So am I covering the DLD Conference in Munich for Technorati? We'll see: Nothing Much Happened (XVIII) In München Today

Tuesday evening became interesting in right about the middle of it. I had just come back from a weekly client meeting around 9 and sat down at the computer to clear my mail do my normal boring day end business. In the background I rotate the TV between the BBC, CNN, Bloomberg and CNBC - the only English channels available on my German TV. And in the background a commercial shows up, I don't know exactly for what, and they talk about a long list of speakers coming to Munich for a 'creative conference'. Hold on. Creative conference? That's my business! But the Internet takes over again and I'm back to my work without being able to understand what the commercial was actually for. I work with my back to the TV for a reason - nothing much worth watching, usually. I still have a cassette tape, and not a videotape of the film, "My Dinner With Andre", because the dialogue IS the entire film. It's just two guys sitting at a table talking. News TV is mostly the same. Talking heads.

But the commercial comes on again, I am cued by the sound, and I swing around sit and watch. At the end it says, www.DLD-Conference.com . What the heck is DLD? Never heard of it. Been in Asia too long. Sounds interesting. So I immediately go to the web. And pull up a site. Jeeziz. Because Jesus is the only person not speaking apparently - and the speaking list is not only impressive, it's extensive. Nearly 150 actuaries in Science, The Arts, Technology, Venture Capitol, a Nobel Laureate and even a Princess. Curioser and curioser. The DLD site describes the conference as such:

"DLD (Digital. Life. Design) is a three-day experience gathering 800 entrepreneurs, investors, philantropists, scientists, artists and creative minds from all over the world. With global diversity in attendees and an interdisciplinary perspective of digital, media, design, art, science, brands, consumers and society, the conference is known as the European forum for the creative class".

So I immediately go to the registration area of the site. But I am told summarily, like the bouncers at P1 will tell you, that I cannot come in. Registrations are closed. What next? And why are they running a commercial on national TV promoting the event and then not letting anybody in once we do what 'direct response' advertising wants us to do, which is 'respond'? Who knew?. As I am writing this, the commercial continues to run on CNN, one day later. Why might that be?

But whadayawant in advertising? Logic? I have been a Vice President at Leo Burnett in Chicago and was even sent to Asia by Michael Conrad, a very nice German and I can tell you, logic had very little to do with a lot in that business. I was the man available on the day they needed a man available in Asia, and off I went. My CV had little to do with it either. It was simply just good enough to not have killed the deal. Advertising and logic belong together sometimes like the words Army and intelligence.

As it turns out, the social networking site Xing, here in Germany, is a sponsor, and I know a few folks up there. Maybe they can help me do a work around. Letters to Xing. Type, type, type. I am a horrible typist. Next up. Brain freeze.

After that, Technorati. I had registered as a writer for Technorati last summer and been accepted but never written a thing. Why? Because basically, I do better on my own and most of my stories are not big news events. To write for another site, you make no money, do a lot of work, and are subject to editorial killing just like a regular job. So why do it? I can publish what I want, do what I want, and get a small but high level readership all on my own on most days. And as opposed to a lot of bloggers out there, I can do that - and get read no matter what I choose to write about. Why? I don't know exactly why. When there's no money involved, it just works that way. I choose my audience and they choose me.

But this instance was different. Here was a story that not only was I interested in, but one that Technorati would actually be interested in as well, and I had received an email from them just last week that encouraged all of us writers to "do more". Why? Because writers were not submitting content to them like they thought they would. Why? Because nobody wants work for free. I had turned down a speaking engagement last year with the Saigon Digital Marketing Conference for the same reason. The sooner this Web 2.0 animal figures that out, the better. There's a not a world of 'citizen journalists' just sitting around waiting to be published for nothing. No, we all work for a living. That's how we eat.

But Technorati should be interested I thought. I am in Munich, and it just makes good sense. I had just written a series called "wHAT's wRONG wiTH mY sOCIAL nETWORKING?" And this conference seems to have the answer to that question in that it brings creative people and Internet development people together. So off to Technorati I would go. A letter to their Executive Editor and a message back in just a few minutes. His response to my query on their need for a writer and stories on the event? "Go for it!".

