Corey had the line of the day at SXSW:

“User-generated content. Can we come up with a better name for that sometime over the next week?”

I couldn’t agree more. It’s a phrase whose time has come to an end, just like “user-centered design.” I wouldn’t have a problem with it if it was called “Dave-centered design” but first I’d have to get over my self-consciousness as researchers follow me 24-7, observing my showering habits to help them create a better bathroom clock/radio

The problem isn’t either of those phrases; the problem is the word “user”. Yes, I busted out the quotes — the word tongs as my former prof Geoffrey Nunberg calls them — because I’m keeping that word as far away from me as possible. I don’t want anything to do with that word ever again.

It is the most de-humanizing word that you can use to describe activities that are done by humans — humans viewing and interacting with your own website. These people are devoting their time and attention to your site. Calling them “users” takes away the fact that there is a person sitting in front of her computer, reading my text, reading five other web pages, updating her MySpace profile, carrying on ten instant messenger conversations, listening to music, and watching the TV all at the same time.

I’m a human being, and the last thing that I want to be thought of is a person spending all of his time on MySpace. I want you to know that there’s more to me than blogging and commenting and watching YouTube videos. You hide my complexity as a person when you call me a “user” and contextualize my activities solely in terms of your website. Disregarding that complexity is the first step in the downward spiral of bad user research, feature development and prioritization, bad user experiences, and ultimately the kind of thing that I want to keep you away from as you read my future digressions.

So what should we call “users” instead?

Great question. I’m glad you asked.

Metonymy

Metonymy is a figure of speech where you substitute the name of one thing for something else. For example, you could refer to the British royalty as “the crown”. If you have a video site, instead of using the word “users” you could just as well call them “play button pushers” or “eyeballs” or “lazy”. Well, maybe not lazy. Maybe not eyeballs either. Obviously my imagination is broken tonight. But don’t let that prevent you from getting creative with your names; metonymy is a great place to start.

Call them what they call themselves

This is my favorite strategy. If you have a site for people who produce video clips distributed on the Internet, you probably shouldn’t call them vidiots (and you certainly shouldn’t call them “stupid”). They most likely call themselves vloggers. Calling them by the name they call themselves shows that you respect and understand them. And in case you hold that label in low regard, it’s best to hold back your laughter until after you have some privacy (vloggers *hee hee*).

Give them a name, individually

Persona development is one of the best techniques for getting everyone to understand who makes up your target audience. A persona is an imaginary person who idealizes the typical person using your product. The number of personas you need depends on your audience, but a two or three is usually enough to focus your discussions. Instead of asking whether or not your “users” would like some new idea, instead ask if Bob, Laura, and John — your personas — would like it. I’ll write more about personas in a future post.

Brand them

Yeah, “branding” sounds like an evil marketing word, but damned if I wasn’t a proud member of the Nintendo Fun Club back in the day. A brand is fine as long as they adopt it too. Green Bay Packers fans happily accept the moniker “cheeseheads”, but you would never call them “Green Bay Packers users” (and the eerie connotation that phrase has). Branding the people on your site gives them an automatic identity — something to share with the other people on the site and a way to know whether you’re “in” with the group already or “out” and need some enlightenment.

Call them what you call them

What do you call your friends? Your former schoolmates? The people on your co-ed soccer team? Call them something real like “humans” or “people” or “friends” or “buddies” or “teammates” or “those people we talked to at the conference” or “that chick I woke up next to after that night we got really shitfaced”. Something like that. But if you’re homophobic, you should watch what you say around fans of Gay.com. Just a friendly warning.

Last words on the word

Give them a name that you would be willing to say to their face, that they wouldn’t be upset or embarrassed about if you said it with them standing right next to you. They’ll appreciate the attention and identity you give them, and you’ll have a friendlier word to use when you talk about them

And remember – these terms are shibboleths; if you don’t use them or use them incorrectly, the people you’re referring to will know you’re an outsider. Incorrectly calling a blogger a “web logger” is a bad idea. Also, there are some times you can’t use the word that these groups call themselves. The “n*****” word comes to mind as an example, so always be careful that you’re not inadvertently hurting their feelings by the name you choose.

Finally, you need to do the legwork to figure out the best term to use when talking about the people on your site. You’ll be amazed at what you discover. For example in my final project at Berkeley, Megan and I studied Berkeley freshmen and their technology habits and histories. Even though the students we interviewed were 17 or 18 years old, they sometimes referred to their friends and schoolmates as “kids”. Megan and I could use that word when asking our questions to them too (despite the fact that we weren’t much older than they were).

Good luck finding your own term to replace the word “user”. Hopefully the last days of the phrase “user-generated content” are finally at hand…

I quit my job.

Ok, I didn’t quit like this guy quit or this guy quit. I did the standard two-weeks-I’m-outta-here routine. It’s never easy to leave a job, no matter what the circumstances. I know where I’m headed next, but there’s plenty of time to talk about that in the future.

But this is more than a turning point in my career. It’s also going to be a turning point for this little web site. I’ve been repeating my user-centered design daily affirmations — such as “Do it for your users” “You are not a user” “You have to find out their needs” — every day for the last couple of months, taking it with me to my job interviews and talks with friends.

From these experiences and others I’ve learned that it’s a very powerful philosophy that not enough people understand. I also haven’t given it enough attention on this site. That’s why I’m going to start writing more about it from here on out. It’s a change you’ll notice very quickly, so stick around for the fun new things I have planned.

