["Edges 5". Part of "The Edges" Series. Click on image to enlarge etc.]

Reading this piece about Dell's new mini-computer, halfway through the PR schpiel I YET AGAIN came across them using the term, "Digital Nomad".

With a starting weight of 2.28 lbs.[i], digital nomads will value the Inspiron Mini’s durable design, with sealed keyboard and reliable solid state drive (SSD) memory storage. A bright 8.9‑inch glossy LED display (1024x600) presents most web pages with no left-right scrolling, and the keypads are large and easy to navigate.

The Digital Nomads blog is what I call "indirect marketing". People aren't supposed to read it and go, "My, what a lovely blog. I think I'll go out and buy me a couple of brand new Dell laptops". This is more of an "Alignment" play. In other words, by "aligning" themselves more with the digital-nomad crowd, they hope it'll help them in time to create products that are more compelling and relevant to them. If you were in the computer business, you'd want to have the same alignment. "The Porous Membrane" etc. The good news is, Alignment plays can be extremely effective. The bad news is, they take FOREVER to gather momentum.

So the last time I was in Round Rock visiting their bright & shiny offices, I asked around. My hunch seems to have been proved correct. This is the alignment they're going after. I was also delightfully surprised to learn that they have no intention of trademarking, or attempting to trademark the phrase, "Digital Nomad". They want to be aligned with it; they don't want to "own" it. A small distinction, but a noteworthy one. To try to own it would rob the idea of all its meaning and power.

Yeah, I know, "Digital Nomad" is not the only term one can use to describe a web-enabled worker. There are others. There are also differences of opinion as to what "Digital Nomad" actually means. Are we talking mere tele-commuters, or is there some even bigger sociological trend going on? Depends who you ask. I've been a blogger and a digital nomad long enough to know how blurry the edges get sometimes. Rather than worry about THE definitive semantics, frankly, I'd rather worry about how to use this brave new world in order to make money, more quickly and easily than the generation before me.

In conclusion: Dell wants to align itself with the "Digital Nomad" crowd. Groovy. If I were them I'd do the same.

OK, fine. So now the next question is, what needs to happen to make all this more likely? Do they carry on doing what they've always done, or is there some FUNDAMENTAL change in their culture going to be required? And if so, how costly and painful will that be for their people, their customers and their shareholders? I'm not saying they're necessarily doing anything wrong so far, I'm just curious, that's all. Change is the only constant etc.

[ON A MORE PERSONAL NOTE:] Over the last few weeks I've been having a grand ol' time getting to know the company better. So far it's been an interesting experience. I've met some really smart, passionate people. The only problem for me initially has been, they're a big company; it's hard for somebody new on the scene to know where to look to find the interesting stories going on. Design? Tech? Marketing? Operations? Finance? Who's making the secret sauce?

But then again, I've been a digital nomad for most of the last decade. So suddenly, with their Digital-Nomad-Alignment schtick, I see a glaringly obvious fit between my interests and theirs. Problem solved. Easy. Rock on.

["Edges 4". Part of "The Edges" Series. Click on image to enlarge etc. Yes, I was thinking about Microsoft when I drew that etc etc.]

Out here in West Texas, we have a certain type of individual, who are affectionately referred to as "Desert Rats".

Desert Rats are basically people who choose to live a spartan, alternative, self-sufficient existence out in the desert. Probably the most famous cluster of them around these parts can be found down in Terlingua Ghost Town, in the Chiquaqua Desert, about 100 miles South of where I live, close to Big Bend National Park and the Mexican border. Somebody just made documentary about them.

Terlingua Ghost Town used to be a small mercury mining town of about 2,000 people. Then in the 1940s the ore ran out, and the work dried up overnight. So people left. It became a ghost town, just like hundreds of other former mining towns here in the Southwest. A few decades later people looking to escape the rat-race in the most extreme way possible started moving down there. The utter harshness of the landscape somehow inspired them.