And that was all the approval I needed - but sorting through the DLD website here in Munich would not be near as easy as getting the go-ahead from a publication based far away in San Francisco. A visit to DLD's contact page gives you two of those impersonal email addresses - you know the ones that say info@website.here or press@website.there - and then a visit to the 'team page' gives you a flurry of nice B&W photos of people doing certain jobs and another page to click on for what is described as 'detailed contact information'. A click on that and guess where you go? Right back to the first contact page with the same two anonymous email addresses. Hmmm. I eventually went to Xing, DLD's corporate partner in the conference, and was able to send personal notes to people who seemed to be directly involved in the production. No response from that quite yet.

So where I stand right now is in having a publication to represent but still needing approval from the conference and no, no matter what happens, I will not be paid, but I'm sure I can schlurp coffee and bag a few scones for breakfast. The interest here is in the quality of the presenters and the mix of personalities - the chance that real ideas may be proposed and even moved forward in an atmosphere where old media and new media could certainly do a lot more in each other's benefit than they might sometimes believe. Hubert Burda, below, has made that a mission. Scientific thought processes, sociological thought processes, artistic thought processes and business thought processes all strewn together for a few days will surely produce more inspiring writing than I might be able to do at home on my own as I did last year for a few conferences in Vietnam.

And should I not get a press pass, there's always the option of covering it as Hunter S. Thompson covered the Roxanne Pulitzer divorce trial, Gonzo style. Thompson, finding the courtroom barred from reporters, simply grabbed the transcripts he could from grocery carts full of them wheeled into the courthouse hallway, and retreated to a nearby pub to watch the trial on TV and interview other pub patrons on the goings on of the trial - but with this not being a drug infused, high profile, sex scandal, I can't imagine that option being particularly effective - or nearly as entertaining.

So now you wonder - what's that funny little graphic that leads off this story? That is my own personal DLD Molecule. Or in this case, the personal Molecule of Infinite Wisdom Consulting. The way it works is that you type the letters of either your name, or your company's name into the DLD Moleculator on the site and it runs it through a little algorithm that determines the shape. I like how in our case, there are lots of diametric converging lines, but that the overall direction of the mark produces one straight and clear line, right down the middle, pointing up, mind you. That in many ways, is how creative businesses should go - examining many opportunities and options, but still headed up towards a single goal. Neat. I though this was neat.

Last night I stayed up until a fairly insane hour of the morning reading all, and I did read them all, of the nearly 150 bios of speakers and panelists for the event. Here are just a few that would be memorable for me and Technorati readers: (Click to see full bios on the DLD site)

Aaron Koblin is an artist specializing in data visualization. His work takes social and infrastructural data and uses it to depict cultural trends and emergent patterns. Aaron's work has been shown at international festivals including Ars Electronica, SIGGRAPH, OFFF, the Japan Media Arts Festival, and TED. He received the National Science foundation's first place award for science visualization and is part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. Currently, Aaron is Technology Lead of Google's Creative Lab where he helped to launch Chrome Experiments, a website showcasing JavaScript work by designers from around the world.

David Kirkpatrick, longtime senior editor for internet and technology at Fortune Magazine, has written for two decades about the computer and technology industries, as well as the impact of the Internet on business and society. His book, entitled "The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company that is Connecting the World" will be published by Simon & Schuster in the US June 15, 2010. The book describes Facebook's history and how this newly-dominant Internet force is changing behaviors across societies worldwide. He maintains a blog at facebook.com/thefacebookeffect.

Dr. Hubert Burda is Chairman of the Board and Publisher of Hubert Burda Media. He is President of the Association of German Magazine Publishers (VDZ) and co-founder of the European Publishers Council (EPC). He set up the Hubert Burda Foundation with a view to promoting interdisciplinary exchanges on future trends. Hubert Burda also founded the Burda Center for Innovative Communications at the Ben Gurion University in Beer Sheva, Israel.He has been awarded numerous prizes and distinctions for his achievements in publishing and business, including the European Print Media Prize and the Gold Medal Freedom of Speech of the European Association of Communications (EACA).

