gapingvoid: "cartoons drawn on the back of business cards"

debora smail

[Applying the pencil to DesertManhattan. Photos courtesy of Debora Smail, who was in town last week. Click on images to enlarge etc.]

Last week the photographer, Debora Smail was in town, working on a travel assignment for a magazine. We hung out a bit; first we cracked open a few beers at Harry's Tinaja, then I took her her over to my studio and showed her DesertManhattan. Besides it being a lovely afternoon, full of interesting conversation, she took a lot of pictures. Here are some of them. Hope you like etc. Thanks, Debora!

desertmanhattan update

[A rough idea of how I'm hoping "Desertmanhattan" will turn out, cannibalized from "Fred 44". 4x8 feet, pencil, acrylic and ink on canvas. Click on image to enlarge etc.]

Over the last week, I've been dividing my time between finishing the book manuscript and getting started on Desertmanhattan.

My head is all over the place at the moment; I thought I should write down some of my thoughts, just to gain some clarity for myself:

1. I'll be damn glad to have the book out of the way. It's been a long, four-year road. I feel a combination of gloriously happy and elated, and utterly burned out from the whole thing.

2. While I was working on Desertmanhattan, the feeling that "This is what I ought to be doing; this what I was born to be doing," kept swelling up inside me. And you know what? This totally terrified me. What if I gave up everything to do this, and suddenly nobody cared? Suddenly nobody wanted to buy my work, and I ended up penniless and ruined?

3. Paintings don't scale. Even if I could sell the paintings for huge amounts of money [It seems a distinct possibility, after some of the back-channel conversations I've had with potential patrons of the enterprise], it would still mean working my butt off and making no more than an average, second-tier attorney. It doesn't always seem to add up.

4. The artist doesn't determine the price of the work. The re-sale value of a price determines the price of the work. If the perception exists that the work will be significantly more valuable in five or ten years, paintings are easy to sell. Without this perception, it's damned hard to sell a painting, even if the potential customer falls in love with it.

5. An artist is about as good example of a "Global Microbrand" as you can get. I have a few artist friends out here in West Texas. On one hand, they totally get the idea. On the other hand, it's an idea that seems to totally terrify them. It always struck me as funny how people want to be artists, yet they don't want to be marketers. To me that's like wanting to be a pro football player, yet not wanting to keep in shape. Nice work if you can get it.

6. "I don't need a gallery; I have a blog." I've been approached by a few gallery owners over the last couple of months about doing a show. So far the conversations have gone nowhere. So far I've yet to meet a gallery who can sell a painting better than my blog can. Gallerists talk a lot; they're not quite so fond of putting down financial guarantees in writing.

7. The artist I admire the most, in terms of taking the internet-enabled "global microbrand" idea and running with it, is my good friend, John T. Unger. Four years of blogging later, and he can't make his "Great Bowls of Fire" fast enough. Though a lot of the ideas he uses he first got from reading my blog, unlike me, he actually applied them and took them to the frickin' sky. Well done, John.

We've been talking a lot over the last couple of months about this new art phase of mine. His advice has been invaluable.

8. Just as I was thinking about all this selling-art-online stuff, one of my Twitter followers, @corkymc turns me onto the blog of a very talented, young Australian artist, Hazel Dooney. Though she was already considered very successful for an artist under the age of 30, two years ago she decided to pack in the gallery system and just do her "dialogue" with her audience directly online. She's got some strong views on the subject, which I approve of:

Inevitably, this leads to another question, also always the same: what's the role of the gallery in this environment? And, as always, I argue that it doesn't have one. Or as I put it in Art Is Moving: "It deserves to die. It's an anachronism that's outlived it's usefulness. I think there is still a role for individual curators or even 'show producers' but they need to work in a more individualised, specialist way within a networked 'virtual' paradigm ..."

To be more precise, I still see value in public exhibitions and installations but not produced, promoted or managed in the way they are today – the same way they have been for a hundred and fifty years – by dithering, technologically inept, socially aspirational and unadventurous commercial 'bricks and mortar' gallerists.

I'll be watching what she has to say in the future with great interest, to be sure.

