What Motivates You?

Daniel Pink writes about a different paradigm for motivation in the workplace in his best selling book “Drive.” I’ve been thinking a lot about this new way of thinking, which obliterates the old notion of carrot and stick motivators and instead focuses on a new approach:

1- Autonomy: The desire to direct our own lives.

2- Mastery: The urge to get better and better at something that matters.

3- Purpose: The yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves.

These ideas have been dogging me for months, and as I continue to bear down on several different life and career milestones, I’m trying to decipher their place in my life.

The overarching revelation that I believe brings the promise for my enduring freedom, however, is one that I think I came up with myself, although I read so much I cannot be sure anymore, so forgive me if I stole this from you:

I am no longer willing to compete for stakes that are internally assigned but have no transcendent value.

Transcendence. That seems like a big word fraught with meaning, but to me, it really just means lining up with point number 3 above: purpose. Maybe it’s the time of the season, but finding something “important” to do feels especially urgent.

Quick aside: I realize I am not the first to feel these things or write these words. Nothing to see here, I acknowledge. Except maybe this: the word “important” does not mean that you need to invent a cure or devote your life to eradicating something or ensure the abundance of something or donate millions or organize folks to stop or start something. So often we get hung up on the grand gesture, which inevitably feels out of reach, which then guarantees disappointment leading to inertia and a profound dissatisfaction.

No.
Important means important to you. Because just like the old saw about not being able to love another until you can find a way to love yourself, I submit you cannot do anything important until you define the word for yourself.

I cannot help you do that, but for me it has taken on many shadings, all of which inform my overall definition of the word. Yet I find I keep coming back to the top three points over and again: autonomy, mastery and purpose. In my case, I have an thirst for knowledge that seemingly cannot be slaked, a desire to improve in all areas of my life (personal, professional, as a father, as a friend, as a golfer) and a devotion to a positive legacy.

Gone are pretense and hypocrisy and shallowness. Well, if not gone, they’re no longer welcome and hopefully on their way out.

So, where’s the transcendence? I think it comes from awareness, both of self and of circumstances. It feels like we all spend a lot of time figuring out (and complaining about?) what we DON’T want, which is undoubtedly time well spent. But do we pursue the reverse?

It’s up to you. Autonomy, mastery, purpose.

What motivates you? And can you get out of your own way?

Posted On 1 September 2014 By matthew In Books, Culture, Education / No Comments

Can you protect your kids online?

The concept of regulation, especially when modified by the word “government,” often produces a knee jerk reaction among many who feel that if the government is involved, things can only end badly.

About this time last year, I wrote about the well-meaning but impossibly overmatched Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) passed in 1998, at a time when the internet did not even bear a passing resemblance to today’s internet. [Click here to read that post.] The focus of that post was largely about parents and other authority figures encouraging kids to lie to get around Terms of Service agreements. Today, the FTC is attempting to strengthen COPPA in a futile attempt to deal with data mining and behavioral targeting.

Naturally, this effort to redress the shortcomings of a law passed in the internet Stone Age is being met with opposition. I think it’s always useful to examine exactly WHO is against any kind of regulatory change as a good first step towards parsing whether that change is good or bad.

In this case, the charges of “get government off my back” are coming from the likes of Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and twitter, not to mention television networks, app platforms and advertising trade groups.

I am not making any earth-shattering observation when I say that kids, especially pre-teens and teenagers, do not spend a lot of time thinking about the long-term consequences of online behavior. (Heck, neither do a lot of adults.) An innocent upload of a picture so they can see themselves on their computer screen next to a Disney character or battling robots inside of an app seems, to them, like no big deal.

Businesses survive by cultivating new customers, and with kids flocking to the internet in droves, they go to where the prospects are. I’m not convinced that any regulation, no matter how well-intentioned, can stanch the flow of data mining and behavioral targeting. The internet did not kill privacy, as fashionable as it is sometimes to take that position.

The only real alternative is to discuss internet safety and internet smarts with your kids. Many parents feel ill-equipped to do so because they themselves feel like they are unaware of how best to act online. The fact is, being online is not that much different than being out in the world, and you should govern yourself accordingly. It is neither reasonable nor feasible to opt out of the internet, just like you cannot opt our of society in general. A little common sense will always carry the day.

And keep an eye on who is for and who is against some of these things. That ought to scare you more than the possibility of your kid being served an advertisement for chocolate covered Doritos.