But I’m not the only one wrapped up in change, and before I depart to my user-centered state-of-mind I’m going to linger in the music world for a moment longer. Apparently lots of folks out there think this year will be a turning point for the use of DRM in digital music stores. I’m not so certain. Let’s look at two big music stories of late.

First, negotiations with EMI (one of the big four music labels) to sell DRM-free music have collaped. Why was EMI looking to sell their music DRM free? Money. This has nothing to do with appeasing music buyers or Steve Jobs. EMI has made some other headlines lately, including:

• A big drop in revenues, shifting their projections down 5 to 10%
• Replacing the CEO and vice-chairman of the board
• All of this news drove EMI stock down 12%
• EMI rebuffed a Warner Music offer to purchase the company

EMI has been going down for the last few years, facing many of these same profit and restructuring problems before just to face them again. So why pick now to sell the music as MP3s? The cynic in me thought that EMI was doing the MP3 negotiations to boost their stock value, making them some more money in any potential buyout. However, checking their stock performance over the last few months it seems that the market is more interested in the buyouts themselves rather than selling MP3s.

Negotiations ended when, as “unnamed sources” said, the digital retailers wouldn’t pay a big enough advance (that is, money upfront) for EMI’s catalog as MP3s. If they had paid, those retailers would likely need to raise the prices on those tracks to make up for the loss, something they’re not eager to do because of the impact on sales. And if EMI isn’t gonna go MP3, you can be certain the other big labels (Sony BMG, Warner, and Universal) won’t go either.

This just leaves the question about EMI’s fate, if they really are struggling so badly. I don’t know the exact future, but I have a feeling Warner won’t be so forthcoming with an offer now that EMI isn’t going to sell MP3s. That is, a major reason Warner made the offers right now was to stop EMI from selling their music without DRM. The big labels like DRM the way it is, and a DRM-free EMI catalog would force them into MP3 territory as well.

This brings us to the other turning point of late. Steve Jobs wrote an open letter trying to convince the big labels to sell their music DRM free. This is, of course, bullshit. Yahoo, eMusic, and others have been way ahead of iTunes in selling MP3s and in calling for big music to sell their tunes without DRM. (Why? To level the playing field versus Apple, of course.) Jobs — like Apple did with the iPod, iMac, and all things Apple — came out after everyone else did but suddenly made it cool.

I’ve written before about why Apple uses DRM — because the big labels want them to, and there’s no iTunes Store or digital music market without the big labels’ content. But Apple is equally at fault; they have never licensed their DRM to other companies (and the major labels didn’t insist on interoperability when they had the chance). The indie labels have never cared about DRM; most of them already sell their content as MP3s on eMusic (the #2 digital music retailer) among other DRM-free outlets. This debacle is solely about the big four labels and DRM.

So why is Jobs calling for the end of DRM? Things are a bit different now that France and Denmark and Germany and Sweden and Norway have all opened investigations into Apple, their DRM, and anticompetitive practices. Steve Jobs is covering his ass, saying it’s not his fault there’s DRM in the music (true) and it’s out of his hands — and up to the big four — to fix it (bullshit).

Of course, in situations like these you can always expect the market to come up with a solution. DVD Jon, who famously cracked DVD encryption, apparently is pitching a system compatible with Apple’s DRM for anyone who wants to buy it. And in response to Jobs, the big four have shot back that DRM is necessary in light of their declining revenues (due to declining CD sales), challenging Jobs to nix the DRM on the Disney/Pixar movies sold in the iTunes Store if he believes in interoperability so badly.

When it was just France who was considering a bill to eliminate DRM last year, that was no problem for Apple because they could stop selling in France with little impact on their bottom line. Now that Europe has ganged up on Apple, Apple is gonna have to do something to fix this. Not even the combined forces of all the digital music retailers will be enough to convince the big four to sell their music without DRM. It’s Apple’s move if they want to be the ones to decide the resolution to this turning point. Otherwise the EU has it’s own plans for the future of the iPod and the iTunes Music Store, and Apple certainly won’t like that.

Recently, lots of folks have asked me what I think the future of this Web 2.0 thing will hold. I give my token answers — users expressing themselves, creating their own content, mass customization of web experiences, online conversations, attention economy, multitasking, widgets, bonsai kittens, Muppet porn, State of the Union remixes, and so on. Most people eat that answer up.

But that answer never satisfies me. While most folks are caught up in updating their MySpace profile or watching narcoleptic pets on YouTube, a deeper transformation is happening right in front of us. In this hyper-polar Internet, large sites still draw the most attention and revenue while an ever-growing number of smaller sites increasingly disrupt the Internet landscape and invade our everyday lives.

I take no credit for inventing the term “hyper-polar”. That honor goes to Moises Naim, who I saw on Fareed Zakaria‘s excellent PBS news show on international issues, Foreign Exchange. Rather than mis-translate the concept, I’ll let Naim explain it in his own words from a Financial Times article:

What is coming – and in some important ways is already here – is a hyper-polar world where many large, powerful actors coexist with myriad smaller powers (not all of which are nation-states) that greatly limit the dominance of any single nation or institution.