9. It took me a few years of blogging my cartoons, before I finally accepted the idea that my audience would always come mainly from reading my blog, and not from being published in the newspapers, magazines, books etc. Even though I have a book coming out in June, I still believe this is the case- just because I'm now an "author", doesn't mean the day-to-day reality has changed very much.

10. And now I'm realizing that if I want to sell paintings, I don't need a gallery, I can just do it all online. Nor do I need critical approval from the art establishment- the media, the curators and the critics. I can just do it all myself, if that's what I indeed do want. It's a great feeling, sure, but it's a new one. Taking its time to really sink in.

11. My paternal grandfather was a Scottish Highland "crofter". He lived on a "croft" i.e. a very small holding of land, where he raised sheep and grew potatoes. I used to spend my summers there as a boy. We were very close.

Crofting is a good life, but not a very financially rewarding one. It's very self-sufficient, though. The interesting thing for me looking back, is that crofters never did "just one thing". Every day they had something else going on. One day it might be sheep. The next it might be a job working on the roads for the local council. I knew one crofter who drove the mail van. Another who ran the local post office. They would do their jobs, but after work they'd still have their sheep, cows and potatoes to attend to.

As my dad is fond of reminding me, I seem to have inherited the crofting mentality. I DON'T like waking up in the morning and doing the same thing every day. I LIKE having all these different balls in the air- cartooning, painting, consulting, writing, marketing, blogging etc. Sure, part of me would like nothing better than just "retiring to the desert and making paintings", but another part of me likes all the running around in different directions. And all this running around DOES get tiring, I can tell you that. Sometimes I LOVE the feeling of being constantly overwhelmed. Other times I utterly despise it.

12. Something in me is changing. I came out to live in the West Texas desert for a reason. I'm just beginning to find out what that reason may be. Sometimes I can clearly see what the reason is; other times it proves more elusive.

13. It's a good life. It really is.

studio update: desertmanhattan

[Click on image to enlarge etc.]

For the last couple of months, I've been talking about a return to large-format paintings.

Originally I was planning 6-by-6-foot canvases; I decided instead to opt for 4'x8'.

I finally have my studio set up, as pictured above. It's an outdoor studio, with cement floor, tin roof, and as shown here, canvas walls to keep the rain and dust out.

That's a 4x8' wooden board you see there, with two-by-fours framing it on the backside. I'm going to cover it with canvas and get painting on it, hopefully in the next couple of days, before I take off out of town on business at the end of the week.

In the foreground you see my acrylic painting materials- plus a ten-foot roll of canvas in the orange plastic bag.

[A rough idea of how I'm hoping it'll turn out, cannibalized from a photo of "Fred 44". Click on image to enlarge etc.]

It's going to be called "Desertmanhattan". "Fred 44" was a ink-on-paper study for it, so go here if you want to get an idea of what the final work will end up looking like.

It's called "Desertmanhattan", simply because I'm trying to create a piece that captures the vibe I get from both living out in the middle of nowhere, here in the West Texas desert, and the big-city vibe I get when I'm on my business travels. The desert is an extreme place; so is Manhattan; they both inform the work I'm doing now. My drawing style was formalized whilst I was living in Manhattan, so the title makes compete sense to me.

Yes, I intend to sell it when it's done. Yes, it'll be really expensive [I'm putting out feelers to potential buyers. If you're possibly thinking about becoming one of them, please feel free to drop me an email at desertmanhattan@gmail.com, and we'll start a conversation, Thanks.] .

If it goes well, I'm not going to suddenly quit everything else and start cranking out Desertmanhattan's like an assembly line. I don't foresee ever doing more than 4-6 of these pieces a year. I don't foresee spending more than one week per month on them, either. I've got plenty other projects keeping me busy; plus it looks like the amount of traveling I'll be doing in the next year is going to increase quite a bit.

As for the marketing, well, of course I'll be using this blog and my Twitter feed to do the heavy lifting. Though my target market is not set in stone, I have a feeling the buyers for the large pieces will come out the prosperous end of the tech/VC/Silicon Valley/Web 2.0 community. They know me, they know my work, they know my value. Besides, the New York financial guys [a favorite target of the traditional art galleries] all seem to be losing their jobs at the moment.

