Watch this hugely informative and stimulating video of a talk that Seth Godin gives about the architectures that he’s used to get his books out to people in this digital age of ours.

Seth is a huge fan of the Internet. He welcomes it, embraces the disruptive changes that it brings about, studies it and figures out ways to use it to spread ideas and connect people.

The Internet is one medium that has the attention of the world like no other. And, what an incredibly malleable medium. You don’t need anybody’s permission to put things out there; you do not need a lot of money to do it, or a lot of time or a bunch of complicated tools. All you need are smart, creative ways to get your ideas across using media that the Internet is great a carrier of – text, audio, video, photographs, pictures and presentations. Using these, you are free to architect a strategy to get yourself heard by the niche that’s your target. All that it demands is some time spent thinking through the stuff you want to say, and a few hours of effort developing and publishing pertinent content. Now, how big an opportunity is that? How wonderfully democratic is that? And, how powerful is that?

When I look at the skyline of any great city, I am in awe at the power of the Internet: this is a medium through which almost every single person in those buildings could be potentially reached, at your and their leisure. No sweat from either side.

If you put across your message in a compelling enough manner, you begin to gather attention towards your material, which could then develop into permission to deliver more or better content. People can become your clique through which meaningful and creative interactions could happen.

It is an incredible, life-changing idea. If you have something to say, and if you can say it well and if that benefits people out there, you can form tribes (Seth’s term) that deliver mutual benefit using the content delivery and financial infrastructure that already exists for use by us all for free.

I spent a magnificent day with “Images of World War II: Photographs from the Daily Mail“. Anyone in love with big, black-and-white documentary photographs would enjoy this one, containing for the most part pictures made in London during those times.

It’s surreal when it registers that you could walk around the same areas in the great city – the parliament buildings, the Buckingham Palace, the tube stations, Downing Street, Trafalgar Square, St. Paul’s Cathedral among the many more – that held such drama 60 years ago. The monuments develop such character when seen through these books that freeze history, having witnessed several epochs of change in the past 60 years. I felt privileged to experience the grandeur of them all, seemingly unshakable in these times of rapid development, in the same manner as scores of our kind have done through the past decades.

To behold the steady march of mankind across time around such pivotal points is fascinating.

Will A Machine Replace You?

An excerpt:

What jobs are secure from the onslaught of automation? Ben Goertzel says, “those that involve transferring knowledge from one area to another, or thinking broadly, creatively and integratively, because these [tasks] require powerful general intelligence, not just narrowly specialized intelligence.“

All the technology that’s being talked about right now are great enablers – they let you do something in a far more economical and time-sensitive way. But, they do not manufacture experiences for you. They don’t they engage in a conversation with you, nor do they empathize with you. They just enable you to do deterministic things better and faster. They stay within a boundary that involves itself in the mechanics of things. But, the translation of it into a certain quality of experience is still done by humans, depending upon the way they use it. Making music, movies or having stimulating telephonic conversations are all facilitated by technology, but technology does not translate things into an experience that people can cherish. This step still involves heavy human input.

As Dan Pink says, the skills that would still be sourced from humans would have the following three characteristics:

• Are you doing something that someone overseas can’t do cheaper?
• Are you doing something that a computer can’t do faster?
• Does what you do satisfy some of the spiritual, emotional, or esthetic needs of our society?

Doesn’t that give you something to think about? How are you preparing to thrive when such an era does descend?

This post on Vagablogging says that spending money on things might not buy you long term happiness, spending money on buying experiences gets you further but spending money on other people goes a long way to keep you happy.

Consider this excerpt, which has always rung true for me. And, I have lived by it – having spent a lot of my money on people. And, I derive lasting happiness from those memories.

Experiences are inherently more social [than buying things] – when we vacation or eat out or go to the movies it’s usually with other people, and we’re liable also to relive the experience when we see those people again. And past experiences can work as a sort of social adhesive even with people who didn’t participate with us, providing stories and conversational fodder in a way that a new watch or speedboat rarely can.

I interpret the purpose of life to be the continuous unfoldment of its powers, its growth into higher forms, that is to say, forms more complex and subtly contrived, capable of more intense and enduring kinds of that satisfaction which is nature’s warrant of life. – in The Book of Life by Upton Sinclair

That’s the best, the most practical and the most empowering of statements on the meaning of life that I have ever read!