Although best known for founding Wikipedia.org, Jimmy Wales has also set up the Wikimedia Foundation in 2003 and co-founded Wikia, Inc., in 2004. Recently, The World Economic Forum recognized Wales as one of the "Young Global Leaders" of 2007. This prestigious award acknowledges the top 250 young leaders across the world for their professional accomplishments, their commitment to society, and their potential to contribute to shaping the future of the world. Wales also received the "Time 100 Award" in 2006, named one of the world's most influential people in the "Scientists & Thinkers" category. Wales received his bachelor's degree in finance from Auburn University and his master's in finance from University of Alabama.

As the leader of the Mozilla Project, Mitchell Baker organizes and motivates a massive, worldwide collective of employees and volunteers who are breathing new life into the Internet with the Firefox Web browser and other Mozilla products. Baker received her BA in Asian Studies from UC Berkeley and her JD from the Boalt Hall School of Law. Her law career included working for Sun Microsystems and Netscape. Baker has been the general manager of the Mozilla project since 1999, helping shape the license under which Netscape's source code was released. As Chairman of the Mozilla Foundation, Baker continues her commitment to an open, innovative Web and the infinite possibilities it presents.

After serving in the U.S. Marine Corps, and after his studies in Utah, Harvard and Cornell, John Naisbitt worked for IBM and Kodak. In 1963 he went to Washington where he became the Assistant Secretary of Education to President Kennedy, and Special Assistant to President Johnson. Since the global success of Megatrends and the 10 books that followed, he has traveled around the globe several times a year and has spoken to almost all the major corporations of the world. He is the recipient of 15 honorary doctorates in the humanities, technology and science. He and his wife divide their time living in Vienna, Austria and in Tianjin, China, where in 2007 they established the Naisbitt China Institute at Tianjin University.

Jonathan Harris makes projects that reimagine how humans relate to technology and to each other. Combining elements of computer science, anthropology, visual art and storytelling, his projects range from building the world's largest time capsule (with Yahoo!) to documenting an Alaskan Eskimo whale hunt on the Arctic Ocean. He is the co-creator of We Feel Fine, which continuously measures the emotional temperature of the human world through large-scale blog analysis. After studying computer science at Princeton University, he won a 2005 Fabrica fellowship and three Webby Awards. He has given talks at Google, Princeton and Stanford Universities, the TED Conference, and at two hippy forest gatherings. His projects have been shown at MoMA (New York), Le Centre Pompidou (Paris), and have appeared on CNN, NPR, BBC, and Bhutanese television.

Reid Hoffman was LinkedIn's founding CEO for the first four years before moving to his role as Chairman and President, Products in February 2007. While CEO, Reid built the company to over 9 million members and profitability; Linkedin now has over 50 million members worldwide. Prior to LinkedIn, Reid was Executive Vice President of PayPal. At PayPal, Reid was in charge of all business relationships: business development, corporate development, international, government relations, and banking/payments infrastructure. During his tenure at PayPal, Hoffman was instrumental to the acquisition by eBay and was responsible for partnerships with Intuit, Visa, MasterCard and Wells Fargo. Reid also has held management roles in large technology companies, including Fujitsu Software Corporation and Apple. Currently, in addition to LinkedIn, Reid serves on the Board of Directors for SixApart and Mozilla Corporation (Firefox).

The Italian mountaineer and explorer from South Tyrol, Reinhold Messner, often cited as the greatest mountain climber of all time brought his sport to new heights. He is renowned for making the first solo ascents of Mount Everest without supplemental oxygen and for being the first climber to ascend all fourteen "eight-thousanders" (peaks over 8,000 metres above sea level). Messner has crossed Antarctica on skis and the desert Gobi. Messner is the author of at least 63 books. From 1999 to 2004, he held political office as a Member of the European Parliament for the Italian Green Party. He co-founded Mountain Wilderness, an international NGO dedicated to the protection of mountains worldwide and dedicates himself to the Messner Mountain Museum.