What do you think? Can anything really be done to protect kids from being marketed to and having their data collected? Leave a comment in the comments section.

Posted On 8 November 2012 By matthew In Advertising, Current Affairs, Education, Web/Tech / No Comments

NASA called, but I don’t get to be an astronaut

Over the past several years, I have really come to enjoy working in education. I always jump at the chance to give talks about social networking or online media to young people, and I enjoy finding out about the ways they are ACTUALLY using the internet, rather than the ways we all assume they’re using it. One day, I would love to start or be involved in a think tank that analyzes the significance of all these tectonic shifts in our methods of communication over the past 5 years, as I think there is much more substance that just staying on top of the latest apps or platforms.

For the past couple of years, I have served as a Trustee of St. Mark’s School, where I graduated high school, which has opened up tons of opportunities to talk and listen to teenagers about a whole range of issues, and not just ones related to the Internet. There are few things I find more exhilarating than having my assumptions challenged and every visit back to school provides me with plenty to think about.

A new opportunity has come my way, thanks to my St. Mark’s involvement, which promises to shake up my thinking even more. I have just been nominated to the NASA Advisory Council’s Education and Public Outreach Committee. [Those of you who know me are probably saying, “Huh???”] The committee supports the advisory needs of the NASA administrator and includes all education and public outreach related NASA programs, projects, activities and facilities.

I’m grateful and excited about the potential, and I look forward to learning more and supporting NASA’s work in this area as, I must confess, I don’t know as much as I should. Stay tuned for more updates. Who knows, I may be coming to a school near you.

Posted On 27 June 2012 By matthew In Consulting, Education / No Comments

What is the Internet good for, anyway?

This blog post has been rolling around in my head for several weeks now, but it’s been difficult to write. I think some part of me felt that it didn’t “fit” in with the normal content of this blog, but the more I thought about it, the less true (and less important) that seemed.

Over the years, I have tried to use this blog as a place to analyze, decode and remark on online trends and trends in social media. While I don’t feel like I have reached the bottom of that well, I have felt a tug in another direction, one that is more personal and focuses on my own experiences in social media and traditional media games.

There have been times, particularly lately, when I feel a sense of hopelessness about my involvement in two ephemeral businesses: the internet and video production, the two pillars of my livelihood. Hopelessness because I have always had a deep desire to create things that last and my involvement in these two industries would, arguably, belie that motivation. I sometimes think creating things that last might be tougher to do online than with media production, but lately I’ve been thinking that perhaps I’ve been wrong.

It is impossible to stay abreast of all the tweets, status updates, blog posts, new apps and services and all the other “here today, gone two seconds from now” inventory which measure the quality of online life. But I think I, and many others, may have it backwards. What if the real peculiarity of the internet is “here today, here tomorrow”?

I have given more than one speech to both young people and savvy marketers about how there is no delete button on the internet. But it has always been in the context of “measure your words” or “don’t say anything online you wouldn’t say to someone’s face” or “don’t say anything you wouldn’t mind being printed on the front page of the New York Times.” Yet this kind of advice, while solid, gives too much power to negative outcomes and does nothing to honor and acknowledge the “other side” of the internet.

So, what about the flip side? What about using the permanence of the internet to create something that lasts? I feel like this, more positive, side of online is sometimes ignored.

All this navel gazing has given rise to some inspiration. I will soon be rolling out a new offering that will aim to help those wishing to contribute to building an online legacy. I haven’t quite worked out all the kinks, but I am confident that it will be simple to use and easy to understand and, with any luck, a useful tool to help those who wish to use the internet and video to erect a castle built on granite, not on sand.

Back when I played drums, my goal was never to be well known or be out in front of a band. I suppose I would have taken up singing or guitar or sax if that were the goal. No, I always strove to be the first drummer called by my peers. My idea of success was to be known within my industry as the “go-to” drummer. As I write these words, it seems like a very weird aspiration to want to get good referrals, but I guess I was a weird kid. The funny thing is, that never stopped being the goal.

I’m not sure this post readily lends itself to comments, but I would love to hear any you might have.

Posted On 27 February 2012 By matthew In Consulting, Education, Web/Tech / No Comments

Many parents help their kids lie to get on facebook. No big deal, right?