Naim continues, saying that these micro-powers have great new opportunities in the world, but these opportunities come with a loss of stability — stability that was once enforced by the major powers. This is similar to the concept of a “nonpolar” world; the importance is that we’re not in a unipolar (U.S. dominated) or bipolar (U.S. vs. U.S.S.R.) world as in the past. A hyper-polar world is the world of terrorist groups, religious zealots, criminals and smugglers, and mega-corporations and the power they hold over governments and worldwide political, environmental, economic, and social events.

Not as obvious, this is also the story of every Web 2.0 company ever made, bloggers, podcasters, video bloggers, every other individual and group creating new content online, the Creative Commons, Second Life, micro news operations, content aggregators, web site remixes, and so on. Even though the Internet is becoming a part of our daily lives, it still has the power to disrupt and change other events in our lives.

Let me offer some examples of this from the hyper-polar Internet. The first national news story that I can remember where a blog was involved was the incident with the forged GWB National Guard papers, as reported by Dan Rather on 60 Minutes where GWB supposedly skipped out on his duties. A day after that story aired, Power Line Blog posted the story on their site. Within a few hours, they received enough evidence to conclusively prove that the document was a forgery — news which slowly percolated back up the news chain until the major news networks got a hold of it and forced Dan Rather off high and mighty CBS and on to fledgling cable channel HDNet.

Here are some more examples of smaller actors disrupting bigger powers. Facebook received backlash from over 100,000 of its users when they added a privacy-breaching feature. 100,000 individual users probably wouldn’t make a difference, but their united effort was enough to make national headlines in several periodicals. A left-wing site ambushed Google News and took the top spot with amusing results. Online video has accelerated the spread of stories like the Saddam execution video, the tasering of a student at UCLA, and lonelygirl15. Howard Dean made an unprescedented presidental run driven largely from communications and donations made via the Internet. And the best examples of this are yet to come.

To be clear, the bigger powers (whoever they are) in this hyper-polar era aren’t about to implode or go away. Instead they will have to face greater uncertainty about their and their competitors’ futures. For example, Fox is not going away (sadly). 24 is ridiculously popular, and Fox will keep making that show until Keifer is rolling around in a wheelchair, holding the gun in his mouth, pulling the trigger with his tongue, and sleeping while drooling for 18 of the 24 hours. But it takes a Fox to produce 24 because of the time, money, and other resources required to create shows like that. If you don’t like Fox or 24, just replace it with the TV show and channel of your choice. (Don’t watch TV? Then how do you live?)

Fox will be affected though. There are hundreds of other network and cable channels competing against Fox for your TV attention. The good news is that there’s enough eyes watching TVs to keep those hundreds of stations on the air, even if some of them are seen by only a handful of peopole. The bad news is that every channel now has hundreds of channels of “competition” (because The Souffle Network is hardly competition for Fox). And you never know which of those channels will launch the next big addictive television program, especially since there’s hundreds of places where that new program can come from (like The Souffle Network’s new hit “Souffle On You”). Yes this is related to the long tail of television, and I’ll write more about that in the future.

For its great explanatory power, hyper-polar is not predictive about how what new forces will form or how they will disrupt. This is a metaphor for understanding the phenomenon, not a crystal ball for showing us how things will pan out. But just to satisfy your craving (and I’ll admit it — to stroke my ego), here’s a prediction about what’s coming next as seen through a hyper-polar lens.

The Internet, for better or worse, is built on advertising. (For proof, look at the beating Yahoo! took when they announced a delay of their new advertising platform, or check where Google’s profits came from the last quarter.) And advertising is built on attention — flashing banners, fifteen second commercials before videos, full page ads you have to watch before getting a link to click through, etc. You need a huge site like Google or MySpace to draw an audience big enough to make significant profits from advertising.

At the same time, Internet audiences are fickle. MySpace and other sites surrounding it are soaking up more and more of peoples’ Internet time, where years (or months?) ago they might have been browsing eBay for hours on end. One site is absorbing attention, so another site is losing viewer time. What can those losing sites do to fix it?

There’s no way eBay can compete with MySpace for a viewer’s time. Instead, eBay needs to find a footing in the MySpace world. How do they do that? Widgets. Let users put an eBay list in their profile featuring their favorite items, auctions they’re watching, or items they’re selling. This way eBay is getting viewer time even though the viewer is really on MySpace. And the best part about widgets is that they can go from site to site, outlasting MySpace and wherever the fickle audiences migrate to after that.

This also shows you how sites like PhotoBucket and Slide have nudged their way up the Internet hierarchy into prominence. You don’t need to compete with MySpace; instead fashion yourself into a compliment of the site. Widgets aren’t the only solution to this problem, but they’re the solution du jour and will be until the next big thing comes along. And before I forget — MySpace disrupted the old guard of the Internet and made itself a staple of today’s Internet. Slide and PhotoBucket came from out of nowhere and are now staple sites because of MySpace.

Unfortunately, this spells doom for some fledgling social network sites (SNS). Since advertising is the business model most have chosen, SNS sites that can’t get the numbers will fall out of existence. MySpace is on the short list of sites that will stick around. Bebo and Hi5 are probably around for the long run too. Niche sites like Tagged or TeamSugar may have a place in this ecosystem as well. But volatility is a trademark of a hyper-polar world, and nobody can predict when these sites will pass into memory or which sites will succeed.

This should be enough to show you that the Internet is really a hyper-polar playground for new sites, ideas, and interactions. I find it a useful metaphor for framing my other observations and opinions about the state of the Internet, and I’ll happily expand on those in ramblings to come.

