Edible Window Gardens in New York

If you want to make this world a greener place but seed bombing sunflowers or planting tulip bulbs in public spaces is too guerrilla for your taste, window farming might be right up your alley.

Window Farms are "vertical, hydroponic, modular, low-energy, high-yield edible window gardens built using low-impact or recycled local materials." Hydroponic means: "growing plants using mineral nutrient solutions, in water, without soil."
The project serves two goals:

1. to start a Windowfarming craze in New York City and other dense urban areas, helping people grow some of their food year-round in their apartment windows.
2. give ordinary folks a means to collaborate on research and development of these vertical hydroponic food-growing curtains through the community site at our.windowfarms.org

Apparently you can grow anything leafy and green, essentially. You can’t grow carrots and you can’t grow root vegetables. Potatoes, garlic, those things don’t work. The kinds of plants you can grow in a windowfarm include cherry tomatoes, small cucumbers, beans, strawberries, peppers, peas, lettuce, and of course, herbs.

Hat tip to http://eil.net/.

Speaking at IAB Belgium's Think Big on 6 May

IAB Belgium is organising it's top digital conference Think BIG on the 6th of May. I'm speaking in some sort of a back-to-back social media battle with Steven Van Belleghem (Insites). Below are IAB's Patrick Marck 5 reasons why you should be there, too:

1. Enjoy creative showers from the Scandic with Gustav von Sydow (Burt), from the East with Tim Cheng (Tribal DDB Hong Kong, @tmChg on Twitter) and Belgian top agencies.
2. Eat social media bullshit with Andrew Grill (when social meets mobile) and an exclusive duo-presentation from Belgium social experts Steven Van Belleghem (Insites) and Clo Willaerts (Sanoma), or when a conversation manager meets women ;-)
3. Explore the treasure of data with Eric Pinson (Isobar France) and Google.
4. Discover the next big thing: behavioural advertising with Josie Howard (Microsoft UK) and digital signage with Benoit Van Cottem (Posterscope).
5. Debate on the old and new business models on publishing (Americ Bauguin, Groupe Lagardère), TV (Yves Gérard, RMB & Thierry Van Zeebroeck, VAR) and the agencies model of 2012 (with Troy, Boondoggle, Happiness Brussels, OneAgency and Emakina.

Register at Think BIG.

Last summer at the world's playground

According to its official website, Coney Island is "a New York City neighborhood that features an amusement area that includes 35 or more separate rides and attractions". Our friend Howard K, who grew up on Coney Island, took us there two years ago and showed us what was left of what was once called the world's playground. and this year I was curious whether it has changed for better or for worse.
The sad truth is: it's changed for worse.
Howard told us there were big plans for this area, but that the contractor went bankrupt. The result is very depressing. Getting a hotdog at Nathan's is about the most exciting thing you can do on Coney Island right now.

Location scout Nick Carr has a last look at some of the incredible buildings, pavilions, and rides on Coney Island before they are demolished. And film maker JL Aronson is raising funds for his documentary Last Summer at Coney Island. So far there are 64 Backers, $3,665 pledged (of $12,000 goal) and 39 days to go.

Coney Island Dream from Joshua Brown on Vimeo.

Product reviews are an essential part of online shopping

Some results from the 2010 Social Shopping Study by e-tailing group PowerReviews: 57% of shoppers trust customer reviews as a research source along with other corroborating information (but 35% question whether they are biased) Factors that degrade trust in reviews suggest that

• 50% do not provide enough reviews to make an educated decision
• 39% doubt they are written by real customers
• 38% said a lack of negative reviews or limited information

But how many reviews do shoppers generally consider before deciding what to buy?

• 41% of survey respondents said they read between four and seven reviews in 2010 before they felt comfortable with a purchase
• 17% read between 2 and 3;
• 27% 17% read between 8 and 15
• 7% between 16 and 25

The study also found people strongly prefer to do their own research online rather than speak to a sales associate in the store. Respondents say online research is preferred for three reasons:

1. the ability to save time
2. increase confidence
3. provide credible information.

57% of shoppers begin their online research with a search engine. The top three places that consumers name for finding information online when researching products were

• 65% retailer sites
• 58% brand sites
• 33% Amazon.com
• (and only 6% social media sites, such as Facebook and Twitter)

The survey was conducted with over 1000 consumers who shop at least quarterly and spend at least $250 annually online. So besides being U.S. centric (hence the importance of e.g. Amazon.com) it also ignores the relationship between online research and offline buying behaviour. Or, in other words: the online-offline conversion.

You might be surprised by the low importance of social media sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, in the online buying process. I think there are two main reasons for that:

1. Facebook is mostly a closed platform, meaning Facebook content does not show up in search results. Twitter flushes its archive after 1,5 days or so.
2. Social media "likes" are important to check whether a product or service is part of a customer's initial consideration set. They play a much less important role during the active evaluation phase that precedes the actual purchase moment.