I first heard of Reinhold Messner from a Ben Folds album cover. A few weeks ago someone had referred me to Jonathan Harris' website related to a job that we were doing, and we even traded a few emails this week. What an interesting life I have sometimes. To be able to come face to face in the line of my work with many of the people who shape my work. In many cases, I get to hire them and in some other cases we might become friends. I often tell students and those needing a little mentoring to make their dreams big - not to skimp on the fantasies - but also to make them real. Real enough just just get a little bit of it every few years or so. This breeds hope and hope, eventually breeds success.

My job now is to get through to the conference and speak with those who cover press. Had I heard about this earlier, I might not be in a time crunch now. Or had they advertised this earlier, they might not have had to put up with my silliness at this late date. I'll keep you posted.

For more on digital marketing and social networking see:

Xing vs. LinkedIn: Round II
Trial and Error: The New Normal
What's Wrong With My Social Networking? Xing vs. LinkedIn I
Low Tech Germany. Who Knew?
Advertising People and Blogs
How to Write the Best Blog in the World
What If Gutenberg Had a Blog?
If Blogs Are Free Does That Make Them Worthless?
Detri-Viral Marketing II: The Top 10 Social Media Blunders
Bright Lights, Big Internet and the WWED
Saigon Digital Marketing Conference Successfully Avoids Plumbers Convention
A Tale of Many Marketing Conferences
Detri-Viral Marketing I: How Web 2.0 Can Go Against A Brand
Marketing Predictions for 2009
Barcamp Saigon 2008
"Ignore Everybody" is Born: A Plug for Hugh MacLeod
Are the Bloggerati Missing the Market? Asia has Risen,
Into the Gapinvoid - Web 2.0 Social Networking Born 20 Years Ago

Is Infinite Wisdom Dead?

Well, that's not the kind of idea that can really die is it? Can we say that we're in Beta? And now retooling? Exactly. One partner is off learning that no amount of money can make a dream come true, and how to just show up everyday and do the work, and the other partner is learning that being right doesn't mean the same as being successful. Will Infinite Wisdom survive. Of course it will. Because the sum of our parts are not always equal to the whole - and once we learn that, we'll be good to go.

Au Revoir Paris: The Wild Wild East Goes West VIII

As I make my exit from Paris, I head to my local Internet cafe to clear my mails and make final preparation for today's departure to Mali, Afrika - printing visas, touching base with Twitter Facebook, and the like - having a tiff with a friend over a little "confidential" firestorm - just your normal days workings in land land of international drama and intrigue. As far as drama and intrigue are concerned, savvy readers have detected more than a slight riff between my partner and I in these travels and I assure you, I suspect that riff is far from over. But on we will go. The path to Infinite Wisdom is no easy one, I assure you. Today is launched for me by the man at my Internet cafe, who only speaks French, bellowing "Bowie!, Monsieur David Bowie, bon jour!"- This pretty much cements my happiness for the day in knowing that it's not only in Asia where I seem to favour the great thin white duke, but also here in France. Bon jour Paris, and thank you. Au Revoir, until we meet again!

For more in the WWE Goes West Series check here:

I) The Wild Wild East Goes West: Onward Ho!
II) Frankfurt
III) C'est Si Bon
IV) Bon Jour Paris!
V) Les Picassos en Paris
VI) Nothing Much Happened en Paree Today
VII) Paris Wallpaper: Sometimes The Best Prayers Have No Words
VIII) Au Revoir Paris
IX) Is Publicis Groupe a Dead Brand?

C'est Si Bon : The Wild Wild East Goes West III

#25. That's us. The Taxi from Paris Est Station to St. Germain and the 6th arandissement is a whirlwind of postcard images and a far cry from the order of Frankfurt or the disorder of Ho Chi Minh City. To see the city in the flesh again for a second time makes one come to realize that whatever the French did add to Vietnam was but a drop in the bucket from the original. The aire urbaine that is the city of the Parisii envelopes one instantly from the river Seine to Notre Dame to our home for the next three weeks across from Jardin du Luxenbourg off Boulevard St. Michel. We are transformed, if only during the short ride, into urban sophisticates jetting the globe in search of business and pleasures unknown - untouched for just a moment by the realities that are our own independent lives - but even the city of lights can not take those realities away, rather it washes them in a waterfall of sights and sounds that say, "Wouldn't you like to be as fucking cool and sophisticated as we every day of the year instead of just for your time in this fucking cab?" My partner nods yes, without moving her head or saying a word at all.

