Hugh MacLeod Cartoons drawn on the back of business cards
Hugh MacLeod
I’m Hugh MacLeod. I’m a cartoonist. Occasionally I write books. gapingvoid is interested in start-up culture, because changing business for the better is what we’re about; that’s what Social Object Factory is about. We live and breathe it; we help everyone from lone entrepreneurs, to mid-sizers, to Fortune 500’s do the same. Check out our work here.
We create art that helps companies kick ass, end of story.
If you want to talk business, then it’s probably best to please contact my business partner, gapingvoid CEO Jason Korman, here. We look forward to working with you. Thanks!
[YouTube video homepage here…] [N.B. Yes, I’m planning on selling this one eventually. Please feel free to e-mail me if you’re interested, Thanks!] PHASE ONE OF THREE: THE UNDERCOAT. Sunday, August 30th. [“Marfa One”, which I started this weekend.. Click on image to enlarge etc.]
A blank canvas (see above) that I finished doing the white acrylic undercoat for, earlier today. Four-foot-by-four foot. Titled “Marfa One”, it’s will be the first of The Marfa Series.
Now to get cracking on the pencil…
[UPDATE: Monday, 31st August, 24 hours later:] PHASE TWO OF THREE: THE PENCIL. [Click on images to enlarge etc.] [Close-up. Pencil lines etc.] [Close-up. Taken from the side etc.]
Yesterday (Sunday) I cranked out the pencil. Took forever, but it was worth it. Besides some very small touch-ups at the end, I did it all in one session. No messing around.
I got myself in a mind-set that, although it’s large and on canvas, it didn’t intimidate me. I just treated that four-by-four-foot, two-dimensional surface like any other drawing, like any other page in my sketchbook. I didn’t treat it like “ART!!!!”. I just did my thing and got on with it; not a lot of fuss.
I think that’s how I’ll approach all my big pieces from now on… PHASE THREE OF THREE: THE INK. [Update: 24 hours later, Tuesday, September 1st, 2009.] [Click on image to enlarge etc.]
Made a good start yesterday on the inking. Hope to finish it by tonight etc.
This is always the hardest part of making a big drawing. The temptation to “rush it” gets more and more overwhelming, the closer you get to the finish line. But last-minute rushing can easily ruin it. Oh well, I’ve been here many times before, nothing I can’t handle etc. [Update: 24 hours later, Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009.] [Click on images to enlarge etc.]
Got up this morning at 4am and put the finishing touches on Marfa One.
It’s done…
[Close-up of desertmanhattan, in its early “pencil” phase, Autumn, 2008.]
I was thinking earlier today how I had made my reputation drawing very, very small cartoons [i.e. “drawn on the back of business cards”], and now here I am, with The Marfa Series, going in the opposite direction i.e. very, very big cartoons. Two sides of the same coin, perhaps…
Yes, I’m still calling them “Cartoons”, even if the rest of the world will want to call them something else– “Paintings” or whatever. No matter where life takes me these days, I still consider myself first and foremost a cartoonist. Like I said over at Lateral Action, “I never liked calling myself an ‘Artist’. I think History decides if you’re an artist or not, not yourself.“
With the traditional cartoonist’s business model looking increasingly untenable (And it was in trouble LONG before the Internet came along , believe me), I think it’s a good time to ask the question, well, what is a cartoon, anyway?
Does the cartoon HAVE to be what it’s always been? Or can it evolve into something else more interesting? Does the cartoon have to be figurative, or is abstract perfectly valid, as well? Does the cartoonist HAVE to have an editorial or humorous slant, or are there OTHER spheres of human existence worth exploring?
It’s good to push the edges…
Shel Israel and I have known each other since 2005, when he interviewed me for his seminal book on blogging, “Naked Conversations”, that he co-authored with Robert Scoble. Since then he’s been running around, writing books and consulting with large companies on all things to do with social media. His second book, “Twitterville: How Businesses Can Thrive in the New Global Neighborhoods” is launching September 3rd. As he and I have the same publisher, they sent me an advance copy to read, which I was really impressed with. I asked him ten questions, and he kindly agreed to answer them below. TEN QUESTIONS FOR SHEL ISRAEL 1. Congrats on Twitterville coming out. Please tell us all about it.
In many ways, Twitterville is the de facto sequel to Naked Conversations. The older book gave the argument of why businesses should blog. Twitterville does the same thing, except it goes beyond business to include government, nonprofits and media.
Essentially, I tell the stories of people who use Twitter in interesting and useful ways. The hope is people will read the book and get ideas for using Twitter to help them in whatever it is they wish to do. 2. This book was actually a long time coming. After Naked Conversations, you had a wee bit of trouble getting your second book up and running. A symptom, I believe, not so much of your talents as an author, but of the inherent subject matter itself. A book takes about a good year and a half to write and produce, often far longer. Social Media changes overnight on a regular basis. Please elaborate.
There are two pieces of conventional wisdom for business books: A. Take one bone-dead simple idea and repeat it with some variations for 16 – 20 chapters such as The World is Flat. B. Write about a subject that will not change while you are writing it such as Thomas Edison and the marketing of electricity.
Obviously, I’m bad at following conventional wisdom. I take a different approach in that I like for something that is just taking off which can be enduring. I interview a ton of people and I look for stories that may maintain value for a few years even as they age.