What the fuck is the problem with 24? Can’t they go one season without killing a major character, murdering thousands of people, or finding conflicts at exactly the end of every hour of the day? How many TV Americans have to die for my entertainment? More and more are dying each day. Act now to stop it! Only you can prevent fictionalized death.

It’s like the Rolling Stones and their hit songs; 24 found a perfect formula for a TV crack. But thanks to themeat.org’s research labs, we’ve cracked their formula. Now anybody can make their own season of 24. This bit of text should cover your first four or five episodes.

A terrorist group from ___________ has obtained
                         a place

__________ ___________ ___________ that they will
 a number   adjective  plural noun

use to terrorize the American ___________.  The
                              plural noun

only _________ who can ________ everyone from this
       noun              verb

is ______________ Bauer.   ___________  has years of 
    a first name            same name

training as a _________ and can use ___________ with
                noun                plural noun

lethal accuracy.  Only after the government ___________ 
                                             adjective

unit foils the ________ do they learn the enemy really
                noun                              

has __________ ___________ ___________ and that their 
     a number  adjective   plural noun

real plan is to _________ ___________ _____________.
                   verb    adjective   plural noun

President ________ is in for a long __________ hours.
           a name                    a number

I wrote this over a year ago and never published it to the site until now. Thankfully all human events are cyclic, so the time to post it has come again. Since I wrote this, both Virgin Digital US and AOL Music have turned their users over to Napster, Apple launched their video store with only Disney movies and has been unable to get other big studios to come on board, a slew of music/cell phone hybrids have appeared including Apple’s new iPhone along with music stores to buy songs for your music capable cell phone, and Apple debuted their Intel powered iTV device for playing your iTunes library on your TV (and the remote control has six “buttons“).

For the record, I have not edited this since I first wrote it on September 21, 2005. (That’s right — 2005.)

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Video iPod… you know, for kids!

Let’s think about how people use iPods today. Many people wear them walking to and from work, plug them into cars or stereos for listening to music, or wear them jogging and exercising. Sometimes using public transportation or on airplanes, people sit and listen to music.

Video is a visually intensive medium, absorbing the attention of the user almost exclusively from other activities. McLuhan pontificated on the differences between radio and TV as hot (low participation) and cool (high participation) mediums. (I think TV is just dumber.)

So how can you watch a high participation medium like video while driving your car without meeting new people (by rear-ending their cars)? I’m sure there are some really rich people out there who do watch videos in their car despite the impact on their driving, but then again people also drive and talk on their cell phones. I can only hope that someday I believe in karma so that it can catch up to those people and bite them in the ass.

Still, would you watch videos walking around or jogging? Today it’s socially acceptable to tune out and listen to the radio or an mp3 player in public. More and more people are walking and text messaging at the same time. But video? You can buy a TV right now that is small enough to carry with you as you walk, but people aren’t walking around with TVs all the time. And on buses and subways (and even walking around), I think people would be wary of holding an iPod in your hand to watch the video for fear of having it stolen right from your grip. (Watching for thieves while watching a video is hard.) Without a transformation in iPod culture, the only places where people will use these is on airplanes and in automobiles as passengers and that’s about it. Can that change take place?

The content Apple is going to sell also tells you something about the target audience of the iPod video — teenagers, because I’ll be damned if I ever buy a music video. They’re the ones who buy ring tones, who watch MTV, who obsess over pop culture, who text message while walking and chewing gum, who spend time riding on school buses. I don’t know many adults, if any at all, who watch music videos. I feel bad for all the parents who will have to shell out for the new iPods and iTunes accounts for their kids. Maybe Apple can start selling iPod family packs… There’s even an iPod mini for baby — it comes in pink and blue.

I think Apple is expecting success similar to that of ring tones — that having videos on your iPod will become cool and wildly popular, passed on between friends, a kind of identifying mark like a ring tone. Maybe something like this is one of the features they’ll announce September 7th (more at the end).

But my doubts linger… Other video players on the market right now already play a variety of video formats, but what will Apple do? Will their video iPod only play video files with digital rights management or some form of encryption? Will the iPod video have an output for display on TVs? We’ll find that out soon, and then we can decide for ourselves whether or not they were pressured to do so by the RIAA or MPAA or their moms.

This is not the end of Apple’s video migration. Apple is not stupid, and I can’t imagine they’re going to start selling video and not develop a version of their operating system specifically for TVs. Think of an Apple PVR or media center, because what good is it if you can’t play all your paid for music videos on your TV? Complete with the $100 Apple remote control which will have only one button. (Yeah, that’s a mouse joke.) I bet this is what Intel had in mind when they signed a deal with Apple to supply CPUs and such, especially with Intel’s new Viiv marketing — an Intel hardware based, Apple software powered media center. If I’m right, you heard it here first. If I’m not, then I’ll deny I ever wrote this.

Maybe I’m just hoping that the iPod video will be a failure out of my disdain for Apple and their shiny, overpriced, technologically inferior media products. But the question that I have which I think there is no real answer for is this: Who the hell would buy the video and the mp3 of a single song separately? Nobody. Apple better have the best pricing and bundling strategy ever for this or it’s already destined for failure.

On a random note… Apple currently controls about 3/4 of the MP3 player market, followed by Creative and then by other random companies. Most of Apple’s competition (if you can call it that) are in a race to the bottom — the lowest price. Creative is really feeling the pinch, missing their sales marks lately and struggling with their Zen line of players. (Editor’s note: I own several Creative products.)

