TheWayoftheWeb

Just a theory, but could it be that the business side of the industry, in control of the finance, business strategy, distribution etc could be worried about letting the inmates take over the asylum?

After all, the creators - the writers, directors,musicians etc seem to have had a rough idea about leading a tribe of passionate people all along.

You may or may not like the films of Kevin Smith, for example, but he knows his audience - he makes films that are comparaitvely cheap to produce, always turn a profit, and generally featured the same characters - in fact his only real failing was with an attempt to go mass market, after which he went back to making films for ‘his’ people.

And he’s not scared to get out and talk to people - averaging 3.63 posts per day on his own message board since May 2004 makes a total of 6082 posts.

Add him to the list that includes Radiohead, Trent Reznor, Cory Doctorow, Neil Gaiman, Joss Whedon etc. All supported by groups who put the fan into fanatical.

Who else can we add?

I first came across ‘The School of Life‘ via the excellent Mark Earls. It’s apparently ‘ a new cultural enterprise based in central London offering good ideas about everyday living.’ And that includes: ‘ evening and weekend courses, holidays to unexpected locations, stigma-free psychotherapy, secular sermons, conversation meals, a floating faculty of experts and a new kind of literary consultancy service called bibliotherapy.’

There’s also a really interesting School of Life blog, which brought up this gem by Richard Reynolds on Guerilla Gardening.

He writes about solo nocturnal gardening missions to cultivate areas which were being left - and how he’s ended up being invoiced by the local council for gardening work that he actually did! One of the lines that jumped out: ‘A lot has happened since I began guerrilla gardening and it’s all because I blogged about it.’

You can see his own ‘Guerilla Gardening Homepage‘ here. What came across was his surprise at how many people were either doing the same thing individually, or have since got involved. He’s inspiring a tribe, despite the red tape and seemingly idiotic efforts of the local council.

With some time to kill before a meeting, I took the chance to browse round the Oxford Street branch of HMV, looking for inspiration for what to buy with a gift voucher I’ve had kicking around, and also to get ideas for Christmas presents.

Aside from reminding me how difficult it can be to find unusual items in even the largest stores (in fact it’s usually easier in the small secondhand record shops I spent much of my music budget in), I also felt something a bit different about the experience. I’m not sure whether it’s the credit crunch, the success of online retailers or the rise of the MP3 but the shop felt slightly emptier than I’d have expected - and the average age seemed slightly older than usual.

The only major exception was the ever-expanding videogames section. Could this be the fact full console games are still viable as a physical product? (Not many options to download a full game, and the filesize would be bigger than the monthly data allowance for a lot of people!) Certainly I got the anecdotal impression that without the videogame section, the average age of the shoppers would be 10 years higher than I’ve ever seen - or maybe I’m just noticing more…

Coincidentally, via PaidContent and Media Guardian comes the news that 32.1 million MP3 players were sold in the UK last year. Jemima Kiss points out, quite rightly, that the title is a bit misleading - 75% of the sales included were MP3 capable mobile phones - but the important point is that 90% of mobiles sold last year were MP3 capable. Whether or not they’re actually being used for MP3 consumption is almost secondary - the point is that a huge mass of people now have the opportunity to be converted at any moment.

I’m not sure that CD player sales dropping to 8 million last year is necessarily related - after all, CD players have been around long enough to have reached saturation point - but if the money drops out of manufacturing CD players, and sales are growing in those little devices that make phonecalls, take pictures and video, surf the web and play MP3s, it’s another challenge to providers and retailers of physical content.

Why would I pust through a packed Oxford Street to experience agoraphobia in a massive store populated by those 10+ years older than me, and then fail to find my ideal purchase without ordering it - particularly when its so closely linked to lifestyle?

Funnily enough, I have seen a packed record shop recently - in Malmo in Sweden. And I wish I’d grabbed a picture, because it wasn’t just records - it was the 50’s style in store cafe.

I realise this has been a bit of a meandering post, but perhaps the takeaway conclusion is this:

Mobile phones are a triumph of convergence to provide value. Convergence is also increasingly happening with living room technology and online applications. Perhaps in a time-starved culture, more retailers need to look at how they could use convergence to build engagement and loyalty in the real world, as much as online? After all, it’s a reason why supermarkets and department stores have continued to have cafes instore. So why can’t record stores look at food and drink, live events, introducing art, photography, specific genre nights, or other ways to hook into the tribes who don’t have a reason to support them anymore?

I’ve been a bit remiss in not blogging about Seth Godin’s latest book, promotion, and social experiment until now. Mainly due to the hundred and one things I’m thinking about - but I have no excuse as my pre-release copy came yesterday as a special gift given to everyone who pre-ordered and signed up for his Triiibes social community.

So far, I’ve got about halfway through in an evening and found it pretty inspiring and hard to put down. In addition, I’ve met some new people, learned some new things, and somehow volunteered myself for a couple of small projects via Triiibes - talk about building engagement right in! And what’s interesting is that although Seth is the nominal root of the community, he’s not putting himself up as the leader, but watching what evolves and responding where needed. I would link, but I’m afraid it’s still invite only.

On the bright side, you can get a free audible version of Tribes, read by Seth Godin himself, for a limited time. You can also get Tribes on iTunes for 95p. There’s also his Tribes presentation on slideshare, and the Powerpoint file to download with accompanying notes.

There really is nothing to stop you becoming inspired to lead your Tribe. And if you still would like the dead tree version: Tribes is available on Amazon for pre-order.

That is probably enough of the Seth worship for one week, but then I saw this great post: ‘Failure as an event‘  which describes the potentially career-ending mistakes and failures which have occurred during his career, and how he’s used them to learn from, and not succumbed to fear. And he’s published it in the middle of a book launch!

Genius!