Where exactly?

I thought I'd do a little Olympic flavour this week and my inspiration comes from our friends at NBC studio who have hundreds of people in London assigned for their extensive TV coverage. Hundreds of people looking after the smallest of details, handling incredibly complex technology for satellite transmission, making sure their viewers are given only the best when it comes to sports entertainment and having at their disposal only the best in their field. Add on hundreds more back in the US doing research and you have a large company doing what it has been doing for over 60 years.

So why wouldn't I get a laugh, when looking for Australia on their web site over the weekend, I find we have magically been transported back to Europe. Seems no one had bothered to check the old chestnut mixup with Austria as I found Australia, "Located in central Europe, bordered to the north by Germany and the Czech Republic, to the west by Switzerland and Liechtenstein, to the south by Italy and Slovenia, and to the east by Hungary and Slovakia. Is primarily mountainous with the Alps and foothills covering the western and southern provinces."

Makes the last tourism campaign of "where the bloody hell are you" seem quite apt and if it was true would make my flights to Germany about 22 hours shorter. I bring all of this back to accurate information being freely available to everyone with any kind of access to technology today. I'm guessing with all that satellite technology at NBC's disposal, no one bothered to check and someone who hasn't left the confines of greater north America and didn't pass high school geography was given the job of loading the relevant or in this case contrary information onto the web site.

It's always the small things that catch companies out and make others remember the errancy of their story. Comedians ( on other channels of course ) will have their way with NBC and no doubt the social media platform will be alive with heckles at the expense of the broadcasting company. The broadcast will be flawless, the commentators will be erudite and pithy in their discourse on the athlete's endeavour but people will still be talking about the little mistakes that people and countries especially, take umbrage over.

I'm pleased to say after the weekend, we made it back to where we belong, an island in the middle of nowhere. It might be a long way from anywhere NBC considers important but to us it means a lot and we'll no doubt continue to take great delight at the ineptitude of a company that should know better. It's good to know that our "sister" country Austria can find humour in the situation as well, when you see the biggest selling T-shirts at Vienna airport proudly stating, "Austria - no kangaroos".

The little things always count, especially when we are the biggest little thing in the Southern Pacific.

Brand you world.

Be yourself, everyone else is already taken. Oscar Wilde had it right all those years ago but there were less of us and it wasn't anywhere near as crowded as it is today. So nowadays it's all about how to stand out in the huddled masses, how to have an identity, how to have visibility, how to shine brighter than the person standing next to you and most importantly how to then sell yourself. Seems everyone is keen to be the next one, the next celebrity, the next online sensation, the next big personality, the next one to stand out more than the others, the next big brand.

The online world is littered with information, forums, literature and experts who will give your accord a successful identity, establish you as a brand and make you the second coming of your favourite impresario or entrepreneur. As much as people are striving to give themselves a makeover via a branding application, the world isn't looking for a copy of someone else, rather it is looking for more originality and innovation. Trying to be like someone you admire and hold in reverence is telling the wrong story about who you really are and most likely covering up your best attributes. Your uniqueness already has a chronicle that makes you different from everybody else and if you can articulate that story better, then you can compete and be noticed, all without the falsehood of so called brand attachments. Do you have something to sell, do you have something to offer are very product driven questions that have taken on an individual bias and have accelerated the over abundance of personal branding messages aimed at your appearance, your personality and your competencies.

You already have a personal brand and if you were to look at it from a product base, maybe it needs a polish or update to realign people's perception of you. Today everything seems to be about brands as we surround ourselves with products, services and leaders that cloud our vision and ability to tell our story and stand out in our own way. It's not about becoming someone else but being noticed and appreciated for what you bring to your relationships, your work environment and your community. It's not about packaging yourself along the lines of the latest personal marketing management techniques, it's about your reputation for doing the right things, having integrity and credibility and always keeping an eye on not turning into someone you aren't.

Branding isn't so much about the packaging, self promotion and event marketing, it's about the authenticity and personal trust you wake up with every day and it's about not wavering in the face of self help gurus looking to be the next great brand, via you. It already exists in you and all you need do, is build your story around the things you do best, no matter how trivial you may think they are, you have something different to offer, you are someone no one else can resemble and as such are one in seven billion. Congratulations you are brand you.