The MP3 player market is being fueled by younger people with lots of disposable income. You know them… They’re the kind that own computers. Yes, I’m saying that poorer people aren’t buying MP3 players with their scant extra money. I think these companies at the bottom of the MP3 player ladder are hoping the rest (also at the bottom of the ladder) will go out of business. Some will, but MP3 players are not commodities like televisions. This market is entirely fueled by rich people and has no appearance of shifting downward — at least not until Dell bundles one of their (rebranded Creative) MP3 players with a computer for under $400. Maybe the rising tide of digital music growth on the net can save Creative and their like from the juggernaut of Apple, but that doesn’t appear to be the care right now.

The same is true of digital music services. A recent survey said something like 41% of people would not pay more than $10 a month for a digital music subscription. Most people overlooked the 34% who said they would never get such a service (and probably download the songs for free instead). The time for these services to sink or swim is coming quickly. I think most of them are limping along, dumping cash into these services in hopes of catching the expected wave when lots of people start using these subscription services in the coming years. Real is just pushing into profits now, mostly from their 2 million new Rhapsody subscribers. Napster is losing money but growing fast. Even with this growth, prices for these services will not drop because of pressure from the RIAA and big labels. If anything, expect it to become more expensive but still have trouble penetrating all demographics.

Apple announces their new iPod innovations September 7th and maybe more during their expo around the 20th. It will almost certainly be the mobile iTunes stuff because Napster just announced their own mobile service. An important part of cell phone culture is sharing ring tones, photos, and more. Mobile iTunes and Napster better support this somehow. Maybe the ring tone market will evolve into the next platform for these digital music services? I’ve told others for years now that the cell phone was going to be the device of digital convergence. The MP3 player market is about to face new competition in the form of digital music enabled cell phones.

But that’s all business analysis crud. I can’t wait for this headline and how many groups it will piss off simultaneously: "Teen driver causes pileup while watching iPod rap video." That story will make news despite people who had car accidents while talking on cell phones or watching videos while driving. Damn sensationalist media…

Interactive Content

Folks often forget that South by Southwest is more than a music orgy. SXSW is really five events divided into three categories. The three categories are Film, Music, and Interactive. Film and Music are pretty self explanatory — there’s a music conference and a film conference along with a film and music festival spread out over several days. The festivals are almost entriely indie content — indie movies and indie music. The film and music conferences have speeches and panels with the latest newsmakers about the important issues in those spaces with a heavy slant towards independent producers.

The Interactive conference is a whole other beast. As far as I know, it’s the only conference of its kind — a cross of academia, technology, and business all discussing the latest trends, gizmos, web sites, and so on. Judd was curious what the crowds are like. Here’s my breakdown of some of the stereotypes wandering the halls.  In short, they’re people who can afford to be there (or people who can get someone else to pay for them to be there):

• Academics
• New media producers (bloggers/vloggers/podcasters/mobloggers/etc)
• Recruiters and headhunters
• Venture capitol and angel investors
• People looking for money/work/business
• Product and web designers
• Authors
• Programmers and tech creators

It’s a strange mix, but then this is a strange conference. Panels topics included how to use AJAX, the future of radio, all things blogging and podcasting, ways to make your users love your products, how AT&T is the Dark Side (complete with AT&T logo-Death Star morph — done by Burnie Burns of Rooster Teeth (the Red vs Blue folks). mp3 here, videos here and here — lots of visual gags but none of his slides are in the videos. What the hell kind of video of a presentation doesn’t record the slides? Ugh. I guess you’ll never see the AT&T logo-Death Star morph unless you were there. His opening slide was best:

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This is the title to the keynote!

This is the smaller, italicized subtitle to the keynote!

---

Maybe you just had to be there.)… you know, the usual technology conference stuffs but all in one place.

They should use this as a promo:

"If you pick any conference to go to this year, make yours SXSW Interactive. Why pay thousands of dollars to go to dozens of conferences in cities that suck? Going to SXSWi is like going to every technology conference all at once in the kick-ass city of Austin, Texas!"

There were some highlights, including Kathy Sierra, author of some of the Head First books which do an amazing job teching a very boring subject (programming). She gave a kick ass presentation about how to create passionate users, drawing from topics in cognative psychology, UI design, etc. She better be in the midst of writing a book on the subject.

And there were some lowlights, like the talk about Darknets. A darknet is a private virtual network for sharing information, like when you dragged your computer over to your friend’s place and plugged into his network to swap porn or when you downloaded a file from a peer-to-peer server that required a password.

The panel was moderated by J.D. Lasica, author of the darknet book. He assembled a very interesting panel including someone from a company that monitors online copyright infringement, someone from Flickr, the founder of FreeNet (hyper-secure P2P), and even a PR person from the MPAA — the body responsible for film ratings and vilifying P2P file sharing. Did I mention that the audience was primarily bloggers, filmmakers, podcasters, and other new media folks? And that there was an MPAA person on the panel?

I think you see where this is headed.

