of One video, the repeated use of “they” and “them” struck me as isolating when it might be more profitable to unite the viewer with the subject. Chapter 6 in Neuro Web Design tells me that it’s all about me, or at least that I want it to be all about me, so I’m now reconsidering some of the wording I used while I was eliminating the “theys”. It’s a good thing we read about emotional appeals in Made to Stick before we got to Neuro Web Design or I might well be trying to work food, sex and danger into an appeal for a non-profit.

So many things to consider. I’m looking forward to seeing everyone’s storyboards. And choosing one!

Salad as a tool for social good

Jennie Bourne’s Web Video: Making It Great, Getting It Noticed continues to be full of technical information that is starting to make sense. And I now have in my possession two very useful bits of awareness:

• When we get to our own video production, no live switching, please.
•  I don’t ever want to build my own studio.

Beyond that, I have more things to consider to while I’m watching video. In particular, I’ll be paying attention to cuts and camera angles. And I finally know what the slate is for! I always assumed it was an early Hollywood holdover, but it serves a purpose. Can we have one when we go into production? Can I be the slate punk? Okay, I’m getting carried away now. It’s late and I’ve had a good day, just not a devoted to reading kind of day.

I’m glad we’ve returned to Made to Stick. I’d already begun to think about our Ripple of One video and this week’s reading was the perfect complement to some of my ideas. Of course, all of that might go tumbling out the window when we meet with Stephanie Enders, but I’m not concerned about that right now. I’ll address the section on emotional impact first because, while I think it will have a lot to do with our upcoming project, it’s an approach I’m not as familiar with. At least, not on the creating end. However, I have been susceptible to emotional pleas and it’s been interesting to realize them for what they are.

The story about the Pegasus dining hall really hit home. When I was a lowly staff member at a place that provided a subsidized staff lunch, I would queue up with everyone else, occasionally wondering what new horror awaited us. Carrot dogs, anyone? That’s a steamed carrot on a bun, in case you’re interested in trying that one at home. If we were lucky, there was dessert left over from dinner the night before. Dinner was always the better meal. The staff line assistant, the person who kept the steam trays full and endured the comments of the people opening the lid on the tray of limp carrots, was typically the least senior person in the kitchen. Needless to say, that job saw a lot of turnover. But for about two months, we would come in and be treated to a gorgeous salad. Every day. The woman who was the staff line assistant during that time would take ordinary salad ingredients and arrange the cut vegetables into swirls and flowers. People would try to dig out the lettuce from under the designs so as not to disturb them. Obviously, they not only appreciated the extra effort, but wanted to make sure that other people could see it and appreciate it, too.

I don’t know if we can relate vegetables to a non-profit in Seneca, South Carolina, but I can appreciate that “the most basic way to make people care is to form and association between something they don’t yet care about and something they do care about” (Heath and Heath 173). I’m pretty sure that we can find an approach that will hit home for Ms. Enders desired audience. We just have to figure out who those people are.

The section on credibility was far more familiar to me. I tend to think more analytically. It drives my husband crazy, but I get it honestly. I may have taken a liberal arts path, but genetically, I should be following a math-science path. My entire family tends to question statistics and try to figure out how they’ve been spun, so the statement that “ethically challenged people with lots of analytical smarts can, with enough contortions, make almost any case from a given set of statistics” (147) came as no surprise. However, I really like the idea of using statistics to illustrate a relationship in order to convey a concept. There are a lot of statistics (from credible sources) about poverty and dropout rates and some of those may prove useful for the Ripple of One project if we can use them to establish an emotional tie with the viewer.

Fade outs

I don't know if anyone else saw this music blog post at NPR.org, but someone had the temerity to ask WHY songs fade out at the end. I never thought to question the why. They just do? Right?

Talking to myself in a public place

First, I’ll apologize for posting late. I spent way too much time messing about with Audacity (a little more on that later) and was in my jammies for the watching of Michael Wesch’s Anthropology of YouTube. Unfortunately, my home DSL connection wasn’t up to the task and I didn’t feel like changing into clothes and driving to campus late at night.

I don’t have much to say about Jennie Bourne’s Web Video. I’ve never given much critical thought to video, web or otherwise, so it was useful for bringing up all sorts of things which I’d never considered. But it was kind of like reading Dear Abby for budding web videographers and I’ll find it most useful when we actually start making videos. It did, however, give me some things to think about when I watched Wesch’s video early this morning.

Wesch’s approach fascinates me because he's so interested in the people who use the technology and how they use it. He’s not concerned with video quality or lighting or compression, meaning that I can understand what he’s talking about. And when he points out that “a large percentage of [YouTube videos are] meant for 100 or fewer viewers,” he makes it clear why he is not concerned with the technological details.

I’ve always kind of disdained YouTube as a way to spend my time. I’d never heard of Gary Brolsma, I didn’t get the references to the Star Wars kid, I had no idea how SouljaBoy got his start and I now understand why someone was carrying a “Free Hugs” sign on campus last week (when I saw it, I just thought it was kind of creepy). I’ll watch some of the videos people share on Facebook, but I tend to skip anything that seems to be about a baby or a baby animal. Unless I personally know the baby or the baby animal. Now I’ve got a whole new approach for YouTube. The whole path of user-generated content to user-generated distribution to user-generated commentary appeals to my proletarian sensibilities. And the videos that Wesch used as examples were often meaningful and topical (He viewed what? 8000 videos in 3 weeks? Better him than me).

Because I had read parts of Web Video before watching the Wesch presentation, I found myself paying attention to lighting, camera shake and background. I don’t remember thinking consciously of any of these things before, but now I’m attuned. I almost wish I could give that knowledge back. But I can appreciate the effort of making oh-so-much. Watching the takes of the student vlogs resonated with me because I have spent several hours tussling with Audacity. It’s not Audacity that’s the problem; it’s me. I shut myself up in a room so no one could hear me or distract me. That was the easy part. I don’t like the sound of my own voice, I slur a word, I end a sentence on a down beat, I let the sentence trail off… The things that can go wrong are endless. I still don’t have anything that I’m willing to share with the public. Yet all those people out there are talking to an unknown audience and just letting it happen. Some are scripted, most are not. And I honestly don’t care if it’s real or fiction; if I can relate, it means that someone out there can relate to me.

I’ll finish with this screen shot from Facebook. A friend of mine posted a question. His girlfriend responded and the public status update turned into a private conversation. It’s still public, of course, but no one else joined in even though the original question is open-ended and (to me, at least) a good party conversation-starter.