Process Storytelling

A home owner is currently losing their house every 8 seconds. It is estimated that half of all foreclosures should not be happening because it costs the banks more in the loss than it would were they to modify the loan. Why don't they do it? They don't have the process in place to deal with a lot of foreclosures.

Website content management is very similar to that situation but in reverse. Many do not have a process in place that regulates their content management. The end result is that it's very, very costly to make site changes and vendors struggle to keep pace with a clients changes - because it's all custom.

While many of us love to create our stories with the excitement and freedom of a child - no bounds on the imagination, the truth is there's a very real cost to that boundless palette. And, 99% of the time, the palette is never truly boundless and the creator can then often feel short changed or limited in expression.

But the English alphabet only contains 26 letters, on opera based on 8 notes, the number of human chromosomes - the basis of all human existence and creativity - 24. This is where process storytelling takes root. Finding the unlimited from an endless combination of the limited. While this is often referred to as templates, it drives deeper than that in finding the consistent patterns of information at the source and by telling the story against adopted patterns. Structure and flexibility can coexist. The trick is to identify where one naturally starts and the other begins.

Today is a Good Day for Human Communications

When I left the family business in 1995 to join a friend to start an Internet company, everyone thought I was nuts. The world wide web was technically only a couple of years old and nobody I knew was surfing the web or even used email. Microsoft in fact wasn't even on the Internet scene, they were just releasing MSN in an attempt to to compete with AOL. It was exciting to be a renegade at the time, but it was also very difficult having a passion for something nobody understood.

It was the beginning of the tech boom that brought the greatest satisfaction. People were finally getting into this great thing that was the Internet. The work that we were doing was slowly being validated - this was a viable career (in addition to being the absolutely most coolest job).

Flash forward to the first quarter 2009. While the financial markets had been crashing the end of 2008, I had been illuminated to a complete opposite explosion - the social media revolution of Facebook and Twitter - to name a few. Since my start in 1995 I had not experienced something which appeared to me as revolutionary as the Internet and email communication growth of the late 90's. The strangest part however was the similar sentiment I was experiencing when I brought those topics up to people who were not expirementing with social media. In a lot of cases there was absolute detest in the discussion. The biggest sting was a similar response from a customer when I tried to suggest experimenting with these tools to see how they could have business applications.

Yesterday's Ashton Kutcher's win in the race against CNN to reach 1 million visitors and Oprah's first Tweet today will be a watershed moment for human communications. When you consider that the first web page was put up by Tim Berners-Lee in 1990, the first public browser available in 1993 (Mosaic), I think you realize that we are just getting out of the silent movie era. Say what you will about celebrities tweeting; millions upon millions of people are communicating quicker, more effectively and with less costs and restrictions. It's a good time to be alive.

Jolt of Inspiration

Listening to a podcast about Augustus Saint-Gaudens, the sculptor when inspiration took a very noticable leap.  I constantly listen to various podcasts, read books, surf blogs...all in an effort to re-kindle those rises that I'm sure happen to everyone.  That yeah, that's what I want, I'm going for that today.  Some times it's not the inpiration rise but it's also the departure from the valley - like after watching the PBS documenary "FrontLine: Inside The MeltDown" - I really could have used a lift.

But today, listening to the Augustus Saint-Gaudens story, I had that lift and then that momement of parellel thought - I can do what he did.  Now to even say that out loud may sound crazy and could very well be, but I'm reminded that the sure way to not accomplish something is to believe that you can't.  I'm not planning on carving The Shaw Memorial but I do have something of equivelent - a digital sculpture so-to-speak that I've been working on for almost as many years and I do believe it has similiar potential if I see it through.  Gaudens spent 14 years on that and perhaps that's what gave me that lift - the idea that he needed vision to keep going that long and there is no doubt he had many reasons to stop or finish it as less than what he thought it could be.   

So thanks National Gallery of Art-Behind the Scenes and thanks Augustus Saint-Gaudens for more fuel for the charge.

The Internet Has Got Me Giddy!

There's a lot of tough news out there but something great is afoot within the Internet.  With the downtrend of things and predictions of gloom, things like Facebook, Twitter, Google and mobile connectivity are glowing with a growing energy.  It's not something I can express in facts or point to headlines, it's just this sence of exuberance that seems to exist there when everywhere else there's a dark cloud.

If things have got you down, I encourage you to spend more time in these spaces where not only is there a ray of optimism running throughout, but a projection of some of these successes, points to me a path toward a way through these hard times.

Email Newsletters Will Slim-Up

The facebook model where you receive an email notification to go to the site to see things/updates is the most efficient - obviously. Everyone posts to the site, email is used to notify.

Email marketing is more expressive - but is that model going to change? Times are demanding more efficient expediency. The combination of email alerts and news-feed on the landing page accomplishes notification and then further informative delivery when you get there. The idea that you kill 2 birds with one stone has a lot of merit - those visiting without prompting and those prompted. Email newsletters seem too customized to pulling people in.

Now I understand that it's a traffic builder - pulling people in who might not ordinarily be motivated by a plain notice from an email. But I also have to ask the question of - if someone subscribes to your notification, a simple headline - if interesting - could be enough to have me quickly click and check it out. A single click from the email takes 2 seconds.

This is just an exercise in thought, but the idea is very inspiring as to the most optimal ways of using email notifications along with dynamic content on the landing page.

RE: Please title your emails

I have to imagine that many have to do what I do - search for old emails. Sort by sender, scan by subject. Then threads (related emails on a topic) are invaluable for tracking a situation. Then there's those black holes of email data that's lost do to the requirement of viewing and scanning the body of every email - when the sender by habit doesn't title the email. This is no rub on those that send emails that way - it's more an exasperation at losing information because it's too hard to find.

Within the past few weeks, I've noticed the spammers have taken to subjecting their emails "RE: " - surely a leverage against all the emails that float through because there is nothing to check as to the nature of the content.

Maybe it's like everyone filling up their tires. If we all just subject our emails, the world will be a better place.

Great Resource: Alertbox

Web usability is every Internet user's concern but not something many think about when charged with an Internet responsibility. As a site developer, it's something we think of often, but we have a tendency to gauge the countless sites we visit as a benchmark.

Enter Alertbox, a bi-weekly column on web usability. They do a very good job of quantifying what many may feel is right or wrong in web usability. Sign up for the newsletter if you have any interest what-so-ever and take a chance on skimming the subjects coming in periodically. I believe you may find as I have that at least every other article will enlighten you on something you thought you knew or better yet, never realized.

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/