Social media does change overnight, but people don’t and business rarely does. So I look for stories that deal with enduing issues such as profitability, the long slow death of traditional marketing ethics, access to information, making government more accountable and so on. 3. You wrote in your book about South By South West 2007, which has now become legend in social media circles. It was there and then that Twitter launched their website to the public, and everybody went crazy for it. I remember– I was there. The first thing that struck me about SXSW ’07 was that suddenly, unlike a lot of the Web 2.0 conferences I had been to before, the star of the show wasn’t some personality, web celeb, “A-Lister” etc… but an actual, non-living, non-breathing, digital website. At the time, I felt like a real shift in Web 2.0 was taking place. From hierarchical, personality-driven, to something else. You?
I think SXSW 07 is the classic story of a star is born overnight, except in this case the star was a flawed little social media platform originally designed to solve an internal problem.
I have always felt A-List focus was vastly over rated. When you look at luminary numbers and put them against the growth rate of Twitter every day, those who are prominent reach a smaller percentage of the entire Twitter universe every day. Each of them is in fact becoming influential to a smaller – not larger– share of the mainstream.
Twitter is decentralizing by its very nature. Of course there are dramatic stories from Twitterville– @JamesBuck arrested in Egypt; @jkrums taking a photo on the Hudson. But just the drama and luminary angle is much smaller than how Twitter serves everyday people, who just have a few followers, who just post a few times every day. Yet Twitter is changing their lives and their business, all the time. 4. Like yourself, I can totally see the value of Twitter (Very cheap, very fast and very easy– even compared to blogs or Facebook etc). Yet, like blogs before it, mainstream adaptation seems to be taking its own sweet time, yet again. As Ben Hammersley said about new media in general back at Reboot 2005, it’s not because the technology is hard to use (it isn’t), or that it’s intellectually hard to get one’s head around (it isn’t), but that to use it properly requires learning A NEW SET OF MANNERS, a new set of social codes. And getting people to do that is really, really hard. As a Web 2.0 consultant with corporate clients , getting these folks to “learn some new manners” must be the hardest part of your job, I’m guessing. Yes?
Ben has a point, but I would take issue with both of you on just how fast Twitter –and social media in general– is changing the world. If you sit on the equator, sipping a beverage with an umbrella in it, watching a coconut tree sway in a soft breeze, it feels motionless; like nothing is happening.
But as you sit there, you are spinning around the world at something like 2400 mph. You are orbiting the Sun at a speed much faster than that and you are hurtling through the universe at a speed humans cannot yet calculate.
Yet, sitting on that porch it may feel like not much is happening.
Those of us who are passionate about social media; who stand in front of rooms where some of the senior people have there arms crossed and there heads going from side to side, often vastly underrate the speed of change.
To understand that, I advise people to go speak to some young people. Watch their habits; watch how they get influenced on what to buy, watch, listen to; where to work. Watch young people going to the workplace and how they use social media as communications and information and productivity tools.
I maintain that we are at the very beginning of a fundamental global social revolution. And it is moving at a blindingly rapid speed. 5. Like Naked Conversations before it, Twitterville is rich in case studies. You talked to a LOT of people. As a fellow author, allow me to pick your brains. When an interesting story was breaking in the “Twittersphere”, one that might have made an interesting case study at some point, did you make a note, put it on file and save it for later? Or did you just rely on memory (and Google) when it came time to write the book?
Organizing for Twitterville was like taking a speed tour through Dante’s Inferno. I am a poor organizer to begin with. I created 17 Word documents on topic and kept dropping links into it. I had post its on my wall and in my reporter’s notebooks. Then something would break like Mumbai and that wouldn’t fit into any of my proposed chapters, but how could I not cover it. While pondering that, Gaza – Israel broke, so then I had to rewrite Tables of Contents.
The other thing that is a challenge is that I try to be more of a story teller, and most business books are not written that way. In the end, I followed the stories and built chapters around them and then restructured– and restructured the flow of the book to respect the people whose stories I told. 6. It’s the worst-kept secret in publishing: Books RARELY make a lot of money for their authors. That being said, since my book came out in June, the number of emails I get, asking about art commissions or other paid gigs has risen NOTICEABLY. I’m utterly swamped. As I’ve been saying forever, “Blogs are a good way to make things happen indirectly”. It turns out, the same is true with books. It’s all about “Leverage”. What’s been your experience?
You and I have discussed this before, but on the fame-fortune continuum, we are both much stronger so far on the fame side. I made much more money last time by advising companies and through speaking engagements.
With less than a week to go before Twitterville is available, I of course have dreams of being a #1 Best seller. It is far more likely that once again I’ll do better with speaking and business advising than from actual book sales.
When I first started, someone advised me that you write a book to get the speaking engagements. You use speaking engagements to set the stage for your next book. That’s what my strategy will be. 7. Your background is in Silicon Valley PR. With Naked Conversations, your focus morphed towards Social Media. What drove this personal evolution, do you think?
I am very curious by nature. For a long time I was simply amazed at the disruption and innovation that exploded from Silicon Valley. Now, the technology of the last 30 years has become part of everyday lives in the developed world.
