The “me, me, me, meme.” What is it?

Cool tech geeks start something online. We jump on the bandwagon. Our friends see what’s going on. A crowd forms, asks questions, then follows our lead. Lifestreams form.

In the video game Final Fantasy VII, the Lifestream is a river of Mako energy coursing through the Planet. The Lifestream is considered the blood of the Planet, which in turn is considered a collective conscience similar to the Oversoul of transcendentalist philosophy, but not quite the same as the type of entity proposed in the Gaia theory.

Our own personal lifestreams, or “public timeline’s” if you prefer, are slightly more mundane than the one from Final Fantasy, however it can still be pondered in an analogous manner. Our lifestream threads together everything that we are. Where we go, what we say, who we interact with, how we express ourselves, concepts inside artwork that we create, symbolism that we identify. All can be considered “us” or “me” in some, hopefully non-banal, way.

We say “me” a lot in our lifestreams. Not always directly. Indirectly also. Off the top of our heads. Well thought out over hours of writing and editing. At the snap of the shutter on our iPhone. While visiting at parties and gatherings. By connecting/friending/following through social nets. Generating our APML wake and bow waves through the public timestream. We are the social seed for our downstream online and offline, everyone has a built-in personal wetware network and many people let this stream filter back online, forming a personal lifestream wake.

When we say “me” we say “we” a lot as well. The “we” message is buried in context of the “me” and provides the rich matrices upon which our lifestreams thrive. “ Frank is watching the Chicago Bears and blogging <link> – #twitter” tells me what Frank Gruber is up to, but the link was meant for his followers -”we”.

When Dave Winer snaps an iPhone photo in the Palo Alto Apple store, I see his Twitter/image post and also note, based on her earlier Tweet, that @StephAgresta is in the store at the same time. @SamHarrelson then notices that Dave might have captured @StephAgresta in his iPhone shot of the Apple store. I then see Stephanie twitter about a happenstance meeting in the Apple store with Dave, Robert Scoble and son. I know all these people, but am I watching a personal version of my own external life unfolding in a Twitter stream? Am I watching Dave’s? Robert’s & Patrick’s? Sam’s? Stephanie’s? Later on I notice (from his Twitter wake) that Robert and wife had their new baby and he might have been in the Apple store in connection with that wonderful event!

Now imagine a person walking up to you, whom you may not recognize immediately, saying “hi Dave/Steph, I just noticed from your twitter stream that you were in the PA Apple store and wanted to say ‘hi’ because we were in the same place at the same time. Our twitter streams crossed in time.”

Wow, new types of meetings are happening in today’s silicon valley technology stores … a new dimension to social meshing is occurring based on bridges being created between online and offline lifestreams.

Me. I’m in this place. I’m in this photo. I’m live video streaming you at this moment. I’m playing pool. I’m waiting at the airport. I’m on AirforceOne. I’m pondering my navel. I invented a new drug. I’m at a funeral. I participated in a Senate hearing. I’m blogging. When saying “me” we don’t like saying it into a vacuum, but that’s the way all lifestreams begin. Erupting from a birth-point in time. The spot upon which we first create a social persona and declare “I am me, and you shall learn more”, like some holy writ dug from the sands of ancient lands. In a world of 6 Billion people we are standing up to say “hello world – I am an individual.”

Now lot’s of folks are saying, “ya, but what about ‘them’, all of you ‘me’ focused people. “Them” – those outside our personal sphere, our socio-economic plateau, our comfort zone. “When you focus so much on yourself you ignore all those people around you.” It seems that if you place your thoughts out into the public consciousness one can be labeled “narcissistic” Who knew this would be the response from people who don’t do it, so can’t “get it?” Duh.

I say create a Twitter wake – drop your social seed and watch it sprout. “Me” “We” “Them” will intermingle. This is the power of connected networks of people.

Of course the solution to the “starting in a vacuum” problem above is simply to participate in life offline as well as online. The wetware networks feed your online social existence. Groupings, micro-crowds, followers, friends, whatever you want to call it, the systems of social interaction which we participate in will subsume our individuality to a greater good if we give at least as much as we receive. However, perhaps when we network in person, face-to-face we can talk about something other than “me” or “we”, I’m so tired of hearing “so, what do you ‘do’?”, perhaps we might re-focus a bit and put ourselves into the shoes of “them” and see what that feels like as a community after the “them” concepts we discuss filter back into our online “we” stream.

I learned a new word the other day, Captology, and it helps me define an area of thought of particular interest (thanks to my buddy Crosby!) I was talking with him about some of my recent posts covering geo-temporal and microcrowd concepts and he suggested that I check out a particular Stanford University website. According to the description on the Stanford University Persuasive Technology Lab website, the definition of Captology:

Captology is the study of computers as persuasive technologies. This includes the design, research, and analysis of interactive computing products created for the purpose of changing people’s attitudes or behaviors.

And they have a nifty Venn diagram that I’ve borrowed so you can visualize the concept.