In the past couple of weeks, two very rich studies focusing on the online behavior of young people have been released. One of them is entitled “Why parents help their children lie to Facebook about age,” co-authored by four of the leading thinkers on online privacy, access and the roles kids play on the internet.

The other is from the Pew Internet and American Life Project and is entitled “Teens, kindness and cruelty on social network sites.”

I want to focus a bit more on the first study first, and leave the second study for another blog post. I would urge you to click on both links and peruse each of them, as they are rich in substance and fact.

Children under 13 are supposedly protected by COPPA (Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act) a Clinton-era law passed in 1998 meant to keep marketers from targeting or collecting information about kids. The law went into effect in 2000, when the internet was a very different place before the explosion of social networking sites, Skype or even GMail. Not that anyone has probably read them, but all of these services have lengthy terms of service agreements which, among lots of other things, are supposed to prevent kids from signing up for them if they’re under 13.

In reality what is happening is the very thing that COPPA was meant to prevent: kids are signing up for facebook and other services in droves, very often with their parents’ consent and, in many cases, their explicit help. Many parents are either unaware of COPPA or, worse yet, think that the 13-year old ban is more of a guideline and not a hard and fast regulation. A typical parental response to helping their kids get around the ban goes something like, “My child is mature enough to handle it.” To a large degree, parents feel that they should be the ones to decide how their kids participate online.

Fair enough. But the real takeaway from the report for me was the one I suspect is doing the most long-term damage. When parents help their kids get around these restrictions, they are normalizing lying. As danah boyd, one of the authors of the study, recently revealed on NPR’s On the Media, “I was aghast to watch how often law enforcement comes in during assemblies and tells kids that in order to be safe online, they should actually lie about their location. So kids are hearing messages all around them that lying is both the way to get access and the way to be safe online.”

Clearly the COPPA mandated requirements are inadequate for today’s online landscape. So, then, what is the solution to keeping kids from being marketed to or otherwise tracked online by advertisers or others? What are some of the consequences to lying either to get online or lying once you’re already there?

boyd further notes that “…a huge number of kids actually say they’re from Afghanistan or Zimbabwe, which are the countries alphabetically at the top and the bottom of the possible countries you could be from.” It’s kind of a funny anecdote, but one that, I think, has far-reaching implications.

What do you think of all this? Have you helped your kids circumvent any ToS agreements like the ones on Facebook, GMail or Skype? Is it really no big deal? Please leave a comment in the comments section. I’m curious to hear what you have to say.

Posted On 14 November 2011 By matthew In Culture, Education, Social Media / 6 Comments

Right-brainers and a Start Up mindset

On May 30, 2011 I had the unique honor of giving the Commencement address at St. Mark’s School in Southboro, MA. I graduated from there in 1984, so I was humbled (and maybe a little freaked out) to have been selected to be the speaker.

In it, I talk about the need to have a start-up mentality in order to succeed today, how right-brainers will carry the day, and I may have even squeezed in a golf anecdote or two. I decided to release it as a podcast, since I have been somewhat remiss in podcasting this year. (Podcast link here) Also, Thomas Friedman’s recent column basically stole everything I talked about during my address six weeks ago, even though I did not notice him in the audience takin notes. (Just kidding, I realize it’s just a coincidence but it begs the question, “Where’s MY NY Times column?”)

Would love to hear your comments and if you agree or disagree with my overall thesis. Oh, and I’ll try to be better about podcasting…

Posted On 18 July 2011 By matthew In Current Affairs, Education, Podcasts, Social Media / No Comments

The iPad 2 and why I’ll never cancel my NY Times subscription

I finally got around to getting an iPad2 about a month ago and it has replaced my laptop, for all intents and purposes. My workflow is centered around my desktop, and the laptop had become a big, clunky travel workstation that I realized I was mostly using for email and reading.

Ahhh, reading.

As many have already written about at length, the iPad is a wonderful consumption device, maybe not so much for content creation. For someone who travels a lot, it’s a great thing to not have to lug a bunch of different books around, or perhaps make an impulse buy based on a conversation or a quick browse through a Hudson News.

But how about newspapers?

Reading the morning newspaper is lifelong habit critical to my sanity. No matter where I travel, I will always read the NY Times as well as a copy of, as my father used to call it, the local blat. To their credit, the Times has worked as hard, if not harder, than any other old media outlet to try and keep their offering current, relevant and, above all, profitable to a new generation of readers or an old generation, like me, who might consume the paper in a different way.