My curiosity is very much focused on how this technology is changing the lives of the world’s people. If given the choice of following social media’s role in Iran’s election larceny, or the beta glitches in the iPhone battery, I’ll spend my time following Iran. 8. When Naked Conversations came out, blogging was new. Web 2.0 was new. Now it’s mainstream. I often get nostalgic for those early days, when the blogosphere was tiny, everybody knew each other, and a brave new world seemed to lie just a few pixels beyond the horizon. Now I find myself caring much less about “the future of media” or whatever, and finding I care a lot more about what I can do TODAY with social media, to help MY business. Has social media grown up? Has it become “like our parents”?
Every enduring technology has been introduced with an associated mania. The inventors are brilliant, the early adopters are passionate, and the media is excited because it’s all so new.
This was true probably of every innovation going back to the wheel. But then comes the longer, slower, steadier period of mass adoption, when people adopt these revolutionary concepts just to get their job done. There was a time when hearing a human voice on a telephone must have been mind-boggling. But, over time, the phone just became an everyday tool to let you use in your life and work.
Social Media, dramatic, explosive, disruptive period is now coming to an end, if you ask me. It is normalizing. It is changing more of the world, but is doing it in less dramatic ways.
We are probably starting to get to the stage of development that interests you and I the least. That’s where best practices get established, measurement systems become reliable, bean counters can estimate cost and value. Social media champions are no longer rebels ratting on the gates of large institutions. We have gotten past the barriers. We will soon start taking our rightful places on the org chart, with our own budget allocations.
This is good for business and the world. It’s just a little boring for disruptors like you and me. 9. As a former PR flack, you’ll obviously have more than your fair share of opinions about PR and how that world is changing, fueled on by social media. Anything you feel more strongly than most?
I think when I practiced PR I thought about ten percent of my peers were true professionals who understood that communications is not buzz; that listening is valuable; that customers need to be respected and that those who cover news need to not be on your side if they are to maintain credibility.
I think all of that is true today and the percentage as pretty much remained constant.
But those who practice PR and are skilled at social media – people like Shel Holtz, Brian Solis, Steve Rubel, Kami Huyse, Richard Binhammer, Scott Monty, Todd Defren [the list is long] have discovered that Conversational tools are far more valuable to communications professionals than the aging and inefficiency broadcast tools that I had to use when I was a PR practitioner.
I think this is a great time to be a Communications pro. You no longer need to be the nicely dressed nobody schlepping press kits and whispering into the ear of the official spokesperson. Now you can be the credible spokesperson yourself.
All you have to do is watch closely what the people I just named are doing, and learn from it. It sounds so easy, but I doubt more than 10 % of the communications profession will end up doing that. 10. So now you’ve got a nice little side-career there as a book author. I’m guessing a lot of bloggers reading this wouldn’t mind having the same, one day. What advice would you give to a blogger who one day hopes to get into the book publishing game?
All of it to me centers on the same issue: he ability to find a story and tell it simply and credibly. You do that with cartoons on the back of business cards, for example.
One other tip: writing a book is hard work. If you price it out in dollars per hour, you might do better in the restaurant service industry. I strongly advise you to love writing before you start. [Twitterville comes out September 3rd, 2009.] [The “Ten Questions” archive is here.]
[Click on image to enlarge etc.]
Greetings from Alpine, Texas. I left here two days ago, and flew to New York City from El Paso [a 220 mile drive to the airport], in order to sign the the Ignore Everybody prints.
Yes, it was actually cheaper and easier to fly up there and sign them, than to ship them down here. Go figure.
After a few hours signing them at the printer’s, I rushed off the Island of Manhattan yesterday afternoon, to catch a flight back to El Paso via DFW.
I was in my bed at the hotel in El Paso by midnight. Slept like a log. This morning I went to buy some art supplies in downtown El Paso, had a bit of lunch at Rudy’s, then drove 220 miles back home to Alpine.
A quick visit, to say the least. “Welcome To The Over-Extended Class” etc.
Among my purchases this morning was a big roll of canvas. The plan is to make a series of large, 48“x48” [4 foot-by-4 foot] canvases, i.e. exactly the same height, and one-half the width of desertmanhattan. The wee sketch above should give you an idea what I’m talking about.
I’m thinking of calling these “The Marfa Series”, named after Marfa, the next town over from Alpine, 26 miles away. I drive there and back about three or four times a week; it’s one of my favorite drives in the world. The drive inspired the idea for the the series in a SERIOUSLY big way.
Some will be cranked out in a couple of days. Some will take a lot longer, even a couple of months. I have no idea where this is taking me, other than I think I’ll end up somewhere pretty interesting. Look for them for sale over on the gallery over the next few months or so, or feel free to e-mail me if you’re looking to commission one. Thanks. [Backstory: About Hugh. Twitter. Newsletter. Book. Interview One. Interview Two. EVIL PLANS.Limited Edition Prints. Private Commissions. Cube Grenades.]
[The Purple Cow Print. Click on image to enlarge etc.]
[UPDATE:] CONFIRMED: The print party will be held at Ilili, 6pm-Late, on 8th October, 2009.
