internet Archives - Page 2 of 12

The downside of the internet

Posted on January 14, 2013 by Steve Sammartino

I was recently watching this documentary about break dancing and its evolution in the Bronx of New York. You may remember from previous posts that I was very much into the activity, before the main stream media and taste makers decided it was over. They pulled the albums from the shelves, stopped showing it on TV (I had 3 channels to chose from) and let it evaporate into history as a fad we can all look back on.

What you probably don’t know about break dancing is that it was around for about 10 years before it hit the mainstream. In fact, it was pretty much developed on a single housing block in the South Bronx. It didn’t move from this single location for the best part of a decade. The 3 tenants of Hip Hip: the break dancing, the Music (DJ’s & MC’s) and the aerosol art – all thrived and evolved in one physical space over a large number of years without any external influence or involvement. A small community lead by people like Kool Herc, Fab Five Freddy and Afrika Bambaataa added layers to their micro culture into a form of self bootstrapped art and entertainment. The period of development was iterative, local and very long before it blossomed into something amazing and beautiful. Hip Hop cultural was the veritable flower growing through a crack in the pavement. It didn’t appear in discotheques of Manhattan until it had fully developed. Only when this flower began to germinate and turn into an garden of undiscovered originality and urban culture – did any taste makers and marketers start to take notice. Only when it was fully developed could it turn into a global phenomenon where big dollars got made via the TV Industrial Complex.

I don’t think that this could happen today. The connected world just wouldn’t allow it. And while, I’m a technology evangelist, it’s true that all technology has some negative outcomes. The lack of isolation is one of these technology negatives. Certain things need the condition of isolation in order to develop to their true potential. To develop in a single environment without external influence. The exact kind of environment that Hip Hop culture both needed and thrived in. It’s why it was so pure and so real. It had to find its way with limited resources. The reason the 3 tenants of Hip Hop are what they are is because the founders were poor. They couldn’t afford instruments – so they used record players and microphones as an instruments. They used spray cans and train sides as their canvas. They took the only nutrients their environment of urban decay provided.

Today the entire connected world is looking for something interesting to blog about, to tweet about, to post on their youtube channel and start a tumblr page on. Anything that looks remotely interesting gets posted about, mashed up, promoted, storied, and presented to the world before it has even taken its own shape. The original community of anything different and interesting can’t own it and nurture it like they could pre-web. And I’m starting to think that we might be missing out on some of the cultural benefits which evolve from simple unadulterated time to develop. If the first blossom of a new species is picked, re-planted or re-purposed will we ever really see what that species might have turned into?

While we are urged to promote and share all that we do and find, maybe it is time to consider the opposite. To cocoon our idea in development until it has evolved into something worthy. The let the startup actually ‘start’, and find its place and take its own shape before others start to re-shape it on our behalf. Maybe it’s time for us to step back and let some things be, before we interrupt them.

The key to the success of all technology, is knowing when not to use it.

The duality

Posted on October 9, 2012 by Steve Sammartino

With great change, comes great tension. This tension often leads to a split between the opposing forces from which re-alignment may never occur. A favourite past time of many of us is predicting a winner – the eventual pattern that we’ll all follow.

No category is less pervasive in this arena than technology. But in reality it is becoming less and less about winners and losers, and much more about choice, fragmentation and tribes. An old axiom by Stewart Brand we’ll all remember is the one about “information wanting to be free”…. but it turns out that this story has an oft left out post script: He immediately added after this that “information also wants to be expensive”, which was a far less quoted caveat.

In a world were control is dissipating, and startups are changing everything, we ought remember that both directions can be equally valid.

The end of manuals

Posted on July 4, 2012 by Steve Sammartino

Up until very recently – maybe 10 years ago – the people who made the stuff we use, didn’t really care if we could use it. Which is why anyone who have ever owned a VCR can remember the time flashing at 12am for most of its shelf life.

People who made stuff didn’t care, because they didn’t have to. Our options were limited. There were only so many brands to choose from, and only so many retailers to buy from. It was buy from them, or miss out. But they were nice enough to a write manuals for us. If you’ve ever had struggled to read or understand a user manual of some sort. I’ve got good news for you… I have the translation below.

“Hi there, we’ve written this manual in order to avoid have to give you any real or human feedback. You see, we are too busy selling this thing in so many countries, that caring would impact our short term profitability too much. So instead we just got some of our engineers to write this thing, and then we hired a translation company to put it into your language….. so if this is all reading a bit back to front, or just too technical to understand, then that is why. The reason our product needs a manual is that we are pretty much trying to be everything to everyone. We couldn’t really decide which features to include or exclude, so we just put all of them in. We believe we can charge a higher price if it has more features, we are not 100% sure, but why risk it? We know having this many features makes it harder to user, but it really makes it easier for our sales and marketing team to tell customers and retailers our ‘thing’ does everything. Our policy is to do the bare minimum when it comes to anything related to our product after we already have your money. And we know that all our competitors do much the same stuff so we reckon we can roll like this. Good luck!”