.

6 months worth of luggage hauled up four flights of ever winding and ever steepening stairs and we are at 444 - a tiny disheveled apartment, on the inner courtyard of an otherwise quietly impressive building, that seems to have been decorated by a French Helen Keller and furnished by Stevie Wonder. There is even an artist's garret across the courtyard with paintings and easels and the smell of fresh oil paint waifting through the divide. This is our bohemian rhapsody for the next three weeks. Our foxhole for planning and plotting our next move.

A trip to the late night gourmet convenience store (I've not seen a 7-11 yet) and three hours of kitchen cleaning the next morning yeilds a spectacular salmon salad with homemade croutin for evening and a breakfast of French toast with salmon side salad the next morning. Dinner Saturday is a braised duck a l'orange with merguez and anchovie dressing on the side - so at least with a budget that is more than modest, we are eating like Sun Kings. The Beatles would have approved.

In 1990 I had visited Paris on a trip not unlike this, combining business and pleasure with a course in French country cooking along with tours of the museums and countryside, so to be able to exercise my culinary skills again in the city of their refinement along with a stretch of networking and plan building seems almost a dream too good to be true. We all need to be able to hold on to days like these and make the most of them - they don't come along but every 20 years or so - at least in my case. And so today is the start of our research and contact building for the future. Is there a market in helping French based businesses with their management consulting and marketing affairs being activated in Vietnam? Well, we're certainly going to find out - and along the way discover just how much actual work it takes to make dreams come true and the proper amount of Infinite Wisdom to be used in holding the whole thing together. Vive la France!

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Post Script: In the writing of this post the following reader registered in on my Live Traffic Feed: Paris, Ile-de-France landed on http://wildwildeastdailies.blogspot.com/ 14:36:14 -- 22 minutes ago - How did they know I was talking about them?

For more in the WWE Goes West Series check here:

I) The Wild Wild East Goes West: Onward Ho!
II) Frankfurt
III) C'est Si Bon
IV) Bon Jour Paris!
V) Les Picassos en Paris
VI) Nothing Much Happened en Paree Today
VII) Paris Wallpaper: Sometimes The Best Prayers Have No Words
VIII) Au Revoir Paris
IX) Is Publicis Groupe a Dead Brand?

Frankfurt: The Wild Wild East Goes West II

Frankfurt comes on the heals of Vietnam like a powerbleached metropolis built between the lines of commerce and commerz. The difference is striking. Surreal. The Mercedes taxi slides past Festival Park, the Frankfurt convention center and home of the world's largest auto show, at 180km an hour as the driver speeds towards the train station near to where our hotel is located. Architecture blurs in a pastiche of Bauhaus office meanderings mixed with function over form human filing cabinets, or apartments, as the Vietnamese might call them. It is explained while driving through the neighborhood of signs displaying "Sex Show" or "Table Dancing" that our hotel is located in this area for the factors of reasonable price and proximity to the train station for our escape to Paris later in the week. I have little trouble agreeing with that.

The flight, from Hanoi to Frankfurt is eleven hours and jet lag takes it's toll on my partner as we settle into our room. Breakfast has been served at the end of one of our longest days and after, the only reasonable thing to do is sleep - but we can't, so we don't, quite yet.

Waking at 3 pm from a flight that arrived at 5:50 am I spy one still dead traveling companion and decide that it's a good time to survey my environs, the more than large train station that lies to the east. And it seems that bums were designed to live in train stations as I am approached by a young t-shirt wearing, German engineered bum who seems more like a college drop-out than an actual bum. "No thank you", I reply to the request. Here at the Frankfurt am Main station, classical European architecture meets steel and glass rennovation to present a shopping mall of Mac Le Grand proportions as Burger Kings and bagel shops grab out for one's ever so well healed attention - or at least that of the locals. The price of my Double Whopper meal nears ten dollars as I realize that in Vietnam, that would be equivent to 180,000 dong and buy you a gourmet entre and appetizer. I wolf that sucker down in classic western carnivorous fashion anyway, as if I am eating the very hollogrammed-silver-threaded-security-embeded Euro note from my pocket. Heaven, in the financial nirvana of Deutchland - delivered in all it's flamed broiled glory.