It took maybe two minutes for the first person to interrupt a speaker with a comment. And when the "audience question" portion of the conversation began, the discussion quickly devolved into berating the poor MPAA woman (who was very brave to be on that panel IMO). Less "question" and more "fuck you MPAA." And I was hoping that the bloggers and podcasters would be able to sustain a civilized discussion…

Here’s my transcript of the panel:

• Blogger: What are you doing to ensure I can do whatever I want with any kind of digital content?
• MPAA: (does that trick where it looks like you’re pulling your thumb in half) You see, my thumb looks like it’s in two pieces, but in fact it’s really ok.
• Blogger: I hate DRM!
• MPAA: That’s not a question. And you’re not watching my thumb.
• Blogger: We’re taking over everything! You’re in the stone ages! You wait and see!
• MPAA: (holds hand above head and snaps finger in the air) You see that?
• Blogger: Wha?
• MPAA: Next question.

Don’t believe me? Listen to the panel, but only if you’re a glutton for punishment. I’d point you to the video but it’s only five minutes long and is missing JD’s great mashup that he showed before the panel spoke because SXSW didn’t want to spend $20,000 to clear the rights for the media that he used.

Where was I? Got mesmerized by that thumb… Oh yeah. If you ever moderate a panel, ask a question, give an interview, or give a speech at SXSW, let me offer you some advice:

1. Remind people that when you give time for the audience to ask questions, you really should ask a question.
2. If you’re going to offer a comment, don’t unless it’s a question and relevant to the panel.
3. Berating the panelists is not nice and will not engender their kindness in return.
4. If you’re giving an interview or moderating a discussion and have never done so before, please take the time to practice. Inexperience shows.
5. If you’re the moderator, your job is to moderate and get the panel to talk. Don’t answer all the questions yourself.
6. If moderating a panel, do not invite only your friends to be on the panel.

Was SXSWi worthwhile? Sure was. Just make sure to put your bullshit filter on high before you go. And bring a bathing suit. And a spare liver. Photos and stories are next.

In case you’re thinking of going next year

If you’re not from Austin and think you’re going to the South by Southwest music festival, think again. 1300 bands in 5 days is a music lovers dream. Bands covering every music style from all around the world play fill nearly every bar in downtown Austin. To see any shows, you need either a badge or a wristband. People who pay the music conference fees (about $500) get in to any show they want by using their conference badge as admission.

Music fans can pay $125/$150/$175 to get a wristband, and that wristband will get you into the music shows as well. The price depends on when you buy your wristband; this year the first 2000 were $125, the next 2000 were $150, and any remaining ones were $175 (up from $110/$130/$150 last year). 4600 total wristbands were sold this year; the first 4000 sold in one day, two max per person. The remaining 600 were $175, cash only, and had to be worn immediately after purchase "to prevent scalping."

If you didn’t get a wristband through the normal channels, plenty of people were selling theirs online. There were at least 260 SXSW eBay wristband auctions and 300 Craigslist wristband sales listings, most of which sold for over face value. If you’re not from Austin or have a friend who’s willing to brave hours in line, then you can always get gouged by the scalpers since Texas has no anti-scalping laws.

I emailed the SXSW music people about this. They said that the wristbands are sold as a "courtesy" to Austinites in exchange for having their town invaded. Anyone not from Austin who can’t be at Waterloo Records on the magic day when wristbands go on sale is SOL. A coworker of mine got a less cordial letter — that SXSW is about the conference and not the fans. If you can’t get a wristband, then please pay the full music conference fees or shut the fuck up. Or words like that.

But that’s not the full extent of SXSW’s indifference to music fans. Buying a wristband does not guarantee you admission to the shows. People with badges always get in first, even if there’s 200 wristband wearing fans who have been waiting in line for the last three hours. In short, if you have a wristband, you’re probably going to spend a night wandering up and down 6th Street instead of listening to the music you paid for.

I don’t know about you, but paying a scalper $250 for a wristband because you couldn’t buy one in person isn’t very courteous; at least ten percent of all SXSW wristbands were sold online. Courteous is not selling only 4600 wristbands and then giving priority to the music execs who have badges paid for by their companies. SXSW is Austin’s premier music festival. It’s the party that put Austin on the map. And it’s fuckin crazy that they would treat music as such a commodity when it should really be about the fans.

One example will clear this up. I saw Sleater-Kinney play a kick ass show on Tuesday night. Admission was an SXSW badge — that is, only people who paid the conference fees could get in. When S-K asked the audience how many people are from Austin, maybe 10% cheered. And that doesn’t count the remaining 2/3 of the people who were busy having conversations and weren’t watching the show (read as: business people). If real S-K fans were in attendance, you wouldn’t be able to have a conversation over the music, dancing, and noise.

Every person who goes to Austin for SXSW should know that if you’re buying a wristband, you’re gambling with your money. In my opinion, you’re better off spending that money on 4 days of great meals and drinking. That’s what I did with the money I saved by not getting a wristband. And let me tell you — I had a better time than I would have if I had gone to those shows. And I didn’t even have to deal with the crazy SXSW traffic and parking.

There’s one last thing that’s been bothering me. It’s "South by Southwest, Inc." They’re a business. How much money are they making of everyone? Let’s go through this:

• Speakers don’t get paid to speak at the conference (though they do get a free badge)
• Bands don’t get paid to play at the festival (but they get free wristbands)
• People shell out hundreds of dollars for wristbands and badges
• Companies pay tens of thousands of dollars for SXSW sponsorships

Other than paying rent for Austin Convention Center, SXSW Inc must be making tons of money off this. Yeah, if you’re from SXSW Inc and are reading this, go ahead and refute this all you want. But all of us who know you’ve raised wristband and conference fees by 5-10% each year for the last few years know better. We’re getting screwed.