Lucky for us manuals are a thing of the past and smart brands know this. In this day and age the thing itself should be the manual. If it isn’t we can be pretty sure that someone will replace our stuff with a better user experience that’s intuitive and actually cares about the people using it.

Digital Dialects

Posted on June 20, 2012 by Steve Sammartino

While it has been reported that many languages are dying via globalisation and nationalised education, language is fighting back. But this time it isn’t geographic. It’s jumping boundaries and hardware devices to find like minds who want to invent their own lexicon. Language likes to be unique. Language likes to treat insiders differently. Language likes to evolve, change and even judge.The connected world is developing an entire cadre of digital dialects in. Most of which are geographically dispersed and happen virtually.

For me it’s another proof point of the world we are all now living in. As soon as we think we understand what’s happening, it evolves. But more important than the change is the fact that it never asks for permission.

Selling – the highest paid profession

Posted on March 31, 2012 by Steve Sammartino

It has been said many times that ‘selling’ is the worlds highest paid profession. While I had my doubts early on in my career, I have never been more convinced of it that I am now. For quite a few reasons which I have shared below.

There is no limit

If we are in a real sales job, then there is no limit to what we can earn. That is, we work on commission. And while there are plenty of dodgy commission based sales jobs around, the serious sales roles allow sales people to earn as much as possible. It’s a simple formula to let a sales person take a piece of every pie they bake. If we are working in a sales role for a salary, then the truth is we are not really sales people. If we work in a sales role that has guaranteed distribution – then again we are not really in a sales role.

The truth about investment bankers

The general populous has been tricked into thinking that investment bankers (yes the type that hang out in wall street and ruin economies) are mathematicians and brilliant statisticians who work out innovative ways to generate more money than existed before they arrived. Well, the global economy learned the hard way that the people running the finance industry are not a bunch of geniuses who worked out algorithms beyond our comprehension. The reality is that the highly paid investment bankers are the sales people of their organizations simply extracting commissions. It just so happens that small percentages on big numbers really add up. The unfortunate thing for all of us is that they are unscrupulous operators who invent a bunch of bullshit (unsecured debt derivatives anyone?) to sell people sausages at steak prices. But the fact is the money goes to the guy who ‘convinces people to pay’ not the engine room.

Great entrepreneurs are gun sales people

It doesn’t matter how great our startup is, we have to sell the idea. First to investors, then to customers – and very often, even to employees and suppliers. The hardest part about what we do as entrepreneurs is getting people on board. Selling to all the members of our supply chain. Sure, the occasional new product or service enters the market and wows the world and spreads organically, but this is the exception more than the rule. It should be our assumption that we’ll have to sell startup to everyone it touches instead.

The definition of selling has changed

When we hear the term ‘salesperson’ we imagine the someone working in a car yard, or traveling sales guy with a brief case calling on prospects, or the telephone sales cold caller. We need to change our perception of what the sales person is these days. The sales person in the 21st century is the blogger, the tweeter, youtuber, the instagramer, the public speaker, the co-working space provider – anyone who is a self publisher. When we self publish, by definition we are building a personal brand that we hope to sell at some point in the future. It’s pretty much everyone. We’ve now entered the age of the micro entrepreneur and personal branding. And if we can’t sell ourselves, we certainly wont be able to sell anything else. We’re all sales people now.

Technology agnostic

The final human truth is that selling is technology agnostic. The sales process doesn’t care if we are selling potatoes, micro chips and iPhone apps. The process remains unchanged, even though the tools are broadening. And if we want to succeed at anything, at least financially, then we need to embrace the idea that selling is where the money is, always has been, and always will be.

The Foxtel hack

Posted on February 9, 2012March 28, 2019 by Steve Sammartino

I’ve been a vocal opponent (and customer) of Foxtel. A service that, as the web evolves is loosing its reason for being in my life. So I decided to disconnect my service and here is the interesting story of what happened.

I called the number and the options to choose from (1,2,3,4) for the appropriate issue. This surprisingly included ‘Press 4 to disconnect’. This was the first clue things aren’t right down at Foxtel. Any business that has this issue come up often enough to include it in the first 4 options of customer interaction has some issues.

So I click it and get put through to the ‘Customer Retention Center’ and they ask me why I want to disconnect. A few of the reasons I tell them include:

I’m sick of seeing better offers advertised to new customers. (Screw the existing ones hey!)
They have reduced the services and kept the price the same for my account.
I can’t get movies on demand (which I’m prepared to pay for) without signing up to a more expensive packaging (WTF, the tubes are already in my house?)

They apologise, tell me I’ve been a good customer for a few years, so they offer me a $30 discount per month. Which is 30% off what I’ve been paying. I retort with, ‘if I’m such a good customer why do you only try and keep me once I’ve already decided to leave you?’ Seems to me they have things back to front at Foxtel.

So I took the discount for now – I’m moving house in 2 months and it is all over for me and Foxtel then.

My advice to any Foxtel subscriber out there is to call up to disconnect and get the discount anyway and hack their already flawed proposition, before it gets hacked entirely by market forces.