And of course, "The Tao of Undersupply" will be seriously informing the marketing:

The biggest problem in the Western world is oversupply.

For every mid-level managing job opening up, there's scores of people willing and able. For every company needing to hire an ad agency or design firm, there's dozens out there, willing and able. For every person wanting to buy a new car, there's tons of car makers and dealers out there. I could go on and on.

I could also go on about how many good people I know are caught in oversupplied markets, and how every day they wake up, feeling chilled to the bone with dread and unease. Advertising and media folk are classic examples.

So maybe the thing is to is get into "The Tao of Undersupply".

If only 100 people want to buy your widgets, then just make 90 widgets. If only 1000, make 900. If only 10 million, make 9 million. It isn't rocket science, but it takes discipline.

It also requires you to stop making the same stuff as other people. Doing that requires originality and invention.

Like it said in "How To Be Creative", don't try to stand out from the crowd, avoid crowds altogether. Again, it isn't rocket science.

In other words, it's better to under-supply the market, than to over-supply it.

"Desert" represents one side of me. "Manhattan" represents the other. We'll see where this goes. Rock on.

[UPDATE] 24 hours later:


[Me applying to undercoat onto the stretched canvas. Click on image to enlarge etc.]

[UPDATE] 36 hours later:


[Four undercoats of gesso and acrylic applied, then I get busy with the pencil on the canvas. Easy. Click on image to enlarge etc.]

[Close-up. Note how the pencil shows up the texture of the canvas. Click on image to enlarge etc.]

the complexity war a.ka. "success is more complex than failure"

Rudyard Kipling once described Triumph and Disaster as "Imposters, both". The longer I stay in the working world, the more I start to get what he means.

It's funny how you can have two guys sitting next to each other in an office, both doing the same job. Both using the same computers and phones. Both with the same academic qualifications. Both with a similar IQ. Both working the same amount of hours. But why does one guy take home five times more sales commission than the other guy? What's going on? Is it luck? Skill? Justice? Injustice?

The question of what separates success from failure, is something I've always liked to ponder on. Suddenly this week, out of nowhere, the following line hit me:

"Success is more complex than Failure."

Think about it. Being a failure is a no-brainer. All you have to do is sleep till noon, get out of bed, scratch your balls, have your morning visit to the bathroom, turn on the Star Trek re-runs, help yourself to some breakfast [Leftover pizza and a bottle of Jack Daniels, Hurrah!], light up your first joint of they day, download some porn, and already you're well on your way. Sure, a few inconvenient variables may enter the picture here and there, to complicate an otherwise perfect day of FAIL, e.g. what you're going have to say to your brother in order to convince him to lend you that $300, so you can pay off the telephone bill, that kinda thing. But for the most part, the day-to-day modus operandi of your "Average Total Failure" is quite straightforward.

Being successful, however, is a whole different ball game. Breakfast meetings at 7.00am. Conference calls at midnight. Visiting twelve cities in five days. Fielding question from a swarm of hostile journalists. Dealing successfully with an enraged, multi-million dollar customer who's screaming bloody murder over something rather trivial in the grand scheme of things. Dealing successfully with an enraged, multi-million dollar investor who's screaming bloody murder over something rather trivial in the grand scheme of things. Making sure there's enough money in the account to meet the payroll of all your legions of highly-paid, highly-effective, highly-talented employees. All these hundreds of unrelenting issues to deal with, all day, every day. You get the picture.

And as always, what's invariably true of people is also invariably true for businesses. So when I see a small but insanely-successful business suddenly implode overnight [it seems to happen quite a lot in Silicon Valley], I'm guessing chances are it wasn't inability to manage growth per se that destroyed the business [a favorite reason cited by those writing business obituaries], but the inability for the business to manage complexity. Complexity increases exponentially with growth, most small companies can culturally only handle incremental increases in complexity. As I'm fond of saying, "Human beings don't scale".

