This may be the first time anyone has ever tried to link two such disparate practices as jazz and Public Relations, but bear with me a bit and I think you’ll see that the comparison is useful and revealing.

The first principle of jazz is: “mean what you say”. If you cannot commit yourself completely to a musical statement, if you cannot breathe yourself fully into your sound, your solo, your story - then you will fail as a jazz musician. You have to believe in yourself before others can believe in you.

Now this principle runs directly counter to the popular notion of the public relations practitioner as a ’spin doctor’, i.e. as a shill, a sophist whose duplicitousness is a given and whose silvery speech and sly strategies are sold to the highest bidder without ethical consideration.

I’m not going to argue that such spin doctors aren’t real. Obviously they are, and I despise them as much as any citizen should. But I will argue that there is another model, an emerging model, for public relations practice, that is aligned more closely to the core principle of jazz expression: “mean what you say”. I will even go so far as to argue that in the era of instant access to all information, this emerging model should be considered a ‘best practice’ in the PR industry.
The model I’m referring to is one based on the understanding that stories define a business organization. The stories that are told by employees to each other about their company, that are told by customers to each other, told by management to staff, told by marketers to the public, told by executives at conferences, told by the media - a company’s reputation, its business objectives, its brand, its products and services, its recruiting and much much more, are all deeply bound up in this matrix of living stories that are told by and about a company. Someone needs to be thinking about those stories - as coherent meaningful forces and not as shallow fragments to be manipulated - within an organization, or else this vital factor shaping the success or failure of a business burns like a wild fire out of its control.

In other words, every organization needs a Chief Storytelling Officer who considers how stories work their way through an organization’s ecosystem (internal and external, top to bottom) and ensures that their impact is as positive as possible. And in this age of unprecedented transparency and global communication that means ‘not bullshitting’, i.e. not relying on spin, not trying to fool people with phony promises or silly distractions or lame excuses. Because people see through that today. As a professional culture, employees today are too empowered as communicators (with our blogs, emails, TVs, phones, etc.) and too media savvy to be easily taken in by old-style PR. Unless you ‘mean what you say’ your stories will be dismissed as bumpf and your business will suffer on many levels.

People want to be given the straight goods. And they know when they aren’t. And increasingly, they aren’t taking it any more. They are talking back, through the countless channels available to them. And any business that thinks those conversations don’t matter is just plain dumb. And as more and more young workers who have grown up expressing themselves and sharing information without restrictions enter the workforce, expectations of transparency will only increase.

Because the No Logo folks have it wrong. Kids by and large aren’t against branding, against logos for life. They just want to know that the brand is honest, that it is what it claims to be in its marketing. And they won’t give their allegiance to brands that can’t walk the talk. Nor to employers. “You must mean what you say,” is pretty much their motto. And it’s not a bad one either.
So what I’m suggesting is that the emerging role for public relations is that of an individudal or profession charged with managing the stories that shape an organization, and ensuring that they accurately reflect the life and purpose of the business. Which means that to some extent this person becomes, rather than a dishonest spin doctor, an ethical watchdog (to borrow a phrase from my colleague Stephen Heckbert) who actually works to see that the stories that are peddled (i.e. we are a customer-centric innovative and creative company) are not bogus pap but are actually standards to which an organization can and must aspire. And in so doing he (or, of course she) gives those stories legitimacy, the company ‘means what it says’ and as a result wins on numerous fronts. (Hey, we really are customer-centric and innovative now!).

So once again, jazz comes to the rescue, offering a model for progressive and profitable business practices. Once again, The Talking Shop explains how to make meaning, make media and make money. See ya next time!

I spent much of my life immersed in jazz. Playing it, studying it, living it. Eventually my explorations in jazz led me into deep studies of the nature of communication itself. But my jazz roots still inform everything I do today. In particular, my approach to social media is profoundly influenced by lessons I learned about public communal expression from jazz musicians. A while back I inventoried those lessons and realized just how relevant they were in a business context. So with this post I’m beginning a series of posts called Talking Jazz in order to share some of those lessons.

Luckily, in talking about jazz these days, we have an extraordinary new tool available to us: YouTube. Yes, for jazz lovers YouTube is a godsend. In fact I’ve found jazz videos on YouTube that I couldn’t find in the National Library of Congress in Washington! So as a starting point for talking about jazz and social media I encourage you to check out this extaordinary archival video featuring Billie Holiday alongside many of the greatest legends in jazz.

This video was made in 1957, just a short time before Billie Holiday died of a heroin overdose in a New York hospital while under house arrest. Among the giants performing in it are some of the greatest sax players ever, including Ben Webster (Big Ben, the first sax player to solo) and Billie’s all-time musical soulmate, the exceptionally fine and mellow Lester Young (The Prez, who blows second). Sitting in front of the drummer is a guitarist named Danny Barker, with whom I once had the good fortune to spend an afternoon drinking lemonade at his home in New Orleans. Other players include a very young and skinny Gerry Mulligan on baritone sax, Roy Eldridge (Little Jazz) on trumpet, and Vic Dickenson on trombone.

