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February 21, 2013

What is a “Cultural Object”?

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[More thoughts on The Racks­pace Book…]

6. ROB LA GESSE

Rob La Gesse is the groovy cat who first hired gaping­void at Rackspace.

He’s also the guy who hired my friend, Robert Sco­ble.

He’s a lot like me and Sco­ble, i.e. very much his own man, very much an individual.

I sup­pose that’s why we get along.

Above is a T-shirt design I’ve never sho­wed Rob before– he’s seeing it for the first time here on the blog, the same as you and ever­yone else. He may like it, he may not.

That’s how Rob and I work together. Like I said in my last blog post, “he lets me just post stuff without get­ting pre-approval. We like doing that way because it lets him see the work for the first time in the wild, which keeps the thin­king fresher, somehow.…”

The thing is, there’s a method to the mad­ness. If the idea fails, hey, it’s just a wee car­toon on a blog post. We can quickly and easily try something else the same day. It’s not like we blew money on a Super­bowl ad that ended up bombing…

But if the idea works, it works REALLY well. The idea gets emai­led around, both inside and outside the com­pany, to emplo­yees, sha­rehol­ders, cus­to­mers and non-customers alike. It sud­denly takes on a life of its own, on its own merit.

In other words, it sud­denly beco­mes a cul­tu­ral object (i.e. a social object that arti­cu­la­tes the  com­pany cul­ture), as oppo­sed to just a usual piece of com­mer­cial, “Here’s-why-you-should-give-us-your-money” mes­sa­ging (You know, the kind that nobo­day actually cares about).

Rob and I never plan­ned it this way, we just star­ted tal­king and this is kinda how it evol­ved. That’s kinda how we both roll. Rock on.

Tags: Cultural Object, gapingvoid classics, gapingvoid t-shirts, Rackspace, Rackspace Cartoons, Rackspace T-Shirt, Rob La Gesse, Robert Scoble, social Objects, The Rackspace Book