Between 27th & 28th
236 5th Avenue, New York, NY 10001, USA
(212) 683‑2929 ililinyc.com
The restaurant will be supplying food, Stormhoek will be supplying wine. Plus there will be a cash bar, if you’d rather have beer or liquor. It’ll be a fun evening. Rock on.
For those of you still in the dark re. The Purple Cow Print that I worked on with Seth Godin, one of the greatest marketing thinkers in the world, this is just a note to say I’ve set up an archive of all the blog posts about it here Seth blogs about it here as well…
And of course, it’s for sale on the gapingvoid gallery
The other bit of news is, Seth and I will be throwing an official launch party for the print in New York City on the evening of October 8th, 2009. A chance for friends of both gapingvoid and Seth to hang out and meet n’ greet. A bit belated, maybe, but we both had very busy summers. We’re throwing the party in a Lebanese restaurant in Chelsea, I’ll also have some of my other works on display– both prints AND original drawings. And yes, they’ll be for sale. So it’ll be a bit like an art opening, with perhaps more emphasis than usual on the people attending [not to mention, food and drink], than the actual art itself. Stormhoek, naturally, will be supplying the wine.
Details to follow shortly. Watch this space etc.
Anyway, I hope if you’re in the area, you’ll be able to make it. Thanks.
[NOTE TO SELF: What a crazy adventure this has all been so far…]
[“Advertising Moleskine”. 5“x7”. Framed. Click on image to enlarge etc.] [Unframed. Click on image to enlarge etc.]
Just shipped this off in the mail today– a commissioned, framed Moleskine drawing. Dave Whittle, an advertising executive down in Australia, commissioned me to draw him a Moleskine, based on an old cartoon print-out of mine, that he had hanging on his office wall.
A Cube Grenade. Exactly. I sold my first Moleskine to a collector in Paris. This one is going to somebody in the South Pacific. I love the way the Internet gives relatively small operations like my own a global reach. Thanks, Dave!. [gapingvoid commissions…] [More Moleskines for sale on the gallery page here.]
[When I was in New York last year, I drew the above cartoon for my lovely friend, Kate. She kindly just sent me the photo. Thanks, Kate! P.S. Yes, if you knew Kate personally, then you’d know how well this cartoon applies to her. Rock on.]
[Click on image to enlarge/download etc. Feel free to use badge for your own needs etc.] [Follow my #evilplans on Twitter.…]
Three years ago, Stormhoek, the South African wine I’ve been associated with for the last four years, sponsored some geek dinners. They were a huge success.
We’re ready to get back at it, as part of my EVIL PLANS etc.
This time, however, we’re going to sponsor Tweetups. If you’re one of the people following me on Twitter, are based in TEXAS and are planning on having a Tweetup in the next wee while, drop me an e-mail, and let’s see if we can’t get some wine sent there for the evening. Even better, if you have one near to where I’m heading on my Evil Pans road trip, I’ll try to attend. Rock on. LESS IS MORE: One of the points I’m trying to make with this exercise in futility is that yes, you can do interesting stuff on a tiny, tiny scale and still make a big impact. So the smaller the event, the better. I’d rather attend a dozen tweetups with five to ten people, than one tweetup with a hundred people. I’d rather attend a tweetup in somebody’s back yard, than a tweetup in a fancy, big-city restaurant.
Sure, a fancy, big event every now and then is fun, but that’s not the main point of this…
[For those of you outside the loop, a “Tweetup” is a spontaneous, self-organizing social gathering of fellow Twitter users, usually organized on Twitter itself. Usually food and drink are part of the equation etc.]
A milestone of sorts was reached, I suppose, at least for me…
Earlier today, my book became the NUMBER ONE Top Seller on Amazon in the “Creativity” category.
I don’t expect it to stay up there forever, of course– it’s probably already fallen a few points since then [Amazon rankings are updated hourly, and tend to fluctuate wildly]. But to see the photographic evidence, I made a little screen shot here.
What does this mean? Not much, in all likelihood. But I think I will go take the rest of the day off…
Thanks for all your support over the years. Seriously.
[“Mistakenly”] [“Nobody Cares”] [“Vanished”] [“CFA’} [Click on images to enlarge etc.]
[UPDATE: These prints are now also for sale individually. Go check out gapingvoidgallery.com to see more.…]
After the very successful launch of Portfolio Series Number One, we’re happy to announce the launch of Portfolio Series Number Two.
After consulting with y’all recently about what designs to use, we narrowed it down to the four designs you see above.
Same deal as last time: They measure 11“x14”, and can be framed and hung, or kept in a portfolio to view or use for meetings and then put away etc. They are all hand-pulled serigraphs, and printed on Rives-Arches paper. All four are taken from cartoons that appeared in my book, IGNORE EVERYBODY.
You can pre-order them for $300 for the set of four, by just leaving a $50.00 deposit using the PayPal button below. We’ll send you an invoice for the remainder when they’re printed an ready to ship.
[$50.00 deposit/pre-order PayPal button etc.]
Portfolio One used black and red. This time we used mainly a black and blue theme. This group of cartoons I selected comes out of my New York days, when my tone was less about business– more personal– and more about being sardonic and hanging out in bars too much. Blue is the perfect color for that…
They came out looking well. I’m excited! Hope you like. Rock on.