Which is why walking around the hallways of large, successful companies can often seem so oppressive to somebody new to it. All that cultural regimentation is there for one reason only: To fight "The Complexity War". Sure, it might feel a bit ghastly to the more idealist and free-spirited among us, but until somebody can come up with a better way to win this Complexity War at a Fortune-500 level, I don't see it ever going away.

book edit almost done

1. Since I got back from the road trip I've basically been locked up in my office, putting the finishing touches on my final edit for the book. It has to be at the publisher's by Monday morning.

I'm pretty much done. Just going over it again and again and again, micro-tweaking the hell out of it.

2. I've been told that the official launch date is June 9th, 2009. Yes, for us Internet types used to immediate electronic gratification, that seems like a long way's away. But hey, this is books, not blogging. I'm told designing a book properly takes forever. Ditto with getting the sales team up to speed. Marketing, ditto. I'm told that if you want your book featured in a magazine article for one of the majors, say, Forbes or Businessweek, they need to see galleys at least four months prior to the launch.

3. And then there's the psychological pressure. You make a mistake on a blog post, it's easy to go back and fix it, or at least, try better next time. But once a book is in print, the mistake is there, in hardback, on paper, forever. If you make a mistake on a blog, well, it's your blog, so nobody really cares besides yourself. If you make a mistake with a book, suddenly there's a whole list of people you're letting down- editors, agents, sales people, retailers. As the deadline approaches, I feel this more and more acutely. It wasn't something I ever really thought too much about before, until it became real.

4. I remember a decade or two ago, Woody Allen telling a journalist that he never, ever watches his movies ever again, once the final edit is in the can. At the time I thought that was rather odd. What? Don't you want to occasionally visit your baby? Your masterpiece?

But having lived with this book in various manifestations for over four years, I can now totally relate to what Woody Allen was talking about. As my film director friend, Dave Mackenzie once told me, by the time you're done with a large project, you are so bloody sick of it- all the pressure, all the meetings, all the changes, all the keeping the thousands of balls up in the air- that you never want to see it again. Though writing this book wasn't nearly as much work as making a feature film, this feeling does permeate. This book is "me" four years ago. This book is not "me" now. I feel that in spades at the moment.

5. In one of the final chapters of the book, I tell how I never really set out to be a professional cartoonist. Nor did I set out to be an Internet consultant. They just kinda-sorta happened. I feel the same way about becoming an "author".

6. A few months back I tracked down a very dear friend of mine, Mark O'Donnell and sent him an e-mail, congratulating him. Mark is pretty much my oldest "creative hero", ever. I've known him since I was nine years old. Mark is the consumate, old school, New York humorist. He wrote for the Harvard Lampoon back in college. Later he wrote for The New Yorker. He wrote for Saturday Night Live. He wrote for Spy magazine. He published comic novels and wrote off-Broadway plays. He still lives in the same Upper West Side, rent-controlled apartment he moved into in 1976, the year he graduated from college.

Why was I congratulating him? Because after struggling away for all those decades- lots of highbrow, critical acclaim, but zero money- he FINALLY landed his first bit of massive worldly success. He wrote the words and lyrics to the Tony-Award winning musical [and later, the movie], "Hairspray". It was huge for him.

So I write him an e-mail, sending him big kudos. The guy's a genius, no one deserves a massive hit more than he. I just wanted to let him know that.

He wrote back: "And Hairspray is like only one per cent of what I'm proud of." A-ha! Bingo. That pretty much is how I feel about the book. Just one small step in a very long march.

[PS: Mark also wrote the lyrics to John Water's next musical, "Crybaby", based on the movie with Johnny Depp. Rock on.]

7. I'm not worried about book sales per se. Having a bestseller would be lovely, sure, but no-one has any control over these things, especially not a first-time author. I'm sure as hell not relying on it financially. What concerns me far more is how the book will affect the rest of what I'm up to. For the better? For the worse? Again, I feel a lot of that is well beyond my control.