So what does this mean for an advertiser's online strategy?

1. Feed the search engines by maintaining a content marketing strategy by publishing and syndicating product and service related content, e.g. by choosing for a friendly expert as your online "spokesperson". Pick only search engine friendly publishing platforms, like blog posts and youtube movies.
2. Monitor customer reviews (even the ones on blogs) closely. Choose carefully when and how to respond to negative web postings - the US Air Force Web Posting Response Assesssment (.pdf) is still a brilliant and inspiring example.

Social Currency Index

According to the Vivaldi Partners Social Currency US Report 2010 (.pdf), Social currency is "the extent to which people as part of their everyday social lives at work or at home". I think they mean social value perception or some other performance index to measure the potential and impact of what an advertiser does.

Social currency was a term coined somewhere in 2000 by American media theorist, writer, columnist, lecturer, graphic novelist and documentarian Douglas Rushkoff. Content and/or media can act as social currency if it can facilitate and/or promote relationships and interactions between members of a community. Rushkoff mentions jokes, scandals, blogs, ambience, i.e. anything that would engender "water cooler" talk, as social currency. It's called currency because, like coins, it has some perceived value but is small enough to change hands quickly and easily. In that sense it is related to what Hugh McLeod, in 2008 post called a Social Object:

the reason two people are talking to each other, as opposed to talking to somebody else. Human beings are social animals. We like to socialize. But if think about it, there needs to be a reason for it to happen in the first place. That reason, that “node” in the social network, is what we call the Social Object.

That said, Vivaldi's report contains an interesting diagram of the main dimensions or levers that enable content and/or media (or, from their point of view, advertisers and their brands or products):

Social currency in Marketing and Management [wikipedia]:

It is about creating a sense of community and by that a strong affiliation between customers, consumers and users of a brand. Having social currency increases a brand’s engagement with consumers and interaction with customers, and by that adding to the customer conversation around the brand, it grants access to information and knowledge, which is being shared within the customer base. Belonging to a group also helps users of a brand to grow personally by accessing new utility and also developing their own identity in the respective peer group. A strong attachment to a brand will also be a core driver for an active advocacy recommending or even defending the brand.

In short: if your ad campaign, press release, or "supposed to go viral" movie does not pull these levers, changes are very slim it will go social. Its score on the Social Currency Index is simply too low.

Books I read while stuck in New York

If you're stuck longer in a place than expected and don't have a fortune to spend on, say, spa treatments, five star hotel rooms or Broadway shows, travelling around by public transport to a place to sit down and read is a good idea. Extra zen points if you brought a charged iPod and a set of noise canceling headphones. Below are the books I've read during this trip, in order of appreciation:

1. Arthur Goldwag: Cults, Conspiracies & Secret Societies (an interesting view on when and why people join cults, see conspiracies and bring out "the truth" about "secret" societies)
2. Slavoj Zizek: First as a tragedy, then as farce ("In the attacks of 9/11 and the global credit crunch, liberalism died twice: as a political doctrine and as an economic theory")
3. David Lynch: Catching the Big Fish (interesting insights in the artist's creative process; my favourite: "The box and the key. I have no clue what those are.")
4. Christian Lander: Stuff White People Like (one of my favorite blogs, along with The Art of Manliness, Cakehead Loves Evil, etc)
5. Seven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner: Superfreakonomics (another funny look at statistics and economics)
6. Elizabeth Gilbert: Eat, Pray, Love
(read it because of her TED talk on why creative genius is doomed)

Books I'm planning to read on the way home:

• Thomas L. Friedman: The World is Flat
• Toni Morrison: Sula
• Ken Auletta: Googled. The End of the World As We Know It

Cool museums in New York (and one in Boston)

Today I made a Google Map with Cool museums in New York. Blue pin means we visited it. I've deliberately left out The Museum of Natural History, the Met and the Guggenheim because visiting them means rubbing elbows with noisy school kids and a particularly nasty breed of elderly American ladies who are fond of "period rooms" (rooms made to look like my grandmother's kitchen and drawing room). My top three of favourite New York City Museums:

1. Museum of Modern Art (MoMa). Their temporary exhibitions never disappoint. But when we found out the Tim Burton exhibition was sold out,this was my facial expression.
2. Brooklyn Museum. We found out the hard way it's closed on Tuesdays. The parks nearby are really nice. The restaurant that was recommended to us was a big disappointment, though. Franny's is what you could describe as an eco chic restaurant, with European portions of fresh food and an open kitchen, but my food was way too salty and Gil felt completely out of place there.
3. P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in Queens. Some of the rooms were closed for maintenance, and many of the tv sets were broken, but this museum gives a really good overview of e.g. performance art. They have a quiet, comfortable dining place with a large choice of affordable vegetarian and organic food. And check out this cool vinyl record floor:

When we found out we were going to stay in the U.S. a little bit longer than expected, we rented a car and drove to Boston. eMich had recommended the MIT Museum there and he was right: this museum has the coolest exhibition of robots I've ever seen. Below is a little Bloggie movie of what I would call the playful/artsy robots:

New York and Boston: a quick Flickr set

We were supposed to go for just one week, but then the Global Gridlock happened. This ad in the New York subway kind of says it all:

So when we found out our new tickets were only for the 25th (instead of the 19th) we did just that: build our own vacation.

I have bandwidth and a laptop today so I'll try and post some more on New York and Boston later today. To start with, here's a quick Flickr set of the pictures I took with the Sony Bloggie camera.

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Where to eat in New York - a crowdsourced map

Stuff still missing? Let me know in the comments!

Where to Eat in New York weergeven op een grotere kaart

The only limit is infinity

Some have called this a “pyramid scheme.” But flip a pyramid and what do you get? A funnel! A plunder funnel gushing straight into your bank account.

Profile, identity, reputation and trust in social media /cc @silkcharm

Really interesting slides from Laurel Papworth (@silkcharm at the ConnectNow "conference at the intersection of social media, emerging technologies and enterprise".

Social Media Monetization Connect Now

View more presentations from Laurel Papworth.

(on slide 25/64) We are continually measuring ourselves for how we are perceived. Over time, it evolves a little like this:

• Profile (active reputation management): initial cursory description in My Account of My Profile page
• Identity (passive reputation management): the profile deepens thorough our choice of avatar/image and connections with friends, groups, events, applications/widgets selected; identity refines and details the Profile.
• Reputation (active reputation management): evolves from activity in the network - tone and quality, content submitted, comments, discussions, roles voluntarily undertaken; brings more targeted connections.
• Trust (passive reputation management): is the end product judged by other members based on your profile, identity and reputation in the network. The network perceives high trust members as influencers and evangelists.

The link with making money is this:

• Loyalty ROI: visit a site 9x more stay 5x as long (Source: McKinsey)
• Brand ROI: 4x un-aided brand recall (Source: NFO)
• Acquisition ROI: $0-10 vs. $10-$400 per customer acquisition
• Support ROI: 5x-10x more cost effective than phone support
• Meet Offline (Center for Digital Futures) One fifth (20.3%) meet at least once a year

Really interesting. I'm only confused about the active/passive difference: why would identity and trust be "passive"? Is this because they are perceived as something that is out of your control?

Making conversations: there's method in this madness /cc @missrogue

Tara Hunt: “when you cut through all of the ‘inane babble’, there are some valuable posts on twitter.”
I totally agree: sometimes conversations on Twitter, Facebook etc are simply phatic, only there to keep the communication channel open, not to convey information. In other cases, there's some subtext in the tweets. An example of Tara Hunt's slides:

Multiple tweets at multiple times of the day... subtext “I’m lonely.” “Hear me. Value me. Connect to me.”

Yes, I DO Mind the Gap

View more presentations from Tara Hunt.

However, I'm convinced there's value in all these "trivial" communications. For the first time in history, we are able to actually trace and hear what people think and do without being physically present. And here's the interesting part: sometimes they're thinking aloud about their buying decisions.
One of the things I'm going to be focussing on in the next couple of months is how businesses can tap into these conversations with one goal: be(come) a key influence in consumers' buying decision cycle.

The First Follower

Leading is not only about leading, it's also about being the first follower.

I got this quote from Leo Exter, author of the Occasional nugget of marketing wisdom blog. Exter posted it in the comments to my previous post The resistance is waiting. Fight it. Ship. - it's from a TED talk by CD Baby and MuckWork founder Derek Sivers. MuckWork is his new company, where teams of efficient assistants help musicians do their "uncreative dirty work."

In his TED talk, Sivers showed the famous example of the Sasquatch music festival 2009 - Guy starts dance party. In short, a succesful movement starts off a little like this:

1. A Lone Nut starts dancing. This is what Malcolm Gladwell describes as a Maven - someone who brings new informations and/or is an innovator.
2. Number two (the First Follower) joins in. According to Derek Sivers, the first follower is incredibly important and completely undervalued. In Malcolm Gladwell's book "Tipping Point", this guy is the Connector.
3. Number 3 joins in. According to Seth Godin, this is the guy that counts. Malcolm Gladwell names this one the Salesman - the one who persuades everyone else to join. Once a 3rd person comes in, the other two don't look that crazy any more.

I'm not a good dancer myself, but I like the image of "leading the dance" - I've used it in my 140conf talk Catching a lead in mid-air. Maybe this is what I should be doing in the next 6 months: starting my little dance in public spaces, and see if it catches on. Because as someone in the comments to the TED talk says: “If you're leading but no one is following, you are just taking a walk.”Or should I stick to being a Connector, and point out really good dancers to slightly bored crowds?

Seth Godin: "Yes. Why bother writing a book at all?"

I didn't get the chance to meet Seth Godin in person, but he did answer my question during the live chat session on 1 April. My question was: Do you see your books as social objects?.
The social object was indeed a hint at what Hugh McLeod posted in 2008: "The Social Object, in a nutshell, is the reason two people are talking to each other, as opposed to talking to somebody else. Human beings are social animals. We like to socialize. But if think about it, there needs to be a reason for it to happen in the first place. That reason, that “node” in the social network, is what we call the Social Object."
The reason why I asked is that Seth Godin publishes a lot of books and they are not exactly always an easy read. He presents short, stand-alone and blog-like ideas, then quickly jumps to another one. So I was wondering what role publishing these books have in his professional life. His answer is in the video below:

Seth Godin: "Why bother writing a book at all? My blog reaches far more people than my books. I find that there are a couple of benefits to doing it in a book form:

1. The biggest one is, if you read a book and it has an impact on you, you can give it to someone - the whole thing. It's different than saying "Google this", or "Pursuit this". It's here, here it is, go do something with it.
2. The second thing is, that once someone's reading a book, they're opening their mind to the voice of the author, which is a very unusual privilege to have. It's as if someone is able to say: for the next one hour, two hour or six hours, I'm going to let you into my head, and at the pace that I want, I will let you talk me through a way of thinking. I see that as a privilige and an honour and the ability to do that with a book is really powerful.

I surely don't like books to sell them. Selling books is no fun at all. But I do like books for those two reasons."

My second question was: what's [your books'] function in spreading the message?

Seth Godin: "What gets me out of bed every morning, is this desire to share ideas that matter. And what I find is, if you want to reach more people faster, the best way to do that is online. The simpler the message, the faster it will spread. However, just because it spreads fast, doesn't mean it leaves a trail behind, doesn't mean it has an impact. So if someone puts up a silly knock knock joke and a million people see it, that may have spread but didn't accomplish anything.
So what I find is that books are somewhere in that sweet spot in between spreading (not so fast, but importantly, spreading) and at the same having that impact."

Thank you Mr Godin! I think this is just the little push I needed: I've decided to publish my thoughts around what social media and the empowered consumer mean for businesses in a book. What I have so far:

• Some notes.
• A subtitle: From Conversations to Conversions.
• Some public speaking assignments in the month of May to test my ideas with different audiences.
• A timeframe: I need that book to be finished (and published) by the end of August.

All the other stuff (a publisher, a title, a decision on what language I should publish it in, etc) I still have to work out. But first things first: I'm going to make some changes in my personal and professional life to make all this possible.

The resistance is waiting. Fight it. Ship.

Yesterday night I went to see Seth Godin and it was truly inspiring. Before this event, I thought he was a guru of the broadcasting kind. No comments on his blog, no Twitter account. He's very sensitive to anonymous criticism, he explained later. A bit weird in this Age of Conversation, but understandable from a human perspective.
I went over to learn more about marketing in the 21st century. But what I heard was a motivational speech for those unhappy in their current professional situation. Like Gary Vaynerchuck, Godin held a plea for plain hard work, discipline, believing in yourself and delivering. The term Godin uses for that last aspect is shipping. But trying to deliver often meets with what life coach and bggd speaker Inge Rock called the terror barrier, a passage out of your comfort zone, or even outside resistance: "The resistance leads people to make suggestions that slow you down, suggestions that water down your idea, suggestions that lead to compromises."
And the good news is: to ship, you no longer need machines, a factory, or trucks. All you need is a laptop and internet connection. And nobody or nothing to get in your way.

I can't help but think: it's a good thing to be a focused, dedicated, self confident genius/artist, but what's it like for those who have to live (and work) with these geniuses? What is their role? Should they silently put up with it, try to resist anyway, or simply provide the comfort the genius/artist needs?

More food for thought was Seth Godin's advice for young parents: "Kids need to learn two things:

1. solve interesting problems, and
2. lead

That’s it!"

He makes it sound so easy. You might, indeed, open conversation during dinner with your eight year old with "So how do you think Antwerp should solve the traffic problems?", and it might just well work out. But I'm pretty convinced that the majority of children just wants to blend in, be like the other children, not be left out or criticised. I'm only guessing here, but what if only, say, 5% of any children is motivated and talented enough to become a leader? What about the other 95%?