Here are some books about marketing that I have come across in recent times:

The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing by Al Ries and Jack Trout
Getting Real by 37signals

I have also been reading books by Seth Godin.

And, as always, some of the advice that these books give are contradictory. Ries and Trout talk about the importance of being the first in the market place. They warn us against getting obsessed about being the best, especially at the cost of being the first. The authors put out a lot of examples that supposedly back their claims. They tell us to concentrate on getting the messages of new products out rather than on building brands. They also say that if a company cannot be the first in a certain marketplace, it much change the way the game is played and invent a new market so it could be the first in there. The examples given date from the pre-Internet era.

But Seth Godin says that trying to invent a new market would lead to a lot of cash-bleed – to try to convince people to spend on products or services they are not accustomed to would take a lot of money, time and effort. He says that companies need to exploit markets already created through the conditioning that people have been subjected to by companies that have walked the path before, and develop products that better existing ones, causing shifts in consumer loyalty. Seth’s ideas are in tune with the Internet era.

So, which strategy should a company adopt?

Ries and Trout also state a company needs to drill ideas into as many people as possible to cause the marketplace thus created to identify best with that company.

But Seth says that in the Internet era, such “interruption” marketing would not be useful. He says that one needs to build a “Tribe” around one’s ideas – that is, to get a few people excited about an idea who in-turn would talk to people they know (people usually network with like-minded people), making the idea spread organically. The impact of brands builds with the size of the Tribe. He tells us to target only those who would be interested in the products or services offered, hoping they would  do the marketing for the company through the power of social networking. These days, people are more connected to others than ever.

So, which strategy should a company adopt?

I sometimes like the strategy that Picture Window Pro adopts. No big ads, no loud promises, no sleek website. Only great, fast photo-editing software written by one of the world’s best programmers that’s available at a reasonable price. Lots of substance. Very little style. I love to stumble upon steals like these. They got a character that the mass marketed products just do not have. I got to know about the software while searching the web for information on color-correction that I could use while processing wedding photographs last November. I landed in Norman Koren’s site, read his glowing accounts about PWP, downloaded the software and fell in love with it. I have been using it ever since.

PWP had three things going for it that made be buy it after the evaluation period had expired: strong recommendations by well-known photographers, a well-known name behind PWP and the affordable price tag. The first two gave me the required credibility to test and use the software, and the last made it too good to miss. That’s Seth’s idea in action.

I did not even know that PWP was out with a new version of the software until I landed at their page one day. Talk about being different from those in-your-face marketeers.

So, which strategy should a company adopt?

Seth Godin, in his book Unleashing the Ideavirus, says:

“Well, the future—the really big money—is in owning a farm. A small one, maybe 100 acres. I intend to invest in a tractor of course, and expect that in just a few years my husband and I can cash out and buy ourselves a nice little brownstone in the city.”

Ludicrous, no? While owning a farm may bring tremendous lifestyle benefits, it hasn’t been a ticket to wealth for, say, 200 years.

Look at that last statement. It says that a particular strategy, which might have been a good way to get rich once upon a time, has not been productive for almost two centuries. Everybody now talks about the changes that are occurring in the world, and how fast and unprecedented it is. If that is true, why do we have to follow the same formula a few of the older generations have followed to get wealthy and to lead a quality lifestyle? Books like Rich Dad, Poor Dad and The Adventures of Johnny Bunko all say that the staple advice of getting a good technical education and putting your shoulder to the industrial wheel to process things, although useful for a long time, is now becoming stale and does not guarantee a fulfilling life.

Books like Free Agent Nation, A Whole New Mind, The 4-hour Work-Week, Escape from Cubicle Nation and articles like The Case for Working with Your Hands and What makes Us Happy? all proclaim that there other options to do things now, in ways that are intellectually satisfying and meaningful.

“A good job requires a field of action where you can put your best capacities to work and see an effect in the world. Academic credentials do not guarantee this.” – Matthew B. Crawford

Check out the career advice given by Dan Pink in his new book, The Adventures of Jhonny Bunko. There are 6 Bunko lessons in there:

The 6 Bunko Lessons

1.  There is no plan.
2.  Think strengths, not weaknesses
3.  It’s not about you.
4.  Persistence trumps talent.
5.  Make excellent mistakes.
6.  Leave an imprint.