I loved the years I went to SXSW, but there’s no way I’ll ever go to the music festival unless someone else pays for it. Or if they have some kind of lottery system for purchasing wristbands along with online purchasing. And give wristbands the same priority as badges. And make sure that wristbands can’t be sold for more than face value.

Of course, a free platinum badge for next year would get me there as well… More on my SXSW and Austin experiences later.

A response from an unarmed alum

My Masters degree is from the School of Information Management and Systems (SIMS). I have a lot of love for SIMS — South Hall, the faculty, the staff, my former schoolmates. But part of love is being honest, and I’ve got some tough love for SIMS that I’ve wanted to get off my chest for a while. Not too long ago, Dean Anno Saxenian delivered her first State of the School address (big thanks to Joe for recording it). Between that, my experience at SIMS, conversations I’ve had with people, and some reflection, I now offer this response to the State of the School.

During my time there and even today, I could never explain what my degree represents or what SIMS does. I can explain my website, my company, my job, and even the scar in my eyebrow in one sentence, but for my life I can’t summarize SIMS in under seventy words or three sentences. One response to this problem is that SIMS has been renamed the UC Berkeley School of Information — the "iSchool" for short. To borrow from David Spade, "iSchool? Yeah, this is Apple. We want our little ‘i’ back." If there’s anything more zeitgeist than the iSchool then the new name would be the eSchool. Sure, I understand the need for branding; most of the schools in this discipline have now changed their name to "School of Information." But iSchool? Only if it comes with a free iPod.

I’m willing to forgive the poorly written mission statement which sounds more like a pitch to businesses than a school training future professionals and academics. However, I won’t forgive this explanation of the school’s "five areas of concentration." For those of us who went there, we know how those fields fit together, even if we only focused on one or two of those areas. For people who don’t know anything about information science, how can they possibly understand how "human computer interaction" fits together with "information economics and policy?" (Quite frankly, I can’t figure that one out myself.) The iSchool is a place where those parts fit together, but through the explanations on that page (and in practice) it seems more like five little schools than one big school.

Here’s my best attempt to explain the iSchool ne SIMS:

The goal of the UC Berkeley School of Information is to understand the nature of information in our society by combining the best practices of Computer Science, Business, Economics, Law, and Sociology. The result is an academic and professional program that educates the future leaders in technology development, management, and research — leaders who can use their knowledge to drive the changes that will become part of our everyday lives.

Yeah, it sounds marketing-ish, but at least it gets the point across — and I didn’t even bring up the PhD/Masters program division (more on that later). I still gotta try to make it one sentence shorter than twenty words.

Let me give you some specific examples about the iSchool’s lack of a coherent brand. Every Wednesday, the school hosts a guest speaker who gives a presentation about something related to the iSchool (many are listed here). While usually informative and interesting, the topics seem random and unrelated. People unfamiliar with the iSchool may think SIMS took people off the street and let them speak for two hours. Putting them under the umbrella of the iSchool isn’t enough to help people understand the connections between "Content Creation by Massively Distributed Collaboration" and "Cryptanalysis Machines through 1950." And for the love of all things holy, please find any guest speaker other than Brewster Kahle. A speech by Brewster about information storage and access at SIMS is as stale as starting a State of the Blah speech with the phrase "The state of the blah is good." (Sorry Anno and GWB — you should hire new speech writers.)

The other massive problem with the iSchool’s brand is how the faculty associate themselves with the iSchool. Most of our best faculty, including Hal Varian (information economics superstar), Pam Samuelson (information law superstar), and Doug Tygar (information security superstar), are professors in both the iSchool and another school (business/economics, law, and computer science respectively). I know writing "School of Information Management and Systems" takes up lots of space in an article, and especially "professor of business, economics, and information", so maybe these professors can now change over to the much more succinct "[professor name here], professor at the UC Berkeley School of Information." Nonetheless, citing "School of Information" still won’t make sense to most people. Maybe people will get the idea that one UC Berkeley Haas School professor got in his head — that SIMS is the place where they "smoke pot and talk to themselves." I may not have recalled that quote correctly, but the sentiment lingers around the iSchool like the smell of… pot?

To solve these problems, SIMS hired a marketing firm to help refine the school’s image. Parts of the firm’s results were leaked to students, including a swath of quotes from students, alumni, campus leaders, and "thought leaders." The quotes pointed to a lack of school identity, lack of knowledge about what we do, and generally a lack of publicity about the school’s existance. Given the tone, I think these comments were inadvertently made available to the students. Maybe part of the plan is to keep everyone unaware of the real state of the school.

All that being said, the iSchool is definitely on the right track. After years of complaining, they are putting more resources into recruiting and they’re revamping the curriculum. The curriculum has always been questionable from the perspective of the students. On one hand, I can understand the reason why the faculty thought encryption should be a required part of our education. But in practice, that knowledge does very little for me.

In the state of the school address, Anno took time to note that the curriculum changes were influenced by her conversations with people in the industry and by a project that completed two years ago called the SIMS corpus project . The results of the corpus project were, more or less, that there’s a difference between what SIMS students think SIMS is and how SIMS is marketed to the world (much like the marketing firm’s results… hm….). The results of that project accurately reflect the state of SIMS from two years ago. While I do agree with their conclusions, the SIMS faculty and staff need to take into account how the goals of the student body change over time. I know that my class and previous years are much more focused on a professional track, but future Masters classes seem more academically oriented.

