I love this mobile lifestyle...

My friend Pat O'Bryan in Texas has built terrific online career around the mobile concept called The Portable Empire...If you don't know Pat, you should. He's one of the really good guys online. Check out his blog.

Speaking of being mobile - in more ways than one...

So, I'm sitting here in the doctor's office waiting for my last shoulder surgery appointment.

It's been almost two months since I had a severe rotator cuff repair that has slowed me down quite a bit. I graduated from physical therapy this morning with flying colors. And hopefully the doc will turn me loose completely today...

I still can't lift anything heavier than 5 pounds with my right arm, but I've got 90% of the full range of movement and  all should be better than new in about 6 months.

I'm coming back to full speed very quickly. Shaking hands is still an issue if I do too much of it...as I did last night.

I attended the awards banquet at the Alabama Information Technology Association last night.

The keynote speaker was Kevin Maney, associate editor of Conde Nast publications, author and former USA Today technology columnist for 22 years.

He specializes in "what's next in technology".

I was really impressed with his talk...because he was bringing a lot of what we already know as information marketers to the suit-and-tie CIOs of the top Alabama corporations.

The big news to this crowd was social networking (such as Facebook and MySpace) My latest favorite is Ning (click on the badge below) because it's about building your own niche social network.

He made a really good point that the next evolution of social networking must focus on how we accumulate friends in the real world.

Smaller more intimate groups are more effective than accumulating thousands of friends in MySpace. Having been in publishing - offline and online - I know that whenever you niche anything, you're improving the efficiencies as well as the loyalty of your audience.

As a marketer, I love the idea of having "lots of friends" online. But as a human, I love the idea of lots of "real" friends online. Those are people we communicate with intimately on a regular basis.

How can you be intimate with friends online?

It's the same as in real life, except more so...

Even though I live a more solitary life, in my small house in the woods about an hour from the nearest big town, I have more real friends online than ever.

And I'm always meeting more. For example, yesterday was a rough day for me. I had a bunch of website issues and a very obvious security loophole that opened my site to theft. But Ashish Moon, someone I'd never met, sent me a note and said,

"David, I stumbled on your website. Consequently, I looked at all your websites and love what you're contributing to the world. I just wanted to hug you for that. But you're making a really basic mistake with your site and, because I want to be your friend, I feel like slapping you really hard."

The real note was a lot longer. I paraphrased, but the key words were there - "friend", "hug", "slap". He was right. I fixed it. And now have a new friend. I will recognize Ashish's name wherever I go.

That's how we create and keep intimate friends...helping one another.

I'm not a phone person. Never have been. That's tough for a sales guy. But, as my wife says, my phone manners are not all that great. I'm a crisp, get-to-the-point, no chit-chat kind of phone person. But I'm working on it.

But I have long, interesting conversations with my online friends who have become great phone buddies too.

I still prefer face-to-face conversations. That's why I love going to the Internet Success Seminar gatherings three times a year. Most of my online friends gather there and I love hanging out with them.

Nothing compares to looking people in the eye and building personal relationships.

How much will that cost?

The second point that Maney expounded on was the "transaction cost of doing business". This my friends, is really important to us individual business folks.

It used to more efficient to have all your resources such as research and development, human resources, and customer service all under one roof, in the same building, sharing copy machines and telephones.

That's why big corporations were built - they could accumulate those resources and cut costs tremendously.

No more.

Corporations are now finding that the real efficiencies and lowered costs of doing business demand that they throw away the old concept and decentralize all aspects of business.

The example he gave was a mining company that reversed its decades old policy of hording all its geographic and geological survey information.

They dropped everything they had considered to be intellectual capital on the internet and offered substantial prizes to amateurs who could analyze the data and find new locations to mine for gas, oil and gold.

The investment was small, and the payoff was huge. They achieved new levels of innovation and reaped wonderful hidden opportunities. That is literally finding the gold on the internet.

Maney showed a more personal application of this collaborative effort.

A musician on the side, he wrote a song and sang the original vocal track with acoustic guitar. Then he uploaded it to Kompoz.com with "requirements" for the kind of middle eastern flavor he wanted.

What he got back was a collaborative effort with half a dozen other musicians he'd never met and a finished studio production quality piece of work.

It just happens to be a song about outsourcing called "I Dream of Bangalore"...

Listen here...

Comments

[HP van Duuren]

Thanks for your post about 'Social Networking' and the interesting Collaborating possibilities.

Also thanks for telling me about 'Kompoz.com'.

Having worked in the Music Business myself I already was familiar with 'Collaborating Music Productions' (on the same 'Compound' I worked, was a famous 'Recording Studio') But I didn't yet know about 'Kompoz.com'.

Now, I must say that I haven't done a lot of 'Music Activity' lately...,

However, I recently re-located my little ('Midi Music') Studio to an other part of my home, because the 'old location' of my own little 'Home Studio' was situated somewhat 'unpractical'. Because of it I hardly ever touched any of my 'equipment'.

So don't be surprised when now..., euh..., someday I might possibly, accidently win some prestegious Music Award :) (You can find one of my 'Weird' Mysterious 'Music Mix Experiments', as 'Background Music' for my own little YouTube 'Movie' at the link here below at:

http://hpshappy.blogspot.com/2007/05/jogging-on-gran-canaria.html )

All the Best,
HP