Well, we could potentially get very confused about our own career choices and the choices that society gives us, should we need to chose among them. We could look out for any contradictory advice dished out by successful, well-known people and attempt to graft it onto our own personality. “If they are doing something that is as much fun as they portray it to be, and if it gives them a good living and social value, I too should be able to duplicate it by following their path, but with a little bit of added personal flavor” is the attitude we typically have towards this.

So, must we accept the above “Bunko Lessons” with some skepticism, put them into practice, and see if what he tells us rings true?

After investing a lot of psychic energy into understanding the concepts that Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi talks about in his marvelous books, Flow and Creativity, I have come to a point where I can think for myself and judge such lessons for their worth. I have made a lot of notes, and have put some thought into the motives of people and the recipe for a creative and fulfilling life, and believe that I can now accept or reject career advice armed with such knowledge.

So, below is my present take on the Bunko Lessons:

1.  There is no plan.

While this is true, it still does not mean that plans aren’t helpful or required. A meaningful life comes about as a result of striving to meet some ultimate goal towards which one feels intense emotional attraction. It usually involves some deep scar being carried around since childhood, and one strives to resolve it through various creative expressions. There might be several subgoals that lead to the ultimate goal, and to arrive at these subgoals requires the development of skills into which psychic, intellectual and emotional energy needs to be invested. The development of these skills and their usage to accomplish the sub-goals must lead to flow states consistently. These skills need to be challenging; its perfection and employment enjoyable. Such a happy circumstance leads us to enjoy the present while being busy in the task of creating meaning. Fulfillment on a daily basis naturally follows.

2.  Think strengths, not weaknesses.

Think whatever skills that are required to get to the ultimate goal. The skills that you are naturally or already good at, and those that need to be developed.

3.  It’s not about you.

It is very much about you. The attachment to your life’s work cannot be purely intellectual. It needs to be highly emotional as well.

4.  Persistence trumps talent.

Very true.

5.  Make excellent mistakes.

Yes. Mistakes do happen regularly. And, the results of making those mistakes aren’t failures if you learn lessons from them. As long as you know the skills you are after and the goals these skills will help you achieve and that you are on your way to your ultimate goal, you’re good.

6.  Leave an imprint.

A lasting legacy is a natural byproduct of a lifetime’s effort into resolving an emotional tension. As long the welfare of other people is factored into such strivings, leaving an imprint takes care of itself.

One cannot simply do an audit of the skills that one’s developed to a reasonably high degree and which consistently produce flow, and build a career around that. That’s just working your way backwards. You need to figure out the emotional tension that you would like to resolve, and work towards acquiring skills that would help you creatively express yourself in order to get to that ultimate goal. If your present skillset helps you do that, you already have a good start.

The genie in the Johnny Bunko books talks about the work of Marcus Buckingham and Martin Seligman and states that, according to them, the keys to success is to steer around weakness and focus on strengths. Well, I think they have really got it backward. The key is not just to be productive by focusing on your strengths and your flow producing activities, but to generate flow while picking up skills to accomplish sub-goals that would lead one to the ultimate goal.

If you have always wanted to create an institution of learning here in India that actually teaches children to construct and nurture a model of the world that empowers them, and not one that simply equips them with skills for corporations to exploit, Colleges That Change Lives: 40 Schools That Will Change the Way You Think About Colleges is one of the books you need to read. It debunks the idea of a degree from Ivy League colleges in the U.S. being the wildcard it’s promoted to be for all opportunities its holder comes across.

Elizabeth Coleman’s incisive TED talk on the current state of education, which seems to encourage fragmentation and super-specialization in every area of knowledge, expanded upon in her speech delivered at her institution’s 75^th anniversary, will act as a clarion call to your capacity to build and deliver a more meaningful educational system to us.

The Shakespeare Festival at St. Louis. Absolutely wonderful. They build mini theme parks to stage plays, with dummy life-size buildings in pretty surroundings that look delightful. Fantastic intellectual stimulation. I wonder why we do not have such things in India. All the outward trappings of success matter so much more to us than these. I guess that’s because the majority of the middle class are still just one or two generations forward from times of poverty and scarcity. Hence, everyone programs us into hoarding up stuff that would secure our future and demonstrate our superiority.

We need to sensitize people a whole lot more to their own country. Writing books, making videos and developing knowledge-based theme parks next to common attractions in India where we could expose a whole lot more to the people about the wonders of their own country would do us all a world of good. It’s going to be tremendously exciting to get such knowledge out to people.