At the moment I’m thinking of how captology interacts with microcrowds. Specifically microcrowds on Websites, Mobile Devices (iPhone), the desktop, in Virtual Reality (SL), and where this crosses over into in-person interactions with geo-temporal implications.

Definition of Microcrowd (s): noun. A group of people in which members are passive, active or aggressive participants. A Microcrowd member may influence other members with their participation.

Example: When I saw my acquaintance Justin Kan during a Citizen Agency party the other day, our discussion led me to consider some new thoughts about geo-temporal tracking. Justin has no idea, but the conversation and my active participation within a specific microcrowd of people altered some of my evolving thoughts around this type of tracking.

In addition to interacting with this example group in person, I also interact with many specific members online. Twitter, chat, email, blog comments and many more points of distributed contact form my networks within the microcrowds that I interact with. Blackberry and MacBook Pro are my primary connection tools, but within email the browser and other applications I also connect with asynchronous video (live: justin.tv recorded:viddler.com) and more.

I might log into the justin.tv website in order to “watch the content”, but because he lives in my city I might log in to see where he is, or to see if the party I’m going to is worth getting into a cab for (Justin tends to hit the same party scene I do so I can “preview reality”.) This seems like the ultimate in technology impacting me, influencing my decisions, yet this decision is also influenced by the wisdom of the microcrowds because if I didn’t travel a similar SF party circuit as Justin and could not “preview the party” then my party-going decision making would be influenced by other microcrowds. If I find out that the Extra Action Marching Band will be at the party, my passive participation in the microcrowd centered on this band would tip me towards attending the party, even without a “reality preview” through Justin.tv, because I love watching this band. Knowledge of their attendance tipped me into going. Once I’ve made this decision, I might Twitter or email about the party to get friends from my other microcrowds to attend. And so it spreads.

At the Citizen Agency party I might have learned something that changes important parts of my life, or I might learn somebody had a birthday. At a Giants baseball game I might be influenced to care more that someone had just hit a homerun, or I may learn that someone that I know had a heart attack. The information conveyed is not important to this particular post as I’m focused on how information waves spread through and among microcrowds. How the information is relayed and the influence applied from within the community and the technology that is in the hands of community members during the conveyance of the message is important, impacting persuasion and human behavior.

I’m participating in many microcrowds in many different ways; in blogs, with family, on social websites, at parties and general assembly events, on handheld devices, in school, on music and video players. Each touch point that I have with the technology tools or in face-to-face meetings will generally influence what I think about and how I perceive “it”.

This appears to be like memes moving virally towards a tipping point, but I believe it’s also analogous to neuron pathway development, influenced by the volume and type of connectivity and communication of participation.

This post has been languishing in my drafts folder for some time, so rather than sit on it longer, or draw any conclusions, I’m just going to put it out there for discussion … hopefully this spurs some new ideas for you.

Tradeshows and The Schwag they effuse; we’ve got to get real here.

Bad schwag gets thrown away immediately. Not only does it NOT make it onto desktops, it causes harm to the environment. And all of you who don’t believe the environment is an important issue can go flip a duck.

Schwag has weight. When consumers are trying to decide what to take back home in the already heavy suitcase, your schwag will lose unless it has value, real or emotional. Perhaps they do need a new pen or want to give a bag to the cleaning crew. However there is a large probability that your chosen schwag may not do anything except take up space in the garbage of local hotels.

I’ve been to hundreds of tradeshows and seen a lot of schwag in my life. During a 4 year stint I actually produced shows for a living, so the schwag I’ve seen has run the gamut.

I’d currently wager that AdTech has a definite lack of schwag innovation considering the industry which it serves. Where are the call to actions and so forth? I expected to see more companies tying their live tradeshow participation and schwag giveaways to their websites, for example.

I can’t affect company tradeshow participation plans, but I can comment on the schwag, so here we go. There are a few simple rules to make your schwag memorable and worth keeping. Kind of like Internet advertising in a way.

Is it cute?
Does it do anything?
Does it add value? (perceived quality)

At every AdTech in recent memory for example, I’ve seen hats, pens and notepads given away by Casale Media. Their golf hats are BRIGHT red and I mean BRIGHT. You would not get lost on the links in this hat. The notepads are a slightly strange design that are too big to slip into a pocket, yet too small to use for regular note keeping. Their pens however, the pens they give out are by far the best at the show, in my humble opinion. These pens are worth keeping a deep supply of. When I return from AdTech shows in fact I usually find that my red Casale pen has mysteriously gone missing from my office desk within days. Hmm…

I thought it might be interesting to solicit your feedback, dear reader, about the “best in class” of schwag which you saw and/or collected at the recent AdTech in San Francisco. That schwag which is worth keeping… Comment away about your own finds at the show…. like maybe you really loved the Doubleclick iPod mini speakers set for example…. hmm that might make a nice bedside music player…..

Here are some examples to get you going:
Best Pens
Best Flashy Thing
Best Notepads
Best Bags
Best Mints
T-shirts with the best design
Best “Other”