1. Ten Thousand Hours.
Ten Thousand is a number that has been in vogue among the online intelligencia lately, thanks to “Outliers”, the bestselling book by The New Yorker writer, Malcolm Gladwell.
Gladwell didn’t invent the idea, but he popularized “The Ten Thousand Hours Rule” [I believe it first came out of a study from Florida State University yada yada…].
In short, evidence suggests that if you want to be really good at something, really successful at something, you need to put about ten thousand hours of work into it, before your efforts bear real fruit. This seems to be true whether we’re talking about computers (He cites Bill Gates being one of the first high school kids EVER to have put in ten thousand hours of computer time before going to college), or making art, fixing cars, laying tile, or getting a black belt in Karate.
Gladwell certainly made a good case for it, and from my own personal experience, ten thousand hours sounds about right. I actually came across the Ten Thousand Hour Rule before Gladwell’s book came out, via my buddy, Stowe Boyd, who wrote a great blog post about it [using me as a case study, *cough*] a few years ago. But I digress… 2. Ten Thousand People.
Ten Thousand is a number that has special meaning to me, as well:
The first few years of this century were tough ones for me. My career in advertising pretty much tanked around the same time as the dotcom crash, and I found myself unemployed, broke, living in the boonies, scraping a meagre living writing freelance brochure copy. Then 9 – 11 came along and made it even worse. Not fun or nice.
Up until that point, I had spent my entire working career “chasing gigs”. Whether we’re talking full-time salaried positions, or three-day freelance opportunities, I had spent well over a decade chasing that ever-elusive island of security in a swelling ocean of advertising-industry chaos. And these gigs would never last, they would always end eventually, for whatever reason. Recessions, layoffs, downsizing, incompetence on my part, incompetence on the boss’ part, whatever. And usually the timing was bad, of course it was.
Chase, chase, chase…. And I was sick of it. Really, REALLY sick of it. Over a decade of working my butt off, and those islands of security were no less elusive than before. And I wasn’t as young as I used to be. The hamster wheel was starting to do me in.
Then, in these darkest of days, I had a sudden flash of life-changing insight. Like I told my fellow burnout-advertising drinking buddy that evening, as we commiserated at the bar about our sad lot in life:
“I don’t want to be chasing gigs anymore.”
“What do you want, then?” asked my buddy. “I just want ten thousand people giving me money every year.”
“Where are you going to find these people?” he asked.
“The Internet,” I replied.
“What do you plan on doing there?”
“I think I’ll start by publishing my cartoons online… on a blog.”
“What’s a ‘blog’?”
The rest, as they say, is history…
There was nothing magical about the ten thousand number. I just reckoned that, as a cartoonist, if I was making t-shirts, books, whatever– and ten thousand people were buying product every year, with me making a few bucks profit off each unit, well, it wouldn’t make me a billionaire, but at least I’d be able to feed myself.
Also, ten thousand people supporting me seemed like a good way of spreading my bets economically. If one person drops out, and all you lose is a t-shirt sale, with 9,999 other people still on board you can easily recover. But in the world of chasing advertising gigs, if the one person you lose happens to be your jackass boss, you’re dead meat.
Then a wee while ago I came across the great “One Thousand True Fans” blog post. A similar idea to my own, except his magic number was one-tenth the size of mine. It doesn’t matter. It all depends on what you’re selling. The famous English tailor, Thomas Mahon, has his magic number set at one hundred, because that’s basically how many handmade suits he is physically capable of making in a twelve month period. Good thing his suits are very expensive– One hundred “True Fans” wouldn’t get him very far if all he was selling were ten-dollar tee shirts.
Whatever your own, personal magic number may be, I hope you find it one day; I hope you find THOSE PEOPLE one day.
Beats chasing gigs for a living…. [Update: Just added this post to EVIL PLANS.] [Backstory: About Hugh. Twitter. Newsletter. Book. Interview One. Interview Two. EVIL PLANS.Limited Edition Prints. Private Commissions. Cube Grenades.]
[The Short Tail] [Company Hierarchy] [Welcome To…] [I Don’t Have Friends.] [I Choose This Life.] [Mistakenly.] [C.F.A.] [Vanished.] Like I said on my last blog post, after the great success of the “Portfolio Number One” launch, we’ve decided to do another one i.e. Portfolio Number Two. [“Portfolio Number One”.] And like last time, all images chosen will be taken from my book, IGNORE EVERYBODY.
So here you go– a shortlist of eight potential “cube grenades”. Four of these will be made into a limited-edition print.
Which ones get your vote? Please feel free to leave a comment below, Thanks!
[One of the cartoons from the book etc.…]
After the great success of the “Portfolio Number One” launch, we’ve decided to do another one i.e. Portfolio Number Two.
And like last time, all images chosen will be taken from my book, IGNORE EVERYBODY.
So if you’ve read the book already, I’d love to hear your feedback. Which cartoon(s) from the book do you think would make good “cube grenades”? Please feel free to leave a comment below, Thanks!
“If ever these was a time to be overextended, this is it.”
I agree with him completely. I know what it means to be over-extended all too well. Recently I made a list of all the projects I’m currently working on. The next book. The road trip. The prints. Blogging. Consulting. Drawing cartoons. The list goes on… All in all, it came down to ten items. Ten. Each one interesting and potentially lucrative enough to be taken on as a full-time job. Ten.