The point of recommending this video, apart from sharing its beauty, is to encourage viewers to pay close attention to how this group of individuals manages the group conversation that is this song. Unlike written music, this song is completely improvised around a very loose blues structure, and yet without any apparent effort, the players know exactly how and when to make their entirely individualistic musical statements so as to support the coherence of the group. They speak in their own voices, utterly unadulterated, and yet they also mesh seamlessly with each other to form a larger whole of singular power.

What does this have to do with Social Media? Well, imagine if corporate bloggers used the same conversational approach as these musicians. What if they were able to express themselves as individuals but in doing so kept in mind the business objectives of the organization for which they work? What if a community of speakers could manage their interactions this seamlessly and supportively? Exactly!
These jazz musicians know when to support the group by playing and by not playing. When to solo and when to lay out. When to be part of the backup chorus and when to unleash a wild riff that propels the entire group forward. Above all they know how to make room for each other without feeling threatened. They know this because they understand how to converse responsibly. They listen, assess the need for sound, and supply a solution that in turn provides yet another opening, for a conversational response.
In fact, jazz is nothing but an endless series of networked conversations creating ephemeral public communities, (sound familiar?) In future Talking Jazz posts I’ll go into more detail about the structure of those jazz discussions and communities, and how they might be profitably adapted to the networked sphere. But in the meantime, stay cool, cool cat!

Now that I’ve had a chance to get a few initial posts up on this blog it’s time to get down to business. I want to start by stripping the web down to its most essential level so that we can all see what is really going on , and why. Here is a an extremely simple idea that should be the basis for every single web-based application, campaign or website, but that seems very difficult for many people to grasp, and even more so to apply. The most fundamental principle of the Internet is:

What Works is Enabling Exchange

What this means is that successful web applications are almost always about helping people connect to one another. They enable exchange. After all, that is the end and purpose of networks. They are for sharing and connecting. And there are a zillion examples of this. Off the top of my head I can think of

• email
• hyperlinks
• web browsers
• search engines (Yahoo, Google, etc.)
• chat apps like MSN Messenger
• message boards/forums
• listservs
• World of Warcraft
• Runescape
• Skype
• YouTube
• MySpace
• Flickr
• del.icio.us
• eBay
• Napster
• Torrents
• Blogs

And the list goes on and on…In other words, most of the basic elements of the Internet as we know it today are tools that were developed to enable people to connect and exchange information.

Seems obvious, right? Well, it is and it isn’t. What’s obvious to most people is that if they invent the next YouTube they have a chance to become billionaires. But for the average CEO whose business is selling stuff - real stuff, not virtual stuff - it is less obvious just how to make use of this principle to increase sales and generate profits.

Well, here’s the answer:

1) identify communities that you engage with (supplier communities, client communities, geographic communities, demographic communities, etc.)

2) build and lightly brand a user-friendly online website themed around your industry that enable members of one or more of your communities to easily connect and exchange information and stories using words, pictures, audio and even video

3) actively promote your site among your target communities in the physical world to build critical mass and to offer people as much as possible a living human bridge to your online space

That’s it. That is the key to successful online marketing. Or at least one way to achieve it. It’s simple. And it’s real. And it works.

For example, if you build sailboats, develop a website that lets people who love sailing exchange sailing pictures, swap information about pleasant harbours and scary shoals, find crew members and learn about boatbuilding. Promote your site at boat shows and major marinas by setting up a video kiosk and asking people “What is the most beautiful (or strangest) thing you’ve ever seen from your deck?” Post their videos on the site and get them to spread the word virally to their friends via email. Invite comments and other stories. Then sit back and watch as your brand becomes more and important, meaningful and far-reaching at very little cost. Watch customers and potential customers become members of your community. And the same applies whether you make boats, clothes (just check out the extraordinary success of www.threadless.com) or anything else that some people somewhere care about.

Of course, you do have to get the design of your online community right. Fortunately that’s where we come in. Drop me a line if you want to make it happen. sobol@76design.com

Steve sent around an interesting link the other day:

http://www.37signals.com/papers/introtopatterns/index.html

It’s an article that seeks to apply to web design the notion of A Pattern Language that was famously and wondrously developed by Christopher Alexander several decades ago in a book of the same name. Alexander’s book (the second of a trilogy actually) was about architecture, but his unique approach to thinking about how we create and use space has spawned a kind of minor cult, of which I’d say I’m a fringe member. Which is only to say that when I first came across Alexander’s book many years ago I was deeply affected by his approach to structuring knowledge via patterns, and it has remained an inspiration ever since, though somehow I keep giving away the copies I obtain and never have one of my own (sigh).

