Meet me on the steps of St Claude's

Ah,Paris. For those not watching my tweets, Facebook, or RoelleKids blog, I took an unexpected 2 day trip there last week. One day was spent in the back room of a facility, but the other we got to spend wandering the city.

One thing we noticed as we walked by various little parks, plazas, and almost any place with steps, was the people gathering just to hang. Picnics, bocce games, and people getting together to sit and chat and ... be. Why was this so novel? It seems like a really social, peaceful, great thing to do! Still, it seemed foreign to us.

In Rochester I can understand a bit why, since it tends to be such a car-based city. It seems like a car-focused culture is less likely to encourage casual hanging. I'm not interested in sitting if I have to drive to get there.... (Well maybe I AM, but I'm not totally the norm. And a campfire would be needed to really get me interested) But what about cities with parks, plazas, and steps that people can walk to, just like in Paris? New York, Boston, Chicago? I was actually hanging with my vendor (Meghan), who lives in Chicago, and she was as struck as I was. It just wasn't the same.

Maybe it's due, in part to that classic "American drive" - the one that leads to marvelous achievements, but also to stress levels through the roof, way too many work hours, overbooking non-work time w/ other commitments, running, running, running, doing, doing, doing. Sitting, relaxing, may be something the French lifestyle is just better suited to. As I type, it occurs to me that the 35hr work week may also have played a role in the number of people hanging out on a Friday afternoon.

I read Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam years ago as I started to think about the impact of social networking on relationships. Great book, but one of those where I filled the margins with counter-arguments. Written in the days of discussion boards and usenet groups prior to blogging, microblogging, and mainstream social networks, much did not seem valid or fully explored to me. And I still hear in headlines here and there how technology and social media are ruining relationships and community.

Personally, I think that's bull. Social media can give us a bit of that sitting on the steps bond w/ friends - hanging out, sharing the inconsequential, or maybe if the mood strikes debating deep philosophical issues. Where cars and stress and workaholism may have pulled us away from old world social gathering, I feel social media has filled a bit of a gap. It's so easy for people to blame the new guy. If you feel relationships are suffering, more people are stressed/ depressed, maybe think more about our choice not to hang just to hang, not to meet on the steps of St Claude's (btw, random name, DK if there even IS a St Claude).

A quick note on how not to appeal to me as a woman -

Copying here an email I sent to some friends -

I appreciate ShinyShiny and PopGadget. I appreciate some of the cool new flower designs and pink (most of the time) and green and cuteness like the Nissan Cube.

What really really irks me is "this is for chics so the techy side of things needs to be about weight loss and yoga" - Way to insult more than half of your demographic. GRRRRRRRRR


Della

In the moment that seemed to say it all. Now I feel a need to explain a bit more.

I get highly offended when I am told something needs to be adjusted for me "because I'm a girl". I grew up with two brothers and lots of guy friends and I see no reason "girl" needs to equal "froofroo". When searching for colleges, I got highly offended by brochures for women's schools that said "We know girls can't perform to their top potential if there are GUYS around." Consider the gauntlet dropped, dude!

So, in my quick glance at the Della site, and its list of reasons why a netbook is the way to go, I couldn't help but focus on "calorie-counting, yoga tips, and planning dinner for your family". And I didn't have time to do more than gut react - There are a whole lot of elements to chics - and if you want to market to them, don't confine yourself to '50s housewife stereotypes. Then we get angry. And you might not like it when we're angry. ( ;-) )

Sharing is a circle

I'm back. Got a bit distracted there for a while. Over at The Roelle Kids, I talked yesterday about my themes for 2009. (Focus, Calm, Circle - soon it will be a mantra I've embroidered into my clothes...)

Circle ties back to much of the storytelling theme I'm working on developing here - when I get around to posting, that is. Yes, Circle is about sharing of all types and it's partially a reminder to participate and keep in touch. But it ties to my work and to anyone who hopes to engage in conversations with people, too.

Sharing is not one way. Any system, process, or habit that is built with only one direction in mind is at high risk of failure because it will be unfulfilling.

Push communications from companies that don't conceive of the possibility of dialogue are unrealistic and as bad as TV commercials, because you know the company is not listening in return.

Social environments that focus on sending your content out without easy reciprocation can become annoyances to the target recipients. Twitter and Friendfeed have value in the conversation. Facebook mastered the newsfeed to key users in on what friends are doing.
- I need to think about that more. I totally see how a social environment that is a circle is advantaged, but I need to figure out how blogging fits in.
- I struggle w/ comments as an exclusive means of completing the circle because they are so infrequently used.

(Well, I'm focusing on this all year, so you'll be able to see it evolve and flesh out further. Your thoughts are welcome. This is a good start.)

Neil Gaiman recently made a comment regarding the different reactions people can have to the same book - and the fact that we're different people bringing different experiences to the reading totally explains this. (Totally true - I'm pretty sure a large part of my negative reaction to Twilight is because I wrote very similar stuff while in high school (and while not too shabby, it was silly high school writing then, too))
Anyway, here's his quote:

"You bring yourself to a book, after all; every book is collaborative."

Collaborative, circle, conversation - it's all good.

Latest storytelling quote

From Stranger than Fiction: True Stories by Chuck Palahniuk:

Our technology for telling stories becomes our language for remembering our lives. For understanding ourselves. Our framework for perceiving the world.

