Jackie Danicki

Jeff Jarvis says that, even if everybody doesn’t “get it”* (which the Guardian’s Alan Rusbridger thinks they do):

everybody realizes they have to [innovate].

Jeff’s talking in the context of newspapers, and I dunno, maybe he’s right. Personally, I still know a hell of a lot of newspaper folk who truly don’t realise that they have to innovate. A lot of them think the internet is just another ‘channel’ or ‘platform’. It’s nice for Rusbridger that he’s surrounded by people who are either scared enough to seek innovation or smart enough to have figured this out a long time ago (and the Grauniad is teeming with smart people who were way ahead of other media outlets in this space), but to conclude from this that everybody else “gets it” does not quite compute from where I sit. But maybe my calculator’s broken.

Now, if we want to talk about who “gets it” in the smugosphere of advertising, PR, and marketing, that’s a whole other, more depressing story.

*Sometime, I should write a post about this ‘it’ and precisely what I think there is to get. Adriana and I were talking today about what we do (together and separately) and what we are aiming for when we (together or separately) go into a company, and the fact that it’s not really about blogs or wikis or podcasts at all. It’s about autonomy and the triumph of the individual over systems and hierarchies. Which is why I have to remind myself that it doesn’t matter, ultimately, if so-and-so doesn’t “get it”. So what or who does matter?

1) The individuals who do understand this and are able to improve their lives as a result

2) The fact that more people now expect to have greater autonomy over more areas of their lives than ever

3) The increased demand this is creating - and will continue to create - from others who have come to expect the ability to define for themselves the nature and context of their ‘interactions’ in all areas of life.

If I lost sleep over every self-proclaimed expert who’s actually full of poo, I’d be…well, as exhausted as I am. Ho hum.

Filed under: Blogging, Individuality vs Collectivism, Life, Podcasts