I buy a baguette for my partner back at the room, knowing she will be little interested in venturing out to this sea of commercialism that thrives on the almost mechanical meticulism of the populace of this less than vibrant metropolis. What you do see in Frankfurt are the spoils of bean counting of the highest German order. What you don't see is heart. And that's what I was about to find to be a byproduct of a strictly German education. Compassion, removed by education - replaced by ambivalence.

The next day brings Ericka. Ericka and I had met on YouTube nearly two years ago and now we were finally going to meet in person. How wild in the world of virtual friends and relationships the Internet has cobbled together for all of us these days.

Ericka Dickens-Gerhardt fronts a jazz and blues band in the city and goes by the moniker "That Broad Abroad" to her fans back in her hometown of L.A. She meets us at one of the more than ubiquitous foreign-owned Irish Pubs that seem to dot the globe and greets me with a warm and gracious hug. We settle down to a less than Irish Lunch and begin to chew the fat, American style, as my Vietnamese counterpart and Ericka carry sidebar conversations in German. Oh how International it's all become. Finishing lunch, Ericka takes us around the corner to the former apartment of Oskar Shindler, of Shindler's list fame. She then presents me with a book about him, signed and commemorating our meeting, along with a small bag of cookies baked by her daughter. So sweet. My partner, ever still victimized by jetlag and a few other traveling demons, decides, not surprisingly, to retire back to the room as Ericka and I continue our venture into the city formerly occupied by the Americans in WWII.

Our afternoon walk travels through Zeil, a posh area of shopping malls and higher class boutiques and ends, accross the Main river at the Deutsche Architekturmuseum for espresso and espresso induced conversation. A large bottle of Pellegrino hits the table and I feel I#m almost in L.A. - Oh and that "slash-mark"? Welcome to the wondrous world of the German keyboard - where Zs and Ys are transposed and all the little nuggets like @ signs, // marks and "quotations are buried in odd, possibly shift or possibly alt key locations making a tour of the typescape a real romp and a speedbump for virtually everz sentence I venture. Fun? No.

But Ericka answers my big question of the tour. "Could I, and the partners of Infinite Wisdom, find work in Frankfurt"?

And her answer is an uniquivocal "Yes"! With over 922 jobs per 1,000 inhabitants, Frankfurt has the highest concentration of jobs in Germany. The areas of Management Consulting and Advertising are represented by all the big names and just a short train ride brings Munich, home to Germany's film production and creative community. So why are we not hanging out longer here and in Munich and instead going on to Paris? Ah, the answer to that question lies in a last minute cancellation of our apartment in Munich and a quick plug in of Paris to fill the hole. Once in Paris, I'm sure we'll sit around and ponder that logic for awhile. Or maybe not.

Ericka's last statement to me on the subject brings us to the beginning of my memoir, Wild Wild East. In further deliberation on the possibility of using my Asian knowledge back here in the West she said, "David, look. The man who got you to Korea can get you to Frankfurt"

From the memoir Wild Wild East:

"Chicago, April 1995: I’m sitting in my office on the 26th floor of the Leo Burnett building watching the sailboats go by when the telephone rings; it’s Michael Conrad, our Worldwide Creative Director, and he has a question: “What do you know about Korea?”, he asks. “Nothing”, I said – and that’s how I got the job."

Michael Conrad & Leo Burnett remains one of Frankfurt's premier agencies for Advertising, Branding and Corporate Image.

Amazing. What goes around, really does come around. More Infinite Wisdom from Paris...

For more in the WWE Goes West Series check here:

I) The Wild Wild East Goes West: Onward Ho!
II) Frankfurt
III) C'est Si Bon
IV) Bon Jour Paris!
V) Les Picassos en Paris
VI) Nothing Much Happened en Paree Today
VII) Paris Wallpaper: Sometimes The Best Prayers Have No Words
VIII) Au Revoir Paris
IX) Is Publicis Groupe a Dead Brand?