8. I wonder what my second book is going to be about...

[UPDATE] Mark left a comment below: "I'm happy for the ancillary coverage. You know more about me than my agent. Congrats on the bouncing baby book! It is a challenge to enjoy it and to keep perspective at the same time. -- Mark O'Donnell"

[Note to Newbies: The book is based on a 10,000 word blog post I did back in 2004, called "How To Be Creative". So far it's been downloaded & read well over a million times etc.]

back from the road trip

[Click on image to enlarge etc.]

Monday night I arrived back in Alpine, after one week and 3,200 miles on the road. I went from here in West Texas, to LA, to Berkeley, to Las Vegas, to Flagstaff, to Albuquerque, and back again. I stayed in cheap motels and lived on mostly American diner food and Diet Coke. Here are some random notes on the trip, in no particular order:

A. Itinerary.

Day One, Monday. Alpine, Texas-Blythe, California. 816 miles. The longest leg of the trip was on this first day, from West Texas to the the Arizona-California border, right on the banks of the Colorado River.

En route I was hoping to meet up with Pam Slim and other Twitters in Phoenix, but got into town too late. It was around 2am before I made it to my hotel.

Southern New Mexico is a stunning place, if you like bleak, tall, red desert, mountain country. I certainly do- when I'm there I feel I could go on driving forever.

Day Two, Tuesday. Blythe, California-Hollywood, Los Angeles. 290 miles. Until you get to Palm Springs, I-10 seems little more than a dirt track going through the desert. Little small towns full of rusted-up mobile homes and billboards, offering food, gas and lodgings. Then you get to Palm Springs and the wind farms begin. Hundreds of wind turbines. Thousands. Beautiful and surreal. The the coastal mountains begin and the traffic gets insane, all the way to Los Angeles.

I had no reason to be in LA other than it's en route to Berkeley. Luckily, one of my oldest friends, Dave Mackenzie is there at the moment, working on a movie. He let me crash at his pad in the Hollywood Hills for the night. Not much to report other than two old buddies catching up, eating dinner, drinking whisky [just like the old days back in Scotland], talking late into the night.

Day Three, Wednesday, Hollywood- Berkeley California. 369 miles.

In the morning Dave and I headed for breakfast at The Griddle Cafe on Fairfax. After breakfast we hugged each other in the parking lot, said our goodbyes, Dave headed for a meeting with somebody in "The Industry", and I headed North.

For such a massive city, Los Angeles is a fairly easy town to escape, once you're on the freeway [so long as it isn't rush hour, of course]. After an hour or two of driving through the mountains on I-5, Suddenly you find the mountains coming to an end, and below you is the vast, flat Central Californian plain.

There's not much to say about it, except it's vast, it's flat, and it's America's largest produce-growing region. Just imagine mile after mile of huge fields, vineyards, orange groves and small towns. After a few hundred miles of this agri-industrial monotony the hills outside San Francisco begin- all covered with this almost mysterious, mustard-colored grassland. Then, like all big American cities, the highways end and the freeways begin. By this time I am so wired from the driving I don't notice the traffic all around me. I'm in a trance. The crazy commuters don't phase me- it's like they're not there.

I make it to Berkeley. A small college town in the Bay area- kinda reminds me of Austin. I'm there for a reason I can't quite talk about. Something to do with business. All very hush-hush. Though I have some good friends across the bay in San Francisco, I don't look anyone up. Too much to do. I'm only in town one night. I'm on a mission. I'll see them next time.

Day Four, Thursday. Berkeley, California to Las Vegas, Nevada.

I stay one night. In the morning I meet the person I'm in town to see for breakfast at the Brown Sugar Kitchen in Oakland. Great fried chicken, though I think they could've used less rosemary. The breakfast goes well. I happily hit the road, heading for Vegas.

A few hundred miles of re-tracing my drive along the Central Valley. About two thirds back to LA I turn off I-5 at Wasco and head West. Middle of bloody nowhere- enough to give anywhere in West Texas a run for its money. Farming towns, pickup trucks, and little else. Eventually the vast, agricultural plain ends and I'm driving up into the eastern Californian mountains. Spectacular. They too, end eventually and just as sunset kicks in I find myself driving through the Mojave desert. Colors so beautiful I almost want to cry.