As for getting jobs, I can’t tell you the amount of complaining we students had to make before we had a SIMS career fair. Our faculty have always stressed that the SIMS Masters degree is constructed to make us look very attractive to employers. If that’s true, then why didn’t all the Masters students have jobs lined up before graduation? Why are companies begging for more Berkeley MBAs and CS students but not iSchool students? How difficult is it to do a Google search for companies in Silicon Valley and send them an email asking if they’ll come in and interview some great students?

The people in the industry Anno referred to (whatever that industry is) may know what they want in SIMS graduates. However, only us alumni are truly fit to say what parts of our SIMS educations are relevant to our careers. I was especially frustrated when Anno didn’t mention alumni taking part in this re-evaluation of the SIMS curriculum. I really hope that was an oversight in her speech. How can you change the curriculum without consulting former students to see what parts helped them most and least? SIMS should take alumni accounts over those of current students and industry experts. While I have great respect for those other people, my fellow graduates and I are the ones shaping how SIMS is perceived in the world. You can show us some respect by letting us take part in the future of the school (and by not mailing us requests for donations every three months).

And now word on the split personality of the iSchool. It’s a great place for people to get their Masters degrees and drive technology changes in the world. Masters students become consultants, user interface designers, information architects, engineers, managers, and someday CIOs, CTOs, and CEOs. Some become PhD or law school students or even librarians. But SIMS also has a PhD program, and since there’s only been 6 PhDs conferred by SIMS, I can’t really say what they become. However I do know that the PhD curriculum is almost entirely academic (as in future professors) rather than professional (as in future managers). All my comments (except these) should be taken with respect to the Masters program.

The amount of PhD/Masters student interaction is… well… drinking, and even then I can’t recall PhDs attending the ritual Thirsty Thursday binge. Maybe they really are that busy, but if so then that still doesn’t explain the lack of PhD/Masters interaction in classes and research. Masters students are treated just like PhD students in terms of access to classes, professors, and so on. It’s just that PhD and Masters student are two very separate vocations at the iSchool. Appropriately, the door between the Masters’ work area and the PhD work area was almost always closed during my time there. And when it was open and we started talking, a bitter looking PhD student would come over and slam the door shut. Not exactly the nicest way to make friends…

The one part of Anno’s speech that stuck with me most is this: $100 million in five years. That’s right — she’s undertaking a mega fundraising campaign for the iSchool. There’s not enough Mitch Kapors, Brewster Kahles, or Bob Glushkos in the world to give that much money to the school (I dig the hat, Bob). And where is Anno going to find time to raise that money, solve the school’s image problem, and teach a class much less run the school? I wonder if she has an open day on her schedule in the next two months. The problems at SIMS run deep, and it’s going to take something other than $100 million to solve those problems.

I still can’t explain what I learned in the last two years, but I know this. SIMS students are the kind of people that…

• See problems before they happen. And when you ignore us and those problems happen, call us in to fix it and we’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again.
• Don’t need to be told what to do. You should ask us what to do, and we’ll tell you what we think. Then we’ll make sure it gets done, let you know how it went, and tell you how to do it better next time.
• Put the pieces together. Is there some new technology or trend that you think fits into your business? We probably already saw that link, figured out how to integrate it, and even started working on it.
• Get it. You don’t have to explain your problems twice, much less once. We speak business, technical, or social lingo. And if you don’t get it — trends, businesses, technologies — we can explain it to you.

And above all, SIMS students are the kind of people that you want working for you. You don’t want us working for your competitors because we know your business better than you do, and we’ll put you out of business before you can say, "How do they keep beating us to the punch every time?"

I really love SIMS… er… the iSchool. My time there has opened my eyes to the ties between technology, policy, sociology, and business. Nearly every time I have a conversation with an alum, we end up at a point where we say, "someone should build that." That’s the kind of people we are — innovators. And before you know it, our influence will be everywhere.

Still don’t get it? Think that someone from SIMS can help you with your problems? Feel free to email me.

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Update – Feb. 22, 2006, 9:57pm:  Comments are working again.  My apologies to anyong who was trying to write one and couldn’t.  Thanks to everyone who emailed me feedback about this rant.  I’ll write more on my post-SIMS experiences in the future.

and then she backpedals

After the DMCA was passed, rumors were abound that the entertainment and media industry heavily lobbied Congress to get the law passed, but those rumors were never substantiated. In a recent blog post, former RIAA head Hilary Rosen admitted that she expected influence and votes in return for her contributions. In her words:

"Damn straight when I gave a $1,000 or $2,000 to a lawmaker I wanted him to listen to my business proposition.  And when I helped organized an event that raised $50,000 or $100,000 you bet I expected their vote.  Why else do it?  Now you can argue that the Member of Congress already took that position and my colleagues and I were just showing our support for their position.  But how can the public really be sure of that?"

Wow. She broke the first rule of lobbying: Never admit you’re buying votes. And in her defense, I can’t be sure of the context of these comments. Was she speaking as a former RIAA head, as a US citizen and individual contributor, as a member of GLBT rights supporter Human Rights Campaign, or any other role she’s taken over the years.

All the same, these are damning comments coming from a former lobbyist. After talking about her role influencing laws, she turns a hard