Technology Hostages.

I want to travel back in time, carrying only my tablet and maybe a phone or MP3 player. Not hundreds of years, not even fifty years, maybe just 20 years. A hundred years ago I would have been burned at the stake as a witch, just by playing a bit of music and showing photos on the above equipment. Fifty years ago the newspapers and publishing world would have made my equipment disappear and me along with it. Two decades ago I would have been anointed a global genius as the web in its infancy looked towards a wireless future of connectivity and entertainment.

Ten years ago the iPod was considered the height of miniaturisation and technology innovation, six years ago the iPhone took further hold on our imagination and three years ago the iPad gave us a reason to stop buying paper products and enriched ours lives with just a ten inch screen. I use the Apple products as a timeline example only, as I look around my world and see a decade of shift that won't be reproduced again. Technology has come such a long way in such a short time that expectations are heightened to the extent we now expect everything to work all the time and when it doesn't, we have no benchmark for our irrational behaviour towards technology. The expectation that someone somewhere is already working on our wildest dreams can over shadow what we have today and I see it daily in the frustrations encountered in what we consider the most mundane of technology.

Where's my folder, why is it taking so long to boot up, how come my system freezes, why isn't it working like it was this morning, did you change my settings and a plethora of frustrated out bursts litter our offices, lounge rooms and cafes. We have careened into the future so fast that we forgot where we came from and how difficult it used to be just to imagine today. The greatest innovations of our time, the car, television, air travel and spandex, all took years to mature and for society to fully embrace them and in spandex' case to leave them behind. Even the Internet took a while to catch on but now it's about how quickly technology can move to keep up with its own publicity and deliver results beyond our wildest fancies.

In fact technology has replaced our future to such an extent, we no longer dream of the future, we expect it delivered to our front door. The moon used to be so far fetched that nothing we thought of technologically was ridiculous, yet today we live and breathe the ridiculous every day. We are so entrenched in a technology future that the obstacles we encountered twenty years, ten years or even two years ago seem trivial, so trivial as to make us hostages to expectations that technology has the ability to fulfil our wildest dreams. Beam me up Scotty.

Appreciation Society.

I like what you do, you like what I do, makes for a good start to a lasting relationship, working or otherwise. The problem with this, we often don't know what people are capable of doing and we don't go out of our way to find out. From that, the follow on is lack of appreciation and recognition. The last job you accepted, was likely based on your qualifications and you no doubt continue in the job using the skill set noted in your resume. Your colleagues and even the boss, continue relating to you through those skills but if they only knew more about you, you could be so much more, valuable and appreciated by the company.

For many people the thank you's become infrequent as time worked, reverts to normal expectations of a job well done. It's hard to notice something that isn't there and doing a good job becomes business as usual and anticipation of acknowledgement fade as you continue to perform as expected. If only they knew you were a passionate musician, skilled in the art of negotiation, a fine writer or even a speaker of note, management might consider using those skills in a way to benefit the staff and the company. If only you could point out your merits without bragging, without coming off as obnoxious and without being seen as self centred. Appreciation of those "other" skills would go a long way to remunerating the bank of thank you's, that is running low due to lack of acknowledgement.

Recent work on social networking tools designed for companies wanting to find out more about their employees has shown a marked improvement in culture, retention and profits as management find more reasons to appreciate their staff. An example is the Skillcloud platform that allows employees to circulate their extraneous abilities, hobbies, sports, interests and accomplishments, within a social context that people have become used to using. This gives companies the ability to source people skills, often not mentioned in resumes and interviews, while finding more ways to engage with their staff.

No one dies from lack of appreciation but it makes enough of a difference that people find more reasons to come to work and bring that little bit extra of themselves. It makes people feel more authentic and whole, elevates levels of engagement and motivation, while giving the company more reasons to show appreciation. So without having to swagger through the day pointing out your achievements, social platforms bring another approach for companies to work closer with their employees.

People leave their jobs for many reasons and appreciation and recognition are high on the list cited by employees waving goodbye to companies that didn't take the time to find out more about them. This openness needs to be part of a company culture and as such has to come from the top. So if you know nothing about your boss or upper management, they don't know anything about you other than what they see everyday, and appreciation is lacking because of that, maybe it's time to go social platform and open up the thank you bank again.