Ouch. Even for me, that seemed like WAY too much.
The other day, a friend of mine was kvetching about having to hold down three jobs. “Three?” I quipped. “Try holding down ten…“
My friend looked at me funny. He was probably right to do so.
Since about 1991, it’s been like that for me. From the moment I woke up till the moment I went to bed, I was working on something. The day job or the cartoons or something else. Sure, I’d have girlfriends come and go, but the girlfriends never lasted too long, and I also ended up inventing, in 1997, an art form that would allow me to carry on working WHEN I was going out to the bars i.e. the “cartoons drawn on the back of business cards”.
I’ve not had a proper vacation in ten years, either. Nor am I planning one.
Call Chris and myself, and probably over 50% of the people who read this blog, members of “The Overextended Class”.
You know who you are. And you know what? In terms of percentage of the population, there were less of us twenty years ago. And there’ll be more of us in two decades.
Our parents and grandparents spent their Cognitive Surplus watching television. That’s a thing of the past… a historical accident of the old factory-worker age meeting the modern mass-media age. Of course it wouldn’t last forever. We humans as a species were designed to compete, not to sit around on our asses.
Welcome to the Overextended Class, People. You may opt out of it if you want, but over time it’s going to get harder and harder to make ends meet, let alone be successful, if you do.
Choices. [UPDATE: Just added this to “EVIL PLANS”.]
Ten Questions For Chris Anderson Chris Anderson is the Editor-in-Chief of Wired Magazine, the great tech & culture publication from Conde Nast. He first came to my attention when he published the book, The Long Tail, which talks about Power Laws and the Internet, especially marketing and the possibilities that the Web opens up for everybody. His latest book, “Free”, talks about the new economies of the Internet, where the default price of everything, as he reminds us, is “set at zero”. He kindly allowed me to interview him. 1. First off, let’s plug your latest book, “Free”. Tell us what it’s all about?
It’s about how technology has turned “free” from a marketing trick to
a new economic model. The digital economy is full of paradoxes,
including the big one: it seems that practically everything online is
free and yet we’re told that there is no such thing as a free lunch.
Even more mystifying, jokes like “we lose money on every sale and make
it up on volume” actually describe the business models of such
massively profitable companies as Google.
The book explains the underlying cost economics that allow so much to
be free online, and the business models built around that. It
contrasts 20th Century Free (simple cross-subsidies – you’re paying,
sooner or later) with 21st Century Free (wildly indirect
cross-subsidies – somebody’s paying, but it’s probably not you). And it
focuses on “Freemium” (free+premium), which I think is the first
really new business model of the web and the future of Free online. 2. I think a lot of people have seemed to miss the point of your book, especially people in your business. To me, the point of your book is not about “Free VERSUS Paid”, but a concorde between “Free AND Paid”. As a cartoonist who swings between “Free” and “Paid” quite happily, I don’t see a conflict between the two. Like I said before,
Any profession is in constant, ever-changing negotiation with “Free vs Paid”. When does your lawyer friend offer you free legal advice, and when does he start charging? Ditto with your heart-surgeon pal you play tennis on Tuesdays with. Musicians give their music away for free on MySpace, but charge for the CDs, live gigs and the t-shirts. Petroleum Industry consultants might give 5% of their stuff away for free, just to drum up some new business, but then charge top dollar 95% the rest of the time. In Internet circles, the 95 – 5% converse is often true. Everyone has their sweet spot. Cartoonists are no different.
In other words, “Free” has always been with us, “Free” is nothing new. So why do you think it’s so hard for people to get their heads around it? Why all the controversy? What are they afraid of?
Well put. I think there are two classes of people who are afraid or
skeptical of Free: those who grew up before the web (ie, olds like me)
and people whose industries are threatened by the web (ie, media
people like me). Many in my generation or profession (mostly, I hope,
those who haven’t read the book) assume that Free is something of a
Ponzi scheme. Meanwhile, my kids are also appalled that I wrote a book
called FREE, but not because it’s wrong/scary, but because it’s so
freaking obvious.
Needless to say, they’re both wrong. Free is neither a mirage nor is
it self-evident. Instead, it’s an essential, but complicated,
component of a 21st century business model – not the only price, but
often the best one. 3. A lot of blog pundits out there spend a lot of time pontificating about “What is the future of media?” You, who probably knows more than most about this, seemed to almost offend this journalist from Germany when you answered, “I don’t know”. Reminds me of a jazz musician from the 1950s (his name escapes me) who was asked by a journalist, “Where do you think jazz is going?” To which the musician replied, “If I knew where it was going, I’d already be there.” Seems to me that the more you talk about the “uncertainty” of it all, the more peoples start demanding “certainty” from you. Odd, no?
The main problem with professional media is that we’ve lost our
quasi-monopoly on consumer attention. What’s worse, we’ve lost it to
an indistinct cloud of mostly non-media voices, from blogs to Facebook
to Twitter to YouTube. These amateurs, mostly producing without any
interest in a business model at all, are narrow where we are mass,
many where we are few and free where we are paid. They are not “media“
but they compete with media. That’s why strict adherence to terms
doesn’t help – it’s fifth column vs fourth estate!