Bright Lights, Big Internet & the WWED

Thanks to Freya for this story from the New York Times, "Bright Lights, Big Internet" by Bill Wasik. It's dead on and we're all living it. Click on any paragraph and see the whole story.

THIS summer, as in so many summers gone by, young aspirants to the creative class — would-be writers, musicians, artists, editors, comedians, performers, thinkers, provocateurs — are stepping off buses in Port Authority and trains in Penn Station, navigating their rented trucks and borrowed cars through outer-borough blocks. These new arrivals come to New York, first and foremost, to find one another, a flock of other young people like themselves. But they come also to seek success, to chase their “big break,” that vague but real moment when, as if by magic, one suddenly finds oneself on the opposite side of the glass from one’s nose print. Is New York still worth the trip?

Meanwhile, another destination beckons, a place that courses with all the raw ambition and creative energy that the hard times seem to have drained from New York. I am referring, of course, to the Internet, which over the past decade has slowly become the de facto heart of American culture: the public space in which our most influential conversations transpire, in which our new celebrities are discovered and touted, in which fans are won and careers made.

Every month more YouTube sensations emerge, more bloggers ink big book deals, more bands blow up through music Web sites and MySpace, and every day more young people seek their “big break” in the virtual megalopolis rather than in (or as well as in) the physical one.

And then there is the Wild Wild East Dailies. Listing, hoping, grieving, smiling, wishing, hoping, praying, delaying and writing again. The path to Infinite Wisdom is long but at least I'm on it. It's all about the trip you know. Destinations rarely matter.

For more on digital marketing and social networking see:

Xing vs. LinkedIn: Round II
Trial and Error: The New Normal
What's Wrong With My Social Networking? Xing vs. LinkedIn I
Low Tech Germany. Who Knew?
Advertising People and Blogs
How to Write the Best Blog in the World
What If Gutenberg Had a Blog?
If Blogs Are Free Does That Make Them Worthless?
Detri-Viral Marketing II: The Top 10 Social Media Blunders
Bright Lights, Big Internet and the WWED
Saigon Digital Marketing Conference Successfully Avoids Plumbers Convention
A Tale of Many Marketing Conferences
Detri-Viral Marketing I: How Web 2.0 Can Go Against A Brand
Marketing Predictions for 2009
Barcamp Saigon 2008
"Ignore Everybody" is Born: A Plug for Hugh MacLeod
Are the Bloggerati Missing the Market? Asia has Risen,
Into the Gapinvoid - Web 2.0 Social Networking Born 20 Years Ago

Big Dreams, Big Plans, Small Money, No Commitment - How Not To Market in Asia III

Watching someone's dreams go up in smoke is never easy, especially in business. It makes you wonder why they were dreaming such things in the first place. This happens often, especially in developing markets. People dream things that are beyond their grasp, usually because they don't like the grasp they are already in. It was conveyed recently to me that all Vietnamese are controlled by somebody; a parent, a marriage partner, a business relationship and so in response to this relationship, they seek to control somebody else, a friend, a lover, a supplier - maybe employees - and in so doing this, seemingly release the pressure they are already feeling from the situation they are already in - and thus, compounding the situation they are already in. What you don't want to be is the last man on that totem pole, because when things go wrong, you or your company will be blamed for all of it, and used as the scapegoat for why the whole deal went sour in the first place.

I've seen it countless of times in Asia. From Korea to Vietnam to Singapore and China, so the syndrome is not just uniquely Vietnamese - it stems from the family business model that is so prevalent in all of Asia.

As many of you will recall, this series started with a patently ludicrous request from a client looking to bring in a blimp in to Vietnam for advertising purposes, just before the Miss Universe competition in Vietnam, last summer. Even before any plan had been written it didn't seem to have dawned on anyone that blimp shots of a beauty pageant were not a particularly saleable commodity. But I dutifully plodded through an 8 page checklist of questions for the client to ask the people who had purported said hot air, just to get the ball rolling - and then I asked for my standard fee. Ball stops rolling. Blimp implosion ensues.

