Jted tagged me with the 5 Things Meme.
I don’t want this to get too personal, but how can I avoid it with this one? Radical Trust is about putting it out there, but why would I want to do this?
Motivation is a strange thing: Why do we blog? What’s in it for any of us?
Some people blog for money, some for fame, some to show leadership and some shout out simply to have a place to be heard. Maybe from these 5 things you’ll be able to guess my motivation to blog about radical trust and social media. That’s what I hope to learn about myself as I write this post today.
#1 My first web job was as a “Media Artist” at the “legendary” Mackerel Interactive (wayback link). Mackerel was the “cool” shop to work at in Toronto pre-bubble era. Even though my web exposure was extremely limited before that date (c.1995/6), I knew my career was at a crossroads. My choices: A. Pick up my traditional animation career as a stop-motion animator at Cuppa Coffee; B. Be a Media Artist (whatever that meant) at Mackerel Interactive. Partially for the parties and partially because my spidey sense was tingling over this idea of a global community, I showed up at Mackerel and set the course for my career path online.
#2 A big chunk of Mackerel’s legend came from their First Class BBS system called Mackerelink. It was my first real connection to the notion of online community and I spent a fair chunk of my day consuming and contributing to areas like Mondo Mackerel and Virtual Watercooler. I was so hooked I couldn’t stop. The thing about this BBS was its ease of use… not too mention the small rewards like the “achtung” notification sound that echoed through the office just as an all staff went out (all staffs, unlike at today’s agencies, were greatly encouraged!).
Mackerel also gave BBS access to its clients! Imagine that! This is the kind of transparency that simply does not exist in the relationship between agency and clients anymore. I believe this was Mackerel’s greatest contribution to radical trust.
Of course, Mackerel went out of business like everybody else from that era. I like to say we set the trend in that too… Read Cory Doctorow’s article for Wired to see how ugly that got. I like to look back at that time with great nostalgia. Kind of like band camp.
#3 Sorry folks, you have to email me. I will not use MSN messenger or any IM tool. If the cocaine of my world is email, than instant messaging is surely my crack. When I was on that messenger thing, messaging was all I did. I took it off my computer years ago and haven’t looked back. I don’t want to be that connected… so that at anytime I can be talking to my colleagues, my wife, my high school friends, my dog, my accountant, my wife, my plumber, etc. Too social, too much conversation… I get this nervous twitch even thinking about it.
#4 For a brief time years ago, I blogged (hand coded) about movies with a property I called “PopCorn Goo”. I watched many movies at that time in my life, so I thought I would share my take on them. This adventure lasted about 5 posts and I abandoned it. Even though many friends encouraged me to continue, I felt really dirty as a critic. Who the hell was I to criticize anything that I hadn’t contributed to? I switched to commenting on imdb.com and somehow that dirty feeling went away. As a forum, the conversations that sparked from my reviews and the ones I read sometimes went on for weeks and were very satisfying.
#5 I spent most of Sept. 11 2001 in chat rooms. I felt more connected to the world that morning then I had ever before. But how to deal? I decided to get online to talk it out. I remember chatting to real people from all walks of life about their fear, grief, regret and anger. It was a very “human” day and I really needed that connection. Frankly, I don’t know what else I could have done -talking about it with strangers online helped me a great deal more than the talking heads on CNN. Human connections are more important than information alone.
This meme is worth the effort. So in honour of the mackerel nod, I tag ex-Mackerelites Diana Galligan, Joey DaVilla, & Chris Cummer, who BTW, introduced me to my wife, Danielle Holke. You’re it!
Here again, the rules, do with them as you will.
Tweet This!
Print This Post
9 Responses to “5 things Meme… As if you didn’t know”
Leave a Reply
Additional comments powered by BackType
January 5th, 2007 at 3:28 am
It’s funny, the different perspectives on the same event. My first recollection of 9/11, being in LA at the time was of hitting snooze to the NPR announcer saying there was a plane crash in PA. When I finally got up and turned on my morning CNN and coffee I saw the replay of the second plane hitting the tower. Moments later I got a call from my boss, who went to Uni at Columbia telling me to stay home. I was connected, but for me it meant more to stay grounded in the real world around me and relationships. I don’t think I went online all day that day, other than to check email. The rest of the day was CNN in the background with conversations around the world on my phone discussing US foreign policy.
January 5th, 2007 at 8:19 am
Thanks for the comment Tamera. Both Sept 11th and the london subway bomb have been really big events for “social media”. The major media outlets (CNN, BBC, NYTimes) on both events, particularly the london one, used footage provided my their viewer-ship. It is true of all major event news stories now. The tsunami, Katrina, Saddam’s execution…And minor events too, Look at the Kramer video on YouTube as and example. Imagine the number of visits Zapruder would have got if the web was around in 1963! It is my opinion that the marketing “social media” / Consumer Generated media is an echo of this, not the voice. The entire concept of Web 2.0 in commerce is, frankly an echo of the need for an online global community for society and cultures sake. hhmmmm this may need to be a blog post all of it’s own. Stay tuned
January 5th, 2007 at 9:08 am
Sometimes I think that this explosion of social networking sites are being wasted on young people who haven’t first learned how to socialize… Then of course; I feel like the old fat man in his undershirt in “It’s a wonderful life” who screams out, “oh, youth is wasted on the wrong people”, and recant.
