The bigger question is – will $100 have enough buying power remaining that I’ll still care…

The other thing that struck me about this post was the number of worthless trackbacks. I’ve started to look at blogs along a spectrum where the degree of interactivity is inversely related to the popularity of the author/blog owner (which, for the larger ones may be corporations or the former dead tree vendors Mr. Shirky is talking about).

The blog starts with everything open, although by default now you have to have some spam protection on. If you reach critical mass you start to have comments that deride you personally, are generally crude, or caricatures of humanity, usually submitted anonymously, and so the comments get shut off in favor of trackbacks.

The acceleration continues and then the trackbacks get too spammy so they have to go too.

The underlying issue is that it doesn’t scale as well when you hit explosive growth. Something I need to think about some more…

The interesting thing is that version 2.7 uses Bonjour, some software that is also used in iTunes to detect what media players are out on your network.

Apple and TiVo seems like a really nice fit, don’t you think?

I was surprised to see so many tribes that I have been fortunate enough to run with. He lead off talking about Joel Spolsky (aka Joel on Software), we threw a cocktail reception after his most recent Business of Software conference in Boston. He had a slide from Gnomedex showing off Chris’ geek tribe, Gary V got a shout out (who is sitting on a panel today in Arizona with my Marketing Over Coffee co-host Christopher Penn).

The biggest suprise I had was a photo from one of Chris Marquardt’s Tips from the Top Floor photo seminars (link to shots from the seminar I attended in Portland, Maine at the end of the summer). There was even a shot from the Red Sox Nation (of which I am a card carrying member (although it may have expired….)). Crossfit was also mentioned, a workout program that has brought me much pain.

Laura Fitton scored some prime real estate, she’s been doing very well even in spite of her attending the Scott Monty Roast.

It was an entertaining presentation, and in his classic style it’s very thought provoking. The good news is that I also recorded the session and will be posting it over in the Marketing Over Coffee feed (presuming that it is of decent quality, I haven’t checked it out yet).

For more photos from the presentation check out my Flickr account.

It’s interesting that the Bailout was shot down, talk about Marketing in Action. For my opinion on the bailout, please refer to this article in Time Magazine.

Remember to follow the money to identify the things that people need you to believe:

• The Government can move the economy. That $700 billion (less than a 1 day loss in the market) is enough to move the entire economy. Controlling the economy is much like controlling the weather, if anyone says they can do it, they are lying.
•  What derivatives die, the 4 Horsemen appear, signalling Armaggeddon. The Time article does a good job at explaining this – the bailout is for some Frankenstein financial instruments – think of it as insurance policies betting on on-time payments from a bunch of people who bought houses that they can not afford, have no savings and have about 10k in credit card debt. If these explode, only the people who thought this was a good idea to get burned (along with the 3 people below them in pyramid scam of reselling  this trash). Clarification – we do have another problem though – this balloon filled with crap is so huge and has been treated like cold hard cash, if it pops there’s enough to get some on everyone. Investing in duct tape and payouts to keep the balloon together is no long-term plan.
• Financial Institutions are Too Important to be allowed to fail. Detroit can be decimated, tech bubbles can come and go, manufacturing can be wiped out, big box retailers come and go but there’s the big 3: Banks, Agriculture and Airlines – if these aren’t socialized there will be rioting in the streets and we’ll be selling apples.
• Being an elected official is a full time career – When’s the last time you heard someone running for office talk about a duty to serve? Did I actually hear the word “Rule” during the debate last week? I’ll stack Politician on the shelf right next to Journalist in the “Professions of Make-Believe”.

And then there’s a few ideas behind the curtain that people don’t want you to ask:

• Where did a bailout package that has Main Street bailing out Wall St. come from? Can someone show my why this isn’t elected officials sucking up to the rich?
• Why are their no financial conservatives left?  Both Presidential Candidates see Legislative spending of citizen’s tax dollars as the solution. As a cranky old man I credit this to budget=power and since we’re dealing with career politicians there’s no incentive not to spend tax dollars.

My friend Steve has been living in LA for more than 10 years and we’ve talked about how difficult it is to buy a home there. The thought of him having to pay tax dollars to bail out some jackasses speculating on crummy mortgages makes me sick. And oh yeah,  the homeowners out of their financial league still lose their homes, they are not part of the bailout.