Renting not shopping.

It was hard for my parents to understand the concept of renting when they first arrived in Australia after owning their house, but they had to accept it as a consequence of the big migration to the "sunburnt country". Renting has long moved on from the family abode, the crash pad, the one bedder or the single room in a house of six. In fact renting has long since moved from real estate into the mainstream as Millennials (we are going to run out of letters eventually, so why not give them a proper name?) look to rent everything from the classic TV, through to technology, cars, husbands and wives, dogs, toys, celebrities and all of the other things in life that make you happy.

The concept of shopping to own, is transforming to a concept of renting, products, places, ideas, people and clouds. For many the last example is seen as the major shift where technology becomes the enabler for you to store information, ideas and products in the cloud and not have them hanging around your lounge room. Seems a lot of the owning angst is about mobility and having the ability to remain unencumbered by the weight of acquisitions. Why carry around stuff when you can rent and store it somewhere else, think goget cars, information that used to belong in books and music that was only available on vinyl.

Acquiring things was always about showing off, to someone who cared, (did they really), and it said a lot about the buyer. We all have varying perceptions of people who purchase luxury goods as status, expensive car drivers and that bloke who was always spruiking about his latest HiFi acquisition. The flea market that is the web, where you can buy anything, anytime, has become overwhelming and for many it's just easier to rent and not make life long decisions about acquisitions that eventually end up on eBay. Millennials have become known as the delaying generation, including growing up, moving out and purchasing assets, giving rise to a new rental mentality or even scarier, I want it free mentality.

Millennials want to connect and renting gives them more opportunity to do that rather than remain isolated within their singular purchases. Rentals are continuous connections and expose them to more than the one off shopping transaction. The purchasing of a car being replaced by the quick hour rentals is a major concern for manufacturers trying to influence the next generation as pointed out by US Toyota president Jim Lentz at a recent conference. He said “We have to face the growing reality that today young people don’t seem to be as interested in cars as previous generations. Many young people care more about buying the latest smart phone or gaming console than getting their driver’s license.” With half of potential drivers under 19 and less of the 20 to 24 year old holding a licence, as reported by The Times, it seems Mr Lentz has something to worry about.

Is this the extinction of ownership? With more Millennials staying at home, living in density in the city, who will buy the houses that Boomers will want to sell in the next decades? Who will buy the cars that Boomers so needed in the burbs? For Millennials a car just means parking challenges, for Millennials collecting means less mobility, for Millennials renting means freedom.

Cool is?

Used to be Steve McQueen was cool, a martini shaken not stirred was cool, Air Jordan sneakers were cool and so was being the first kid on the block with the latest gadget or piece of technology. Attitudes and mores of society change yet the concept of cool continues to fascinate us, even if we can never attain those lofty heights. Even with constant change the attributes of exclusivity, innovation, behaviour and influence remain pillars of cool. To be in the Zeitgeist, the minute, the moment as the leader, the innovator or just the epitome of social awareness grants you the right to be cool, however fleeting that moment may be. From the jazz cellars of the 40's where cool is thought to have originated to Marshall MacLuhan describing television as a cool medium, unlike the hot media of radio and print, because of its complex sensory involvement of sound and pictures, cool has looked to arbiters of taste to define it for the general masses.

So I chuckled when a UK judge decided that the Samsung tablet was not as cool as the iPad, in a copyright verdict handed down this week. Cool was never a definition handed down by authority, in fact it was usually the opposite as the elusive essence of cool was the domain of a few in tune individuals willing to pass it on or point it out. It is the ultimate social label everyone craves but if something cool suddenly becomes mainstream acceptable, it all too quickly fades back into the suburban. The very nature of cool is only 5 minutes away from being ordinary if mass acceptance brings with it imitations and copies. Sunglasses at night was the height of cool for jazz musicians but has become mundane as we watch C grade celebrities aspire but fail the test of chill.

There is cache attached to cool that today can be turned into money. Apple didn't turn into the world's most valuable company by just building computers, Mr and Mrs Smith aren't just hotels and Johnny Depp isn't just Jack Sparrow. So the search for the next cool thing continues as boundaries are pushed, creativity springs forth and televisions get paper thin. From music, through celebrities, fashion, cars and attitudes, cool dances in our heads and becomes an aspirational aim for many but only a few get to decide what's in and what's out.