I met the love of my life on MySpace two years ago. Many in my family and circle of friends thought this kinda of odd; I find it rather obvious. I was bloggin’ up a storm, writing silly little stories; she was looking for a story teller… I’m guess we have a shot at being the couple with the oldest combined age [40+43] ever to have hooked up on MySpace
Although I go to my page everyday; I don’t post there too often anymore [finding my way back]. I still go to Fark regularly and Kevin got me addicted to Flickr; can’t go a day without playing ‘guess where NYC”.
I share with Collin that point in history where all this began for me; Mackerelink… What he may not recall are the absolute wars we had inside the partnership and areas of management with respect to just how public Mackerelink would be. In the end, the war was won… thank goodness.
It’s funny, in all the places I’ve worked since; I’ve yet to see any other company take advantage of that kind of open system… maybe they felt, as we did admittedly experience that folks would spend a lot of time around the water cooler; but honestly, those times/that time was never looked upon as lost time by Kevin, myself or Dave… On the otherhand; I certainly had no love for that silly networked maze/fighting game
eh, Memes, mods, muds Social networking sites, bulliten boards, instant messages, SMS… I’m THRILLED that the interweb is finally getting to where we thought it was in 1995… On the otherhand, it really just does seem all kind of obvious.
January 5th, 2007 at 9:26 am
Oh… and if you’re interested…
My Blog [warning, the last few posts are a bit ranting, did deep, you'll tap into some wonderful sap]
My MySpace Page: [Look, mommy, your son DOES have freinds!]
My Flickr Page But more importantly
My Handle on Fark is: Just_Another_Drug_Overdose_Survivor [it used to be Mackerel97 :-]
I’m also a charter member of the Mackerlites message board, although, I’ve been told, I’m more or less responsible for most people having left…
Like Collin, I have not used IM for years as like Diana Troy screams in the ‘clip episode’ of STtNG when they hook her up to Rikers brain… “TOO MUCH, TOO FAST”… But, you can dial me up on Skype at gogo_nyc.
…and, if you haven’t noticed already, I’m half an hour an two posts into this comment on Collin’s post; AND I haven’t made reference to 9/11 once
xo
January 5th, 2007 at 10:40 am
Thanks for the comments Gord.
I wondered about the inner debate amongst Mackerel Uppers regarding the public ness of Mackerelink. It was either very brave, or very naive, either way, it was certainly ahead of the time. I applaud you guys truly for taking that risk. My favourite intra-net to this day!
For those of you that don’t know, Gord was the Prez of Mackerel back in the day. There are many ways to track his new life’s pursuit in NYC as listed in his links above. A great guy with heart o’gold.
January 5th, 2007 at 12:19 pm
Perhaps, brave naivety would describe it best; I mean, who really knew what they doing back then. We only knew that ultimately we were doing something quite useful.
Before I brag on and on about the openness of Mackerelink; I have to admit that there were forums shared only within certain groups at Mackerel; AND for the most part, we obviously kept separation between one clients forums and another [both these practices, were debated].
The real debate circled around who had access; and how deep would this access go. Would clients have access to our “employee lounge” the water cooler, where we promoted Mackerlites to talk about just about anything they wanted to; would we give access to ALL project and customer forums to freelancers just as we did internal employees?
Ultimately we felt that everyone inside and outside the office would benefit from knowing what everyone inside and outside the office was working on; a rough edged version of ‘open source’ development perhaps.
We also allowed members of the “interactive development community” at large have access to the board. Being that most of them worked for competitors; what level of access would be prudent?
We gave these folks access to almost everything outside of specific customer/project forums. Ultimately, this proved Mackerlink to be a very good tool for finding knew employees… In the end, the competition was not knowing who was working for who on what, but who had the biggest ‘creativity base’; the biggest bunch of the brightest working for them.
As I write this; I’m suddenly reminded of all the disappointment many of us had while trying to built this ‘mini-net’. Looking back though, it WAS pretty naive; we worked with most of our doors open; and I think it was that bravery which accounts for why a few folks [like Collin here], still think it was kind of a cool place to cut their teeth and start working with this medium…
Of course, years do have a way of expanding the myth of seemingly heroic yet ultimately failed endeavors
January 5th, 2007 at 3:48 pm
I love your contributions here Gord. Thank you for the insight. It is great to look back on this with a little more insight.
cheers!
collin
January 8th, 2007 at 10:11 am
I read a great quote on community yesterday that goes along well with Gord’s first comment about youth wasted on young…
It comes from Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
“What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.”
January 1st, 2008 at 11:19 pm
[...] I will do my best to shock and amaze… but no promises, 8 is a tall number, I’ve used 5 good ones [...]