I'm on Interstate 15 heading into Vegas from the South. It's nighttime, it's pitch black, save for the headlights of other cars. Then suddenly you see Vegas in the distance, a vast ball of colored lights. I find my hotel on the Strip- the MGM Grand, and check in.

Then the blur begins... like all blog conferences. Talk. Networking. Business. Alcohol. I've done it all before, many times. We're professionals. We know the score.

Day Five, Friday, Las Vegas.

Blur. Surreal. Vegas. Overwhelming.

Day Six, Saturday, Las Vegas.

More blur. More surreal. Meet lots of people at Blogworld. Fun time had by all.

Day Seven, Sunday. Las Vegas-Albuquerque, New Mexico. 585 miles.

The day starts with the usual "End of Conference" thing. I pack, I check out of my hotel, I hang with Loren and Michelle for a while, till they have to go grab a cab to the airport. I go grab my car and head east out of the city, hoping to make Albuquerque by midnight.

I make it to Albuquerque in good time, i spite of the two-hour traffic jam going over the Hoover Dam. I stop in Flagstaff, Arizona for dinner- a modest fare of Big Mac, fries and coke. I love this part of the world, if I wasn't so damn busy, if I didn't have this massive deadline hanging over my head, I would have taken a few more days to check out the Grand Canyon and Monument Valley. I've been to both before, both spectacular place, but I decide to save them for next time. I almost didn't.

I make it to my hotel in Albuquerque just after midnight. A nice Best Western, just off the freeway. I'm asleep within minutes of first entering my room.

Day Eight, Monday, Albuquerque to Alpine, Texas. 486 miles.

The road between Albuquerque and El Paso isn't much to talk about. I've been on similar drives in Texas, and I prefer them. By this time I'm starting to burn out on the road trip. I make it to Texas and keep on heading on till I reach Alpine. I slept 12 hours that night.

B. Random Thoughts.

1. Besides all the geographical splendor this part of the world affords, the best part of a road trip like this, of course, is that is gives you all that time to think. And what di I think about? Short Answer: How the heck am I going to manage all the stuff I've currently got going on, AND find the time to draw cartoons. If you know the answer, please tell me.

2. I didn't go to Vegas for the Blogworld conference. I went for the semi-annual Board of Advisors meeting for b5 Media. I am a board member, so are Stowe Boyd, Doc Searls, Robert Scoble and Renee Blodgett. We all hung out most of Friday with b5's CEO, Jeremey Wright. Great meeting. My original plan was just to fly up to Vegas for a night or two then fly back, but the lure of the road got the better of me. Sure it added a couple of days to the equation, but hey, you only live once.

3. Being on the road taught me exactly how useful a Blackberry can be, especially one with GPS-enabled Googlemaps. Like the old advertising line says, don't leave home without it.

4. I like being on the road. If I had to choose a blue-collar job it would be a truck driver. No question. Second choice: Dry wall builder. Third choice: Plumber.

5. Seems I'm well on target to drive 40,000 miles this year. All those trips to Austin, Marfa, Terlingua etc.

6. Part of me just wants to quit everything, live in the desert, and make & sell paintings. I know it's more than feasible, it would be a gig most "creative" types would kill for, but I suffer from other yet unrealized ambitions.

7. It's a good life. I think what keeps it good is the spirit of adventure. Hopefully we can hold onto that feeling for as long as we are alive. Otherwise, why bother? Rock on.

"good ideas have lonely childhoods"

The first chapter of my upcoming book is called "Ignore Everybody".

1. Ignore everybody.

The more original your idea is, the less good advice other people will be able to give you. When I first started with the biz card format, people thought I was nuts. Why wasn't I trying to do something more easy for markets to digest i.e. cutey-pie greeting cards or whatever?

You don't know if your idea is any good the moment it's created. Neither does anyone else. The most you can hope for is a strong gut feeling that it is. And trusting your feelings is not as easy as the optimists say it is. There's a reason why feelings scare us.