I think that this is a moment where the sacred vocabulary of
professional media (“journalism”, “news”, etc), which we use as
incantations to differentiate ourselves from the unwashed horde, now
obscure the path forward more than illuminate it. Some of what we do
still has great value and perhaps always will: original information,
accuracy, analysis, great writing, edtiting, etc. But it is arrogant
to assume that only we can do that stuff, or that we know best what’s
“fit to print”.
I don’t know what the future of professional media is, but I am sure
there is one and am excited to participate in the many experiments
that will reveal what it is (obviously there is no one model or a
silver bullet solution – instead the future is going to messy and
multivariate, which is why it’s so scary for many). One thing that is
sure is that it’s not hoping change will stop or wishing to reverse
the tides of history. 4. You’ve become one of the great advocates of “Free”. Yet the people who sign your paychecks, well, they’re not in that business. They’re trying to sell magazines and advertising space. Similar deal with the people who publish your books. Does this create a lot of tension behind the scenes? Or do you try to educate them? How do these two different worldviews work together?
Actually, they *are* in that business. Most companies understand that
Free is the best marketing, which is why the magazine company I work
for makes its websites free and my book publisher gives out thousands
of free books each year to influentials. Of course they’re in the Paid
business, too. But that’s the point of the book: it’s getting easier
and easier (thanks to near-zero marginal cost of digital
distribiution) to use Free to promote Paid. In the magazine world, we
charge some customer groups nothing (web) or very little (print
subscribers) and other customer groups (advertisers) a lot.
Books are more conventionally priced, but when Hyperion agree to
publish a book called FREE by me, they knew what they were getting
into. It was a negotiation, to be sure, about how far we would go, but
using Free in one way or another was always part of the plan. 5. You’ve got your Editor job, you’ve got your book deals, you’ve got your blog, you do a lot of speaking gigs… As your name gets more and more known, are you having trouble keeping up with everything? What’s your coping mechanism? How do you find the balance?
Plus the five little kids, the two startup companies on the side, etc.
Obviously, balance is a distant goal. In the meantime, I delegate,
work all the time, hardly sleep, totally ignore politics, sports and
pop culture, neglect my family too much and probably don’t do any of
my jobs as well as I could. But these are exciting days, and if ever
these was a time to be overextended this is it. 6. Everybody knows you now as “Editor In Chief of Wired”. That’s a pretty big deal. I’m curious how you got there. Did you start off in journalism, with a career path all planned out, or was it a “random act of traction”? Tell us about your background.
Trained as a physicist (Los Alamos, etc). As I was heading to grad
school, realized that I wasn’t a very good physicist and that the
high-energy experiments that I was working on were running headlong
into a financial crisis (cost of accelerators rises with the square of
the energy of the accelerator – many $ billions). Bailed and went to
the science journals instead (Nature, Science). Then recruited to
start Internet coverage at The Economist in 1993 (remember the Web
started in a physics facility, CERN, so I was an early user). Three
years in London covering tech for the Econ, then three years in China
covering Asia, then to NYC as US Business Editor. Then recruited in
2001 (darkest days of the post dot.com crash) by Conde Nast to run
Wired.
So from physics geek to the Devil Wore Prada. “Random acts of traction” indeed. 7. Wired makes the lion’s share of its money via advertising, of course. The more I think about advertising-funded media, the less I think it’s just about offering “space” and “eyeballs”. At some level, the magazine’s job is to provide a context, a situation, an arena, that makes brands appear more “interesting”, than if they went somewhere else. The goods news is, this is a great opportunity for magazines. The bad news is, it’s really, really hard. What’s Wired’s attitude on this? Are you trying to push out the limits of advertising, with the same verve you try to push out the limits of tech and culture?
We should, and if we are to thrive, we must. We invented the banner ad
in 1995 (sorry!) and I hope we’ll help invent some of the ad units
that work best in the next era, too. Much of the innovation will be
online, but not all of it. And once devices emerge that allow a
magazine-like experience with digital delivery (Apple tablet?), the
distinctions between the two will blur. 8. As anyone who reads your stuff will know, human civilization in the middle of great changes, with media at the vanguard. And when great change happens, some things get harder, some things get easier. What’s getting easier about your job? Harder?
Easier: experimenting. Harder: predicting. 9. We all know what Wired is, and it’s great. But what do you want Wired to be, that it isn’t already? Just curious.
We’re known for being innovative in magazine making. I’d like to be
equally know for innovations in business models. 10. A lot of bright kids out there, just leaving school, would love to have your job one day. Hell, a lot of them would love to just have a job on your team. What advice would you give them, in order to make that happen?
Don’t wait to be given a job to do something cool. Follow your
passions, create something every day, take chances and try to be the
best in the world at something, no matter how tiny and trivial.
Nothing impresses me more than initiative. And there has never been a
better time to take it.
On a more prosaic note, I think that leading people is perhaps the
most important skill these days. My business card says “Editor in
Chief”. I suspect that if any of my children follow in my footsteps,
their card will say “Community Manager”. Helping (and inspiring) other
people to do cool stuff is what an editor does, and when you take it
out of a purely professional media context that looks more and more
like effective community management. It’s a great skill and I admire
those who do it well.
[Click on image to enlarge etc.]