The critically self aware, the intrinsically cognisant and the perpetually observant among us, are the arbiters, bringing forth ideas, products, behaviour and style that becomes a substance, a state of cool obvious once we encounter it but invisible if you are not tuned in. Personality wise, you either are or aren't cool, depending on your style, your bearing, your sentience and it is a difficult comportment to fake. You certainly cannot call yourself cool because that would be the most uncoolest. Yet today you can be cool, just by the accoutrements you carry, especially if it happens to be the latest piece of technology.

So is there really a short cut to becoming cool, staying cool and being cool? Technology says yes if you are an early adopter of the right innovation but that will only get you so far, because eventually you'll have to talk, relate and communicate, signalling you either have it, or not. For some, cool is a perpetual state of being, which brings us back to Steve McQueen, still cool.

Should I go or should I stay?

The Clash may have been talking about girl trouble but they could just as easily have been talking about how long you should stay in a job nowadays. Over the past several months, friends and colleagues have been asking themselves the above question, with many taking the opportunity for change and others continuing to struggle with the question. HR and recruitment companies indicate that over 30% of employees will leave their employer this year, with another 50% seriously thinking about it. This morning I heard that 50% of all nurses will leave their profession within the next decade, showing that even the most dedicated of professions are asking themselves the question. Many leave for cultural, monetary, promotional, recognition and management reasons and most saw the signs early, helping to validate their reasons for departing. As Joe Strummer so eloquently puts it, there could be trouble if you stay, there could be trouble if you go, so look for signs you've been working too many hours, working with the wrong people, working for the wrong company.

The gold watch for lengthy stays has long disappeared and the reality today, is even a few years, can be a long time in one place, with technology prolonging your days. A two year job stint, can look and feel like a four year stint if you add up all the hours you work. Surveys indicate that emails start getting checked at 7.30am and don't generally finish before 9.30pm, giving you a solid 14 hour day. Even if you don't recognise it, that's close to 50% more work time than most people get paid for and no matter how convenient it may feel, with technology as the enabler, it is time away from the important things in life. Sometimes the signs are obvious, as in hours to satisfaction ratio but often people "just do" their job and never notice how the little things creep up and accumulate. Is the extra time spent at work, worth it? Is the extra time spent at work, making a difference to your work? How long do you keep this up?

So how long to stay, when to start looking and when to leave are tough questions and difficult answers to find if you are not aware of your circumstances and the landscape around you. A recent trip with a client walking through an airport where he knew everyone from the sandwich lady to the check in attendant gave rise to a few laughs but the serious side of so much time away from his family, didn't go unnoticed by either of us. The throw away line of not knowing his neighbour as well as the people at the airport should be a litmus test, a bench mark, for realigning work hours, for a change at work or perhaps to leave for greener pastures. If you don't recognise some of the more serious signs, you could end up under the greener pastures.

It sounds serious but in today's climate of low unemployment the indications to change shouldn't be mounting up until you can no longer suffer the weight of expectations, hours required to do a job or the concern of changing jobs more frequently. If you know the flight attendant, the cleaning lady or even the boss better than you now your family and friends, you should be asking yourself the question.

Opinions matter.

I've left the occasional comment or opinion on web sites, travel sites, blog sites and forums come chat rooms. There are a lot of sites and reasons to leave those comments and I don't know if I have enough time, to help out, leave complaints or show allegiance and commitment to my favourite brands, products or people? There are many reasons people leave comments online with boundless opportunities and avenues to communicate and connect. It is the psychological reasons for leaving these comments that bind us together.

A need to help, a selflessness as altruistic intention, is a major rationality behind a lot of what we do on the net when we leave a little bit of ourselves behind. From what we consider informed and insightful shopping information, through likes and twitterings for brands to improve and discernment of the best places to eat, holiday and enjoy ourselves, it becomes obvious we want to do the right thing by others. The net has given us a single entry point to the world and how we see it for ourselves and how we'd like to see it for others. This desire to help in an online community defines many as valued members of that community, which is often difficult to attain for many in our maladaptive, dysfunctional society. So don't stop giving those opinions and insights, for there is no better reason to leave something of yourself, than to help someone else.