Before I return to our regularly scheduled marketing programming I’d like to mention Rep. Ed Markey and staff who were unable to tell me his position on Monday’s vote and even took my email address and said they’d get back to me, no need to bother now, your Aye vote speaks for itself. VoteSmart says this is an election year for you.

I’ll also note Sen. John Kerry’s office that wasn’t answering the phone, and my fax was refused, but I can give him some credit, perhaps things were just too busy today and at least he’s sharp enough to put his opinion up on his blog for everyone to read. In contrast, Rep. Markey’s website’s “Recent Events” section has him being named “Irish Man of the Year” back on March 12th.

The last of my representatives is Sen. Kennedy, regardless of political battles and opinions, I wish him the best with his health.

I can’t wait for election season to pass. Here’s the Beancast if you need some marketing to counteract the politics:

direct link to file

This week he was thinking about media being free. It’s actually far worse than that. Media is less than free. It costs you money and time to produce, and often the people consuming it are not going to pay for it. This came to me in a flash in New York City after touring NBC studios. A few blocks away I saw a subway sign for the TV Show “Heroes”. Here’s one of the biggest shows going, from one of the biggest entertainment conglomerates in the world, and they buy space on a bus to make sure it stays one of the biggest shows.

How can a lame podcast like The M Show compare to that? One easy answer is to change and go more niche. The M Show isn’t really different from talk radio, but Marketing Over Coffee is audio that you can’t find on the radio, or anywhere else.

It kind of makes you wonder how musicians can complain about the death of CD sales, while TV has dealt with end users getting the stuff for free from day one.

The problem with trying to find a way to charge for content is that it ends up throttling the only marketing the majority of content producers do – the giving away of great content for free, one of the oldest marketing stunts in the book. If it’s no longer free, now you need to find another way to make it spread. I’d like to be able to say that you can succeed on the strength of your content, but classical marketing says that you need to be anywhere from 5-10 times better to dislodge a competitor. Have you ever read a book that you felt was 10x better than everything else out there? Or better than the average? For me that’s happened maybe once.

So unless you have some budget to make people aware of your content, you are going to have to stick with free. There are some ways to make it work, you have two paths – one is to come up with a business model right away. For someone like Justin that could be having to say “70% of my time will be producing videos for others”, basically doing commercial jobs to fund the more entrepreneurial project. The  other option is to ignore the cash and go hungry and spend every waking hour gathering an audience.

Once you have a fans, scarcity enters the equation once again – everyone’s audience is unique, and odds are they have characteristics that can’t be found everywhere else. When you reach a critical mass of people this can fuel a business model. Another method that I see as the wave of the future is product placement. There’s only x minutes of time within a story, and if people are clamoring to watch the story you can limit the supply by having only 30 seconds to sell out of the whole story. Let the bidding begin.

Gather a crowd and go from there.

Some recurring themes:

Marketing as Sales – New technologies allow the marketeer to automate and remove manual labor from the sales cycle.

Privacy  - I was surprised to hear this topic come up a few times. I fear there is trouble on the horizon here.

Video – Obviously Video is gaining momentum because everyone seems to be sick of it.

Produce Content – Nothing new to you, you savvy blog reader.

I was able to meet a bunch of interesting people and catch up with some folks I haven’t seen in a while. Hopefully there won’t be a pile of work a mile high when I get back to my desk tomorrow.

For those not initiated, Daniel Lyons works at Forbes and while experimenting with blogs came up with Fake Steve Jobs, his idea of what would happen if a CEO decided to do a real blog, not the watered-down, PR and Legal approved abominations you occasionally see at large companies. There’s no surer bet for a laugh if you are looking for a feed to add.

Mr. Lyons is living proof of my theory that those best suited for success in new media, are those now working in the established outlets. I’ve heard many editors and publishers berate blogs, obviously deaf to that giant sucking sound that is their circulation. Those already in the publishing industry that aren’t afraid to try something new will be the most likely to succeed as things continue to evolve. The days of subscribing to 10 magazines, buying a stack of CDs, and listening to terrestrial radio are only visible in the rear view mirror.

Another group getting it is Version 2 Communications, the co-host of the event. They had the Flickr and YouTube tags on the back of the name badges, check out the vid with me chewing the scenery as hard as The Shat, with Chris Brogan driving it home with the ultimate punchline.

Click here to view the embedded video.