Lots of virtual ink has been spilled over whether the Times app is any good or whether their paywall idea is sustainable or not. I don’t review apps and I don’t know if the paywall gag will work or not. For me, I don’t use the app for two simple reasons:

1- Holding an actual newspaper in your hands is not incidental to the absorption of its contents and,

2- I simply cannot shake the nagging feeling that I am missing something when I read the paper via the app versus the actual paper. And after a side-by-side comparison, it turns out I think I’m right.

Taking the above points in order: With any web interface, so much development time is devoted to UI and UX (user interface and user experience). You may have a great product, but if one or both of those elements are lacking, you’re kind of dead in the water. I have never ONCE heard anyone talk about the UI or UX of a newspaper, so let me be the first. Well laid out newspapers, like the Times, Washington Post or WSJ, will guide the readers’ eyes to the most important stories. Over time, you “learn how to read” a newspaper, and you figure out the best way to scan the content. But perhaps more importantly, during this process of scanning, every once in awhile you will come across something that you might not ordinarily have read. The physical act of holding a paper, however, offers the reader the chance to see the paper in its totality, something apps cannot really match. I cannot prove this, but I believe that being exposed to two facing pages of text and photos has an affect on the way readers take in the information. To me, it’s like the difference between information and knowledge.

With regard to point 2 above, I spent four days in Boston last week reading the Times app in bed upon waking up, and then buying a copy and reading it over coffee. I don’t know if its for editorial reasons or for reasons of space, but there is a lot missing from the app that you can find in the paper. Despite the categories that attempt to mirror the analog reading experience (Top News, Opinion, Sports, Arts, etc.), the app takes some getting used to, particularly the way a story from yesterday’s paper might hang around in the app for two days or more. While it is indisputable that a printed paper has no chance keeping up with fast moving events in other time zones like the Middle East revolutions, there is a sense with the app that I have only experienced with certain cable channels: “Is this new, or is this just new to me?” It seems like a hedge for a news app to tout its immediacy, but also keep old bananas on the shelf.

Anyone who knows me or reads this blog knows that I am no Luddite. But I’m keeping my newspaper subscriptions for as long as they’re still around.

What do you think? Are apps just as good as the printed paper or magazine? Am I just being stubborn?

Posted On 25 April 2011 By matthew In Books, Culture, Education, Social Media, Web/Tech / 1 Comment

facebook and the losing battle over privacy

So facebook doesn’t seem to care about your privacy. Until they do. Or, do they? Kind of hard to tell. The people who run the service that was pitched to all of us a few years back as a semi-private club where we would have control of who saw our photos, status updates and hackneyed inspirational quotes have now, for the fourth or fifth time, moved the goal posts on what constitutes “privacy.”

Finally, on May 26, facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was forced to address the frenzy whipped up online and off over what many perceived as a sneaky attempt to manipulate people’s information. Past attempts have stirred up a storm among the digerati and have been mostly confined to blog posts and tweets. This time, however, it landed on the front page of the New York Times which for an internet business can only mean two things: you have stopped being cool because the stodgy Times found out about you OR because you did something bad/stupid/illegal or some combination of the three.

This is not the first time they have done this, nor the first time I have written about it. But for some reason, THIS time it is really freaking people out, and not just the techie geekerati. So what is at the heart of the problem, and what can be done?

facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg firmly believes two things: 1) the web is making us all more open and that privacy is an illusion and 2) facebook is on a mission to transform they way we all interact with the web. Facebook wants to be the center of our digital lives, the starting point of our engagement with the internet. facebook believes that “By making the world more open and connected, we’re expanding understanding between people and making the world a more empathetic place.” Oh, brother.

The hue and cry was so intense about their ham-handed changes, that Zuckerberg was forced to acknowledge their mistakes and offer up different settings options for users. The previous privacy settings had 50 pages of clicking and over 170 possible permutations. Who the hell is going to go to all that trouble? That, of course, is EXACTLY what they were counting on- that few of us would.

So, is facebook evil, stupid or crazy like a fox? The truth is, there is not as much of a business for them in only being a place for you to upload your photos and provide status updates as there is in collecting massive amounts of data about their users which can then be used to earn advertising income by more effectively targeting those ads based on your online activities and expressed interests.