The other side of the coin is the fine line where you get arguments on both sides as to whether the leave behind is a complaint or just a strong opinion. Yes we love to have a whine and complain about the state of the planet, the runny peanut butter that says crunchy on the jar or anything else that cheeses us off on the day. What better place than the web, where we can voice complaints behind anonymity, voice complaints behind a basic human right to "kvetch", all the time knowing a punch in the face is not coming down the broadband. This is something that still surprises some companies that allow comments and are then astonished when comments are not enthusiastic but derogatory. I complain, therefore I am, is the catch cry for many who cannot find the appropriate outlet outside the net.

Along with helping out and complaining on the net, psychologists point to our need for attachment and celebrity on the net, as we align our thinking to brands, products, companies and personalities. Alignments that see us develop a loyalty we are happy to propagate, shout about, generally celebrate in comments, gossip, remarks and observations. This is not the loyalty attached to a frequent flyer account but the loyalty of an Apple "fan boy" who lives and breathes loyalty within a community and is happy to shout it from the rooftops. It's about a loyalty that can morph into renown as people themselves become the celebrity. Everyone needs to be noticed and comments and opinions can lead to the rarefied air of "going viral" and thus becoming something they would never achieve in the real world.

In the end, the net gives you a voice no one was listening to before, that can now be heard by multitudes and regardless of the psychological reasons, can introduce us to the world. I think that's a good thing, psychologically speaking.

Who is 'i' ?

'A' used to be the most powerful letter in the alphabet. 'A' was the alpha when it came to companies wanting to be first on alphabetical lists, first in the phone books and first in our minds. I remember working for AAA Destinations, where the A's didn't stand for anything, but they made sure we were always at the front of alphabetical searches. That was before the net did away with that particular search and now companies pay for search based on optimisation algorithms only the boffins at Google understand. The net did away with looking at information from an A to Z view and we now target single pages of particular information. Yet one letter has stood out and grown in popularity over the last 5 or 6 years, especially when it comes to searching and thinking about identifying a growing market segmentation.

I give you the small 'i', which has become the most ubiquitous letter in the alphabet and today stands for ideas and concepts, established by one company but used by many, hoping to ride their coat tails to success. It's not like we haven't been using 'i', it is the fifth most common letter in the English language, it is the first-person singular nominative case personal pronoun in Modern English and used to refer to one's self and is capitalised. So who is 'i' today, who do we associate with 'i' and why 'i'?

For most, the answers are obvious and referring to oneself is a pillar of Apple thinking as they develop technology for our lives, our business and our culture. Great marketing along with innovative products associated with the small 'i' and you get a global leader building a brand that captures the imagination of all who come in contact with its sphere of attraction. Everyone knows the Apple story and can see the wide ranging affects a powerful brand, let alone a small letter, has on the bottom line. There will always be those looking to prosper from the success of such power and Apple has its hands full protecting its intellectual property, branding and marketing because of this.

A logo may not be a brand, but people associate one with the other and for Apple that has meant a whole other story in ambush marketing by anyone in technology wanting to get noticed by a single letter placed before their names. As a rule, not many think to use or steal words or letters from global brands to identify themselves as something they are not. After all what can you do with Walt, Micro, AT, Voda, Ama or even 3 to identify what industry you are working in or what you are trying to say about your product?

Yet the small 'i' has become the singular nomenclature identifying innovation technology today and the small 'i' has been used and abused far more than Apple ever thought it could be. According to iGoogle (?), there are 60 million companies worldwide, with approximately 4-5 million IT companies. It seems half of them have decided to use 'i' as a prefix to show consumers, customers and prospects alike, they too are innovators, they too belong in the rarefied air with Apple and they too get the search optimisation associated with that tiny letter. It's time we agreed to whom this letter belongs, just the way the letter 'C' belongs to the Count on Sesame Street, just the way 'O' (?) belongs to Business, so does the small 'i' belong to Apple.

The only one I know who has really gotten away with it so far, is over a hundred years old and they use a big I in IBM, so I'll give that to them. The rest need to work on their own identity.