When talking about Terlingua, you never go very long without someone mentioning "The Porch". They'd be talking about the porch of the Terlingua General Store, the place where people gather daily at sunset to drink beer, play guitar and tell stories. I've hung out there a few times. Got chatting to Doctor Doug, one of the local characters. Nice guy. He's been living in a rusty, yellow, dilapidated school bus for 20 years or so [He gets a mention in the documentary, so click on the link above to see more].

But not all Desert Rats live just in Terlingua- they're pretty much everywhere round these parts. I've met lots of them here in Alpine, for instance.

What you notice is that, their unconventional lifestyle notwithstanding, they're quite different to the usual alternative Woodstock-college-student-hippie-drippie stereotype. They own guns and hunting knives, and will use them if they have to. Try trespassing on their land with bad intent one day, if you don't believe me.

The other thing you notice is JUST HOW LITTLE MONEY some of them live on. Heck, I thought I was cutting back when I moved out here, but some of these people are off the scale. It's not uncommon to see them living on $5-10 thousand per year. Lord knows how they do it; except that barter is a huge part of the equation.

Sure, by mainstream American standards you could argue the Desert Rats are an eccentric, "out there" bunch. But there's something compelling about them, too. That great American ideal, "Rugged Individualism" is clear to see in their faces. Their lives somehow seem a lot closer to the 19th-Century Western pioneers, than to say, the present-day, Blackberry-addicted commuters of New York and San Francisco.

And you always ask yourself, Why? What makes them take this particular path?

Short Answer: Because they can. They wanted to do it, sometimes for good reasons, sometimes for bad. And so they did, for better or for worse. And yes, though parts of their lives seem incredibly rewarding- especially from a distance- they've also paid an equally incredibly high price for the privilege, which isn't always so obvious at first glance . This incredibly high price is no different than anywhere else, whether we're talking here in West Texas, or we're talking a big tech company in Silicon Valley, a startup in Chicago, a Wall Street bank. "Living on The Edges" is invariably a damn expensive business.

Alpine, Texas. A lot of my friends in this town work in the construction business; a lot of former big-city people are moving into the area these days, mostly trying to get away from the urban sprawl. So that's where a lot of the local well-paid jobs are. As a result, knowing what I know, a lot of my friends end up picking my brains for marketing advice, which I'm happy to give them.

What I usually do is start out by telling them about the local Alpine farmer's market, which happens here every Saturday.

Our farmer's market has one main problem: This isn't farming country. This is high mountain desert. This is ranching country. People harvest cattle and oil round these parts; they don't do so well with legumes.

The people selling the produce for the most part are local amateur gardeners, who primarily grow what they need for themselves, then sell on whatever surplus they have to folk like me, for a little extra cash.

What does this mean? It means you have to get there early, because the market opens at 8.30 in the morning and is COMPLETELY sold out within 45 minutes.

Whole Foods? Forget it. You really have to drive to Midland, 150 miles away to get anything closely resembling what you're used to in the big cities. The local supermarkets do what they can, I'm told they're a hell of a lot better than they used to be, but... there's still a long way to go.

There's something so interesting to me, that in this modern, over-supplied world, the supply for something most of us educated, blog-reading types take for granted- high quality food- falls so short of actual demand. There's plenty of people in this town who'd gladly spend more money on quality food if some enterprising person would set them up, so why isn't it happening?

I'm optimistic. I believe it's just matter of time before the aforementioned enterprising person spots the glaringly obvious gap in the market, and actually does something about it. This is Texas, after all. Sitting on your ass doesn't get you too far in these parts. Stuff tends to happen if there's enough people willing to pay for it.

So I tell my construction friends, well, what's true in the local food market is also true in the construction market. There's a lot of people from the big cities moving in with a lot of money in their pockets, compared to what the locals are used to making. And they're used to a certain level of service which a lot of the time, THEY ARE SIMPLY NOT GETTING. The construction person who can ACTUALLY understand and ACTUALLY cater to their ACTUAL needs will win. The construction person who still wants to do it same-old-same-old will have a much harder time of things.

Then knowing this, the only question that remains is, which construction person are you going to be? The Trailblazer, or the Same-Old-Same-Old? Only you can answer that.