A couple of people emailed us, saying they were having trouble their PayPals, and needed some extra time to sort it out.
Besides that, as the original Monday night deadline came an went, people were still trickling in. It seemed a bit mean just to cut them off arbitrarily. So with that in mind, we’re keeping the the IGNORE EVERYBODY print offer open for a while yet. We’ll see what happens.
Thanks to EVERYBODY for THE MOST SUCCESSFUL pre-order we’ve ever done! Seriously. Rock on.
[A print idea for #evilplans. Click on image to enlarge etc.]
EUREKA! I had my EVIL PLANS road trip idea, but it was lacking the social object it needed to really work.
Sure, driving around Texas with a video camera and an idea about “Dream Big” was all very well, but it needed something to work as a totem for the Stormhoek wine. IDEA: Hand-painted wine bottles.
I’ve drawn on Stormhoek wine bottles before, using painting sticks. They looked kinda cool. While I travel around Texas, I’ll be making them to hand out to people who went to all the trouble to support this enterprise. See image above to get a rough idea what it might look like…
This is exciting. The road trip idea is suddenly A LOT More interesting, all of a sudden. Rock on.
[Update: Just added this blog post to EVIL PLANS.]
Boing Boing is one of my favorite blogs. It’s also one of the most widely-read blogs in the world, and deservedly so.
So why is it so popular? The most obvious answer, “Great Content” is a no-brainer. Of course it has great content. People wouldn’t read it if it didn’t.
But “Great Content” is only half the story. The other half is just as important, though a little more subtle. And what is that? Short Answer: “Sociality”.
It’s not just that Boing Boing’s content is fun to READ. It is. It’s also that Boing Boing’s content is fun to SHARE.
“Wow. What a cool article. I think I’ll email it along to my friends at work. Better yet, I think I’ll mention it to my hundreds of Twitter followers. Hell, I’ll even blog about it…“
Boing Boing has a lot of “Sociality” baked-in, i.e. its content makes for great “Social Objects” i.e. their blog posts are great “Sharing Devices”.
We are primates. We are social creatures. We like to socialize. And we socialize around objects. Boing Boing cranks out “social objects” by the ton, that we can effortlessly pass along to our friends.
And that’s where the true value of Boing Boing lies. Will sending your friend, Bob a link to this cool post about Detroit photographers permanently change his life for the better? Probably not.
But giving you something that allows you and Bob to socialize with each other [“Cool post, Dude!!!”] digs deep into what really matters to us primates: Socializing i.e. Sharing ourselves with our fellow species.
And what’s true for blogs like Boing Boing is true for any other product. It’s not what the product does that matters to us so much, it’s how we socialize around it that matters. This is why the iPhone is so successful. Sure, we like having all those cool apps, but being able to talk about and recommend cool apps to our friends [“Cool app as social object”, Exactly!], that’s what we are genetically hardwired to like even more.
Read Mark Earls if you don’t believe me… [N.B. I didn’t coin the term “Social Object”; it was an idea I was turned onto by the brilliant Jyri Engstrom. Here’s a great video of Jyri speaking about social objects in 2008.]
[The cartoon I gave to Ester Dyson back in 2008.] “Random Acts of Traction”.
This is a phrase I use a lot these days.
It seems to be the story of my life.
I put stuff out there– cartoons, prints, a book, a blog post, whatever. Some of it flies, some of it goes nowhere.
Eight years of pretty successful blogging later, and I STILL have no way of predicting what will work, and what will fail.
Who knew the book would be a bestseller? Who knew the phrase, “Social Object” would enter the lexicon of mainstream marketing, simply by me rabbiting on about it ad nauseam? Who knew “Wolf vs Sheep” would be my most popular-selling print? Who knew the Blue Monster would spread like wildfire through Microsoft? Who knew all these things would gain “Random Acts of Traction”?
Not I, that’s for sure. The great Doc Searls described this phenomenon much better than I ever could:
Tell ya what. I’m fifty-seven years old, and I’ve been pushing large rocks for short distances up a lot of hills, for a long time. Now, with blogging, I get to roll snowballs down hills. Some don’t go very far. But some get pretty big once they start rolling.
See, each snowball grows as others link to the original idea, and add their own thoughts and ideas. By the time the snowball gets big enough to have some impact, it really isn’t my idea any more.
Anyway, at this point in my life I’d rather roll snowballs than push rocks.
I think anyone who makes their living even partly via blogs and social media will understand the snowball metaphor, will understand “Random Acts of Traction”.
My friends, Dennis Howlett and James Governor, both technology consultants, certainly understand this. As they can only realistically execute on 10% of their ideas, they don’t seem to mind giving away the remaining 90% for free, via their blogs. If one of their free ideas gets “Random Acts of Traction”, it’s great PR for their businesses. It leads to conversations eventually. Conversations that eventually lead to paid gigs.
This only works, of course, if you can make your “snowballs” quickly and inexpensively enough. If you spend too much time worrying about it, you lose. If you try to control where the snowballs go after you’ve released them down the hill, you lose.
“Fail cheap. Fail fast. Fail often. Always make new mistakes.” -Esther Dyson. Words to live by. Exactly. [Update: Just added this blog post to EVIL PLANS.]