If you believe their numbers, facebook has over 400 million active users, two thirds of whom live outside of the US, but the privacy features are explained in ENGLISH ONLY. So many users have invested so much of themselves (ourselves) into the service that simply quitting facebook is not really a viable option. And even if we did, what would become of all those pictures, videos, intellectual ramblings, etc.? facebook would tell you that they are simply reflecting the change in people’s attitudes about privacy. I have seen no evidence of that. Rather, I would suggest that they are forcing change in order to be able to better target advertising and make more money. The truth is, given the choice, human beings typically opt for convenience over privacy.

(Side note: the implication here is that young people don’t care about their privacy. Zuckerberg himself is only 26, and that may very well be his personal ethos. Yet a Pew Reserch Center study released on May 26, 2010 about reputation management and social media found that 71% of social network users aged 18-29 have changed their privacy setting on their profile to limit what they share with others online. “Reputation management has now become a defining feature of online life for many internet users, especially the young.” Here’s a link to the survey.)

For those who were freaked out by this latest breach, I think the main reason is that our privacy has been under assault from so many quarters, and that is a real concern for many of us. From illegal wire tapping and circumvention of FISA to self-inflicted revelations in public fora, many of us face a constant push-pull over how much to reveal and the harm it may inflict. When I say “harm,” I don’t necessarily mean physical harm, although there are many heartbreaking stories of physical harm. It could be embarrassment, getting caught in a lie, or just forgetting that you are sometimes speaking to a broader audience. But these missteps feel manageable because we realize that WE were the ones that made a mistake by revealing too much. It’s quite a different, and creepy, feeling when someone ELSE reveals our personal information without our informed consent. Betrayal is tough to come back from. Unless you’re facebook and no one seems to give a damn.

For all intents and purposes, facebook has no competition and, as danah boyd points out, the deeper a relationship, the higher the cost of ending it. So what can be done? Not much, I’m afraid. Stay on top of the changes (because this WILL happen again. And again.), and remain ever mindful of what your goals and objectives are when you join an online club.

As always, I would love to hear your comments.

Posted On 27 May 2010 By matthew In Culture, Education, Social Media, Web/Tech / 3 Comments

What if somone says something bad?

Regular readers of this blog know that training young people to use social networking/social media effectively is something I am very passionate about. I also think that, used properly, it is an invaluable tool for admissions departments, alumni offices as well as a way for current students to chronicle student life.

There was an article in this morning’s NY Times (link) focusing on the MIT Admissions Department’s embrace of social media by selecting student bloggers to write about what life is really like at the Cambridge geek factory. (And I say “geek” with love.) The powers-that-be at MIT have been able to get past the fear of “What if someone says something bad?” and given students, AND commenters it should be noted, an unedited forum to sell the school. Let’s face it- high school kids today know when they’re being BS’ed. Hell, my seven year old sees a commercial on TV and said to me, “Dad, it doesn’t really do that. This is just a commercial.” I honestly don’t think I was that savvy at 7, so imagine what kind of filters 17 and 18-year olds have.

But back to MIT bloggers: they are chosen by means of a contest that grades their writing samples. According to the Times article, once incoming students arrive on campus, “[T]he bloggers are sought out as celebrities during the annual ‘Meet the Bloggers’ session at Campus Preview Weekend.” One of the bloggers, for example, wrote about her love of anime, something that would have little chance of making it into a slick brochure or marketing video. Yet a prospective student who was also loved anime saw the post and reacted, “I never would have guessed that people at MIT are interested in anime. Oh, well…+1 on my Why I should go to MIT list.”

STILL think current students are poor ambassadors for your school? My response to that is the same thing I say to companies who are unsure if they should let their employees blog, tweet or otherwise speak on behalf of the company. If you can’t trust your employees, you have a bigger problem than just deciding on your social media strategy. Further, if you have a sub-par product, maybe the key tenets of social media- transparency, openness, conversation and engagement- make you a poor candidate for a social media strategy. You can put lipstick on a pig, but its still a pig.

And in regard to the “what if someone says something bad?” fear, here’s an anecdote: One blogger complained about how the resident advising system was making it impossible for her to move out of her housing. The housing office requested that the admissions office remove the post, but they did not. Rather, they suggested that the housing office leave a comment or rebuttal on the blog. “Eventually, the system was changed.”

That, party people, is the essence of blogging, in particular, and social media, in general.

Posted On 2 October 2009 By matthew In Education, Social Media, Web/Tech, Weblogs / 1 Comment