Probably the quickest way to kill a bad deal is to ask for money up front, which means, to get all your expenses covered, before you even get on to the playing field. For even writing plans in Vietnam, that fee could be as little as $500 just for doing a basic proposal, to much, much more should you need to expend cash, or risk life and limb to enter the deal. I was recently told of a business deal involving the shipping of tons of wood to the United States. The business owner was now complaining that the shipping company was now holding them accountable for freight charges because the shipment had been declined by the purchaser in the US (Global financial crisis blamed for causing drop in furniture sales). "But wait a minute", said I, a man with an art degree, to the MBA close to the deal, "Shouldn't all expenses have been covered first in the contract", before anything was shipped? Of course they should have. Standard logistics company contracts require that all the money for a purchase of this nature be deposited in a secure account in the country of the purchaser and then released to the supplier upon customs clearance of the shipment. Essentially, the shipment docking pays the bill - thereby keeping skinflint buyers from balking in the middle of a deal. Looking just in a cursory fashion at someone who allowed this to happen, makes you wonder about all sorts of things.

The "How Not to Market in Asia" series continued with a story of a man who thought he had sold a TV show, but just needed me to write a demographic profile for him over the weekend to seal the deal. "What?" I asked myself. "This is a potential $20,000 initial pilot program and you think you've sold it but it lacks a demographic profile?" Bullshit. Having not been able to get any sort of plan or PowerPoint on the deal thus far, I simply asked for the $500 and the ball stopped rolling. Unfortunately I was barraged by a bizarre negotiation that went all the way down to $50 at one point and shots of me rolling around on the floor laughing during the protracted telephone conversations. I have no idea what ever happened to that deal but since it involved a bank sponsorship right at the media height of the global financial crisis, earlier this year, I suspect that nothing is the correct answer.

And so to the current meltdown. A deal this week, valued at just under $10,000 went south just because a $292 contingency cost couldn't be met? Bollocks. The basic plan was $1500 over budget before leaving the starting gate and had far more risk in it (99.9% for me) than $292 dollars. That small cost was just my red flag warning as to what might happen should things have gotten rolling to much further down the line. A fair call for avoiding possibly massive pain in the future.

I was once told to avoid at all cost, second generation Asians from seemingly wealthy families. Their parents worked hard, planted rice, ran green grocers, built buildings or whatever and then sold off the family fields or store to wealthy Taiwanese real estate developers or just socked it away, day by day dollar by dollar, making maybe millions. Then they sent their children to Harvard, Cambridge, Oxford or some other prestigious International university, thus producing offspring who have no idea at all of all the hard work it took to have made the money in the first place. So I've learned to watch out for this. When you see a person who's sending out all the outward signs of being well tended and well educated, look carefully and make sure they have the go-to spirit that made their parents so successful - or have they just learned to rely on others to do all the real work while they go on maintaining the face that is ever so important in these societies.

Hugh Macleod, in his book "Ignore Everybody" puts it this way "Put the hours in - Doing anything worthwhile takes forever. 90% of what separates successful people and failed people is time, effort, and stamina. Stamina is utterly important. And stamina is only possible if it's managed well. People think all they need to do is endure one crazy, intense, job-free creative burst and their dreams will come true. They are wrong, they are stupidly wrong. Put the hours in, do it for long enough and magical, life-transforming things happen eventually." When evaluating any potential business deal with another party, simply ask yourself, "Yes, but are they willing to put in the hours like I do?" That will tell you more than any contract, budget, pedigreed degree or business plan ever will.

This week, with the help of a friend, I was able to get my book proposal to a more than relevant agent in New York. "A Rock Star" agent, as she was described to me. And what made the week for me, was that - not the idea that I might ever actually get to publish the thing, but that one more small link in the chain had been set in what might be the longest chain I have ever tried to assemble. I've done the work. I've publicized the work. I've put in the hours. And continue to do so with every letter I type on these pages. It all adds up, in little ways, sometimes.

A few weeks ago, the person with the ten thousand dollar deal had dismissed this blog and the Wild Wild East book as, not realistic - a long shot. And probably, from an outside reviewer's standpoint that's partially true. But you not only have to believe that long shots can happen - you have to put in the hours to make them happen. Dream real. And do the work. That's my Infinite Wisdom for today.