Alexander’s ‘pattern languages’ are sort of worlds within worlds, a way of expressing networked relations between objects so that when you think one you necessarily engage the others. In many ways his book entirely accidentally foresaw the basic structure of the hypertextual web, and has proven useful in devising and managing database taxonomies too (just learned this through a quick google search…google is all about pattern languages too I suppose). When I look at this very blog with its categories and trackbacks and various hierarchies, it too is a kind of pattern language.

Here is a link to a site that offers a surf-able (tho stripped down) version of his book:

http://downlode.org/etext/patterns/

One of the things that the 37signals essay picks up on is what I’d call the ’scribble’ effect that Alexander used, or what maybe is sometimes called back-of-a-napkin thinking. It’s a quick and dirty but amazingly effective way of conveying information and organizing thoughts. Of course it has become a bit trendy too, not always in a good way. I remember seeing the napkin on which Daniel Liebeskind submitted his $170-million design for the Royal Ontario Museum redesign, which he won. but it seems that in Liebeskind’s case his quick-and-dirty approach was really something of a masquerade for a lack of insight and research because the project’s way over budget and has gone back to the drawing board numerous times.

Anyway, I think Alexander’s pattern languages are as useful now as they were when he created them, if not more so. The book is an extraordinary resource for thinking about networks and knowledge and design. Not to mention building a house!

I’m not usually one to gush, but it just occurred to me as I sat here writing up a proposal for a really cool project that I think we’re very likely going to win, having just finished an excellent lunchtime learning session about Action Scripting led by our venerable Lead Designer, and basically getting this and that done usefully and efficiently with other people in the  studio that …I LOVE MY JOB! It’s been about 3 months now since I arrived at 76design, fresh from a bloodcurdling year in grad school (OK, it was a crazy idea) and it has been a blast from day 1. Talented, good-humoured and supportive co-workers, demanding but well-heeled clients, nice digs, visionary leadership…hey, it’s a great setup and I’m really looking forward to 2007! Thanks to all of you who have made room for me here at 76design!
j

For the past year or two I’ve been an active member of a terrific listserv moderated by Trebor Scholz of the iDC (the Institute for Distributed Creativity). The list features wide-ranging discussion of a very high calibre, as many of the world’s best-known digital artists, activists, curators, scholars and critics are subscribers and occasional contributors (Bruce Stirling, Lev Manovich, DJ Spooky, etc.). Anyway, there is currently a thread on iDC that explores the idea of Continuous Partial Attention (CPA). That’s one name given to the way people manage multiple datastreams as they work, and by and large people on the list have described this condition in very negative terms. Some posts have suggested, for example, that people go ‘blank’ when they try to manage too many incoming data streams. Here’s my post to the iDC listserv from last night, responding to this thread…feel free to add your comments after reading it…js
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I’ve been giving continuous partial attention to this thread for the past few days. It has casually nagged at me as it nattered discontinuously along (listservs are 90% CPA) until just now, when, as I lay restlessly in bed giving continuous partial attention to all sorts of dreamy thoughts, I found myself focusing productively on the notion of CPA for the first time. Which, in a way, is my point. That most of the time most of us are giving attention to many different things, and managing that aggregate feed quite comfortably, and choosing to focus on one stream or another only as needed.

In fact, I’d propose that the P in CPA might more accurately be changed to Peripheral, as in Continuous Peripheral Attention. That seems to me how we live most of the time, even when we’re unplugged. (All at once sensing faces, air currents, light sources, soundscapes, memories, hopes, destinations, calculations, companions, desires, aches and pains, etc.) And I don’t see that our wide-spectrum awareness need necessarily interfere with our narrowband focus either. As an improvising musician I’m always trying to balance my focused and diffused awarenesses when I play within an ensemble. It’s a technique. A sophisticated dialogical skill. Maybe such a skill has to be mastered to maximize the soulful usefulness of connected culture, like the competing Yin and Yang energies in Tai Chi, or the Jungian anima and animus energies.

Maybe our (I say our because I believe this holds true for the vast majority of the readership of this list) resistance to CPA stems from our collective allegiance to literacy, a profound attention-focusing technology that unlike aural/oral or digital networked communication requires that peripheral attention streams be extinguished to be effective. When there’s lots of noise we find it hard to read or write meaningful texts, and that makes us nervous. We ‘blank’. (Supposedly, tho I don’t really believe in techno-blanking, at least not as something significantly different from all the other forms of ’spacing out’ we know and love/hate)

But our conflicted experiences as literate emigrants to the datasphere don’t really matter here anyway. What matters is that there is a generation of kids out there for whom reading long texts is weird, for whom writing long texts is weird, for whom literate-style one-way communication that eliminates peripheral streams is downright freaky. That’s why I’d like to think that continuous peripheral attention is a more accurate description than continuous partial attention, because the former allows for the possibility of a focused stream within that peripheral awareness, of a constructive managing of flow that transcends superficiality and/or chaos. And thus it suggests to me – in my more optimistic moments anyway – that the kids having sixteen conversations at once might be leading somewhere I’d be like to go.