I wrote that chapter over four years ago. As I'm currently working through my final edit before publication, I've been thinking about some of the stuff I've learned the hard way, since first writing this post. Here are some random notes:

1. "Good ideas have lonely childhoods". When I say, "Ignore Everybody", I don't mean, "Ignore all people, at all times, forever". No, other people's feedback plays a very important role. Of course it does. It's more like, the better the idea, the more "out there" it initially will seem to other people, even people you like and respect. So there'll be a time in the beginning when you have to press on, alone, without one tenth the support you probably need. This is normal. This is to be expected. Ten years later, drawing my "cartoons on the back of business cards" seems a no-brainer, in terms of what it has brought me, both emotionally and to my career. But I can also clearly remember when I first started drawing them, the default reaction was "people scratching their heads". Sure, a few people thought they were kinda interesting and whatnot, but even with my closest friends, they seemed a complete, non-commercial exercise in futility for the New York world I was currently living in. Happily, time proved otherwise.

2. "GOOD IDEAS ALTER THE POWER BALANCE IN RELATIONSHIPS, THAT IS WHY GOOD IDEAS ARE ALWAYS INITIALLY RESISTED." The older I get, the truer this sentence seems to be. Especially in industries that are more relationship-driven, than idea-driven.

3. "Fight The Power". The good news is, creating an idea or brand that fights the powers that be can be a lot of fun, and very rewarding. The bad news is, they're called The-Powers-That-Be for a reason i.e. they're the ones calling the shots, they have the Power. Which is why the problem of selling a new idea to the general public can sometimes be a piece of cake, compared to selling a new idea internally to your team. This is to be expected: having your boss or biggest client not liking your idea and firing you, hits one at a much more immediate and primal level, than some abstract housewife in rural Kansas hypothetically not liking your idea, after randomly seeing it advertised somewhere. Which is why most team members in any industry are far more concerned with the power relationships inside their immediate professional circle, than what may actually be interesting and useful for the customer.

4. Idea-Driven vs Socially-Driven businesses; which one are you in? The answer is, of course, both. "What you know" determines what kind of access you're given to people. "Who you know" informs what kind of access to ideas you're given, and when. Though all businesses tend to skew differently in either direction. My experience in the wine trade is a good example of an industry that's primarily socially-driven, at the expense of being idea-driven. I've heard a lot of wine trade folk over the years yakking endlessly on about "Innovation!" Why? Not because they necessarily had any actual new ideas worth talking about, let alone acting on, but because "Innovation" seemed to be a word that their big customers [the supermarkets] liked hearing. So they used the word whenever possible, gratuitously or otherwise. In other words, they were acting in a socially-driven manner. Primarily, they just wanted to be liked.

5. "I want to be part of something! Oh, wait, no I don't!" I've seen this before so many times, both first-hand and with other people. Your idea seems to be working, seems to be getting all sorts of traction, and all of a sudden you got all these swarms of people trying to join the team, wanting to get a piece of the action. And then as as soon as they get a foothold inside the inner circle, you soon realize they don't really understand your idea in the first place, they just want to be on the winning team. And the weirdest bit is, they don't seem to mind sabotaging the original idea that got them interested in the first place, in order to maintain their newfound social status. It's probably the most bizarre bit of human behavior I've ever witnessed first-hand in business, and it's AMAZINGLY common. [AFTERTHOUGHT: "People are not primarily governed by their own self-interest. People are primarily governed by their own self-delusion."]

6. Human beings are messy creatures. I suppose the main thesis to this post is; the hard bit of having a "good idea" is not the invention of it, nor the selling of it to the end-user, but managing the myriad of politics and egos of the people who are supposedly on the same team as yourself. Managing the vast oceans of human chaos that all enterprises ultimately are, underneath the thin veneer of human order.

the "digital nomads" thing heats up for hugh macleod

["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.

About the same time that I first started seeing this term being used a lot from them, their Digital Nomads blog appeared on the scene. So I guessed something was up. I figured the blog is not just some crazy side project from some renegade Dell employees, this fits in to a much larger corporate strategy. Like I said in a recent blog post:

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.

desert rats

["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.

the farmer's market

["Edges 3". Part of "The Edges" Series. Click on image to enlarge etc.]

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.