Am I interesting ... enough?

I've seen a few blog posts recently about being interesting. They take different paths related to their target audiences, but the nutshell is, to be interesting, be interested.


Image via pdphoto.org

Makes sense. And I'll throw my few cents into the pot, as well:
1 - Passion - I've always found that passion is what carries me through - what can help me shine in interviews, presentations both internal and external, in general conversations. And I do tend to get jazzed when talking about storytelling, community, new research methodologies aimed at getting better views inside customers heads - and giving them a better time while we're at it.

2 - Variety - A single focus makes you a great subject expert, but can also make you as dull as dirt. Perhaps it's a part of my multi-tasking, micro-attention-span side, but I find that the unexpected elements variety can bring make life, subjects, people oh, so much more interesting. I love throwing a monkeywrench into people's perceptions of me by bringing up factoids and interests that force them to shift their thinking. Here's some examples - I think they play off better when you meet me in person, but we'll give it a shot - do any surprise you?

• One of my hobbies is smashing glass.
• I only drink beer that you can chew.
• My bookshelves include books on cities underground, the world's smallest man, Lizzie Borden, ghosts, women's roles in traditional fairy tales, Russian poetry, novels in French, Neil Gaiman, Eugene Onegin in verse, Alduous Huxley, etc. Umberto Eco is a favorite, as is Oliver Sacks.
• I watch "Cops" to destress when home on Saturday nights.
• My favorite flick is "Delicatessin"

Well, I think it's interesting, anyway.

3 - Freshness - Right alongside variety, you've got to keep it fresh. Not only keep abreast of what's happening in your product space and the nearby adjacencies, as well as in the field of social media and marketing, but keep an eye on News of the Weird, ethnographer's blogs, research in other areas like youth and trends. BrandFlakesforBreakfast, by Plaid, does this quite well, I think - watch the range of things they come up with.

In this spirit, I loved this post from Russell Davies. I plan to print the list and try to follow it for 3 months, maybe more.... It will help to bring my blogging and photo habits back up to speed. I already have ideas on how I can weave some of these elements into work tasks, too. Very excited. Stay tuned, things should be getting more interesting around here.

Update 6/13 - I didn't realize the Russell Davies post was from '06 until I printed it to start following the list. Ah, well - I think it's still good stuff.

Small shops in small tourist towns

We just returned from a family gathering in Cape Vincent, in the Thousand Islands region of NY and Canada. The towns in the area are small and have a highly seasonal population. One person in a larger town claimed roughly 13,000 residents in summer, and roughly 500 year round - the 2000 Census lists a pop of 1,088 - so that's probably a good guess on the actual year round number.

Wandering through some of the less touristy shops that were more my speed, I noticed a trend. Dual purpose retail. A coffee shop that also does interior design. A tea shop that also sells art prints and apparently manages apartments. It struck home the need to have multiple ways to pull people in if only a few hundred are around all year.

Both of my favorite examples have a web presence, but no real social media outreach that I can spot. Interested customers still really should show up in-person. Perhaps the impetus for the web pages is the prospective tourist, checking out the town before heading up for the summer rush.

But how could this change in a social media environment? The shops could arrange for TweetUps and MeetUps from around the region to happen on the premises, potentially enticing people to remember to stop back when they're in the area next. They could create a virtual group of experts in one of their varied areas of business, so when you go to their shop, you're really reaching out to a much broader community. Or they could link into social charity programs like Kiva to rally the community for a global cause at the shop door.

I'm not sure if any of these are a really spectacular solution. The most obvious step, I would think, to ensuring a steady customer base in a seasonal location would be to sell online - to break the restrictions locale has placed. I didn't get into conversations with these shop-owners about why they had not done this.

What do you think? Are there ways beyond the dual-purpose diversification to bring a steadier stream of business in a seasonal town? Are there social media opportunities - beyond simple web retail - that could keep some of these pleasant, non-chintzy places around, where you know so many have struggled and failed?

The storytelling theme continues

And as a writer, or as a storyteller, try to tell the stories that only you can tell. Try to tell the stories that you cannot help but tell, the stories you would be telling yourself if you had no audience to listen. The ones that reveal a little too much about you to the world. It’s the point I think of writing as walking naked down the street: it has nothing to do with style, or with genre, it has to do with honesty. Honesty to yourself and to whatever you’re doing.

- Neil Gaiman

I can't help but think about what an excellent guideline that is for brands! Storytelling and honesty as the ultimate expression of transparency. Some are moving that way ... slowly. Some are close.

As BusinessWeek said:

The extent to which you can create a sense of belonging, friendship, and dependability between your brand and customers is the extent to which you have a powerful brand asset.

How better to build friendships than to tell your stories? And, personally, I have a tendency to correlate honesty and dependability/ trust.

As a kid, I thought I'd become a writer some day. I'm an avid reader of a wide variety of authors. I have notebooks with teen Fantasy pieces in bits and pieces. And I'm terrified that I'll never have a really good idea - an idea for a story that will send people to buy/ download/ support an actual book.

Brands really don't have an issue here - they have stories to tell. I could see myself writing stories for several companies as I sit here (for those following me on Twitter (@eileen53), we won't have City Hall on that list at the mo, due to the passport snafu).