OK, so this weekend I did another "Live On The Edges" cartoon. I've been playing around with the idea A LOT in my head these last few days. More thoughts:

1. I prefer "Live On The Edges" more than "Live On The Edge". Like I said in my last post, there are lots of "edges" out there. "The Edge" just sounds too "rock n' roll lifestyle" for my taste. "The Edges", at least to me, connote more of a feeling "Exploration" somehow.

2. Whether you prefer "The Edge" or "The Edges", actually, I really don't care. I really don't think it matters either way. That being said, the blogosphere is chock full of semantic micro-managers, so I must be careful.

3. I was driving around town this morning, running errands, when suddenly it occurred to me: I have actually reached a fairly high state of what I would call "Cartoon-Enabled Personal Sovereignty". In other words, I simply couldn't do what I do without the cartoons. I'd have to go get a job somewhere. Ugh. My advice? Personal Sovereignty is an edgy business. Not for everyone.

4. Yes, of course, the Internet DOES make it FAR easier to be an "Edgeling". I've been talking about that for years now...

5. I read somewhere that the average American today has a higher standard of living than Louis XIV, yet we're all unhappy. Yeah, having read his history, I'm not sure King Louis was that happy, either. But hey, at least he wasn't a 17th-Century French peasant. Count your blessings where you find them etc.

6. I'm agnostic. I see both "The Edges" and "The Middle" two sides of the same coin. Like the circle's center and circumference, both need the other.

7. TV shows start out seeming kinda edgy, then after a while they seem mainstream and boring. This happens even when the writing's quality stays high. We get used to stuff. We assimilate new forms of language, and then we move on. My cartoons are no different. Ashes-to-Ashes etc.

8. "Living on the Edges" for its own sake is a complete waste of time. "Mommy! Mommy! Look at Me! I'm living on the Edges! Can I have a cookie?" What's more interesting, of course, is the idea of "Constant Renewal", "Constant Re-invention". Edges are a good place to go out and find it. You either have an appetite for it, or you don't. You either have a talent for it, or you don't. Life is unfair.

9. I remember when blogging was considered "edgy". It was actually not that long ago. Now it seems rather mainstream. Like Point Number 7, we assimilate media as a new form of language, and then, again, we move on.

10. You get older and you start noticing how there's a lot of people out there doing really interesting, crazy stuff, but then they go home and live these very ordinary, middle class, suburban lives. Hanging out with the family, cooking barbecue in the back lawn, movies and going out for Chinese food, playing frisbee in the park, it's all good. Imagine the trouble these folk would get into if they didn't have that kind of balance in their lives. By most standards, I would say I have a pretty "edgy" career. It's why I live in West Texas in a quiet, sleepy town. It allows me push the edges internally without getting ripped apart externally. Living in Manhattan would kill me inside twelve months.

11. People often ask me, "How do you stay inspired over the long haul?" My answer: "By working hard". Bliss through Toil, Baby. It's all good.

12. "Edges" is not a lifestyle choice. It's just something you do. It just happens. No, you have no real control over it.

13. All is Vanity.

Over the weekend while I was working on the above drawing, from out of nowhere the phrase, "Live on the edges or not at all" suddenly popped into my head. So I used that line for the drawing's title etc.

Since then the line has stayed with me. I've been giving it a lot of thought. What exactly do I mean by it? Here are some notes, in no particular order.

1. There are lots of edges. The phrase, "Living on The Edge" often connotes something negative. Think of Jimi Hendrix, dying young from drug and alcohol abuse. Or William Blake, whose visionary art and poetry was never properly understood in his lifetime. Or William S. Burroughs, and his crazy years of lonely exile. All living on the edges of Society. All paying a heavy price for the privilege. You get the idea.

But there are other edges out there. Plenty of them. Apple obsessing about industrial design. Dell obsessing about their customers. Microsoft obsessing about software problems that may not even exist yet. Though their business models are all quite different, they're quite edgy about what they do as individual companies. And this is PRECISELY what made them so successful- the edge part, not the middle part.

2. And we're not just talking about computers. While most people are happy to sell business suits for a couple of hundred dollars, here's Thomas selling them for $5000. He's selling at the very extreme, high-end "edge" of the suit market. Or Max Brenner and his incredibly expensive chocolate. Price-wise, he's also "on the edge", and people can't get enough.

3. "Edgelings". This term was coined by a friend of mine, Stowe Boyd to describe people who gravitate towards the edges. So far I've heard nothing better.

4. The Herd. When sheep flock together, in order to protect the collective, the strong end up in the middle of the flock; the old, infirm and weak end up on the outside of the flock, leaving them easy pickin's for any predators who may be nearby. If you read Mark Earl's fabulous book, "Herd", you soon realize that human beings aren't that different. For all the heroic individualism Western society likes to idealize [almost to the point of fetishism], humans are surprisingly "Herd-like" in their behavior.

Just as sheep move to the center of the flock for purely survival reasons, so do human beings. It's why we wear khakis and join tennis clubs. But some of us move to "the edges" for the exact same reason- Survival. "If we stay in the middle, we're just going to get creamed like everybody else, once the market moves on." I don't think "Edgelings" consciously choose to be this way- like every other mammal out there, they just want to get on with their business without being eaten by wolves. Declarations like "Live on the edges or not at all" come after the fact- as Mark Earls would say, it's more about justifying past behavior, rather than ensuring future behavior.

5. What's true in life, is also true in marketing. The great advertising and marketing thinker, Russell Davies says that a brand's Number One job is to be "Interesting". I agree. And I also seriously, seriously believe that if you're on the hunt for "Interesting", you're going to find it far more easily on the edges, not in the middle.

As my friend and mentor, Seth Godin told me over dinner a couple of years ago, while I was picking his brains for marketing advice, "The edges. Always keep pushing on the edges".

Exactly.

It's been almost two years since my "Global Microbrand Rant":

Frankly, it beats the hell out of commuting every morning to the corporate glass box in the big city, something I did for many years. Just so I could make enough money to help me forget that I have to commute every morning to the corporate glass box in the big city.

There are thousands of reasons why people write blogs. But it seems to me the biggest reason that drives the bloggers I read the most is, we're all looking for our own personal global microbrand. That is the prize. That is the ticket off the treadmill. And I don't think it's a bad one to aim for.

That's one of the main reasons I started this website, back in the day. I saw it as a ticket off the treadmill. Not exactly sure how it all happened, but for the most part, my evil plan worked.

I've noticed that building a Global Microbrand, whether you're a tech consultant or a maker of hand-built guitars, is a lot like learning how to teach oneself to be a cartoonist i.e. you need the same three basic ingredients: Talent, stamina and discipline.

Like any good Kung Fu master will tell you- There are no secrets. There is no magic formula. Just a lot of hard work.

[The lithograph I did for last month's Techcrunch party in Menlo Park, sponsored by Stormhoek. Click on image to enlarge etc.]

I'm going to be hanging out my shingle more in the cartooning department. I think it's time.

I'm looking at lots of ideas, but here are the four that currently interest me the most:

1. Lithograph Commissions. Like the lithograph I did for Techcrunch above, or the Blue Monster one I did for Microsoft, I'll be taking on corporate commissions. If you have a company that you think could use a high-end "social object", please feel free to send me an e-mail, thanks.

[This is a cartoon I designed for Jerry Colonna's business card, about 2 years ago, which he still uses.]

2. Business Card Commissions. Sure, getting one of my cartoons onto your business card is easy enough via my Streetcards site, but if you fancy something a bit more personal, a it more unique, again, feel free to email me.

3. Cartoon Commissions. People want cartoons for all sorts of reasons. One of my favorite gigs this year was a series of cartoons I did for Sun Microsystems. I'm open to discussing all sorts of ideas here. Let me know.

4. Events. Every now and then people will sponsor me to come to their events, draw cartoons live and hand them out to attendees. Here's a link to one I did a few months ago. I'm in the market to do more of these. Again, feel free to send me an e-mail.

My one caveat is: I'm not as inexpensive as I used to be. Basically, I charge corporate rates. Just letting you know...

Looking forward to seeing where this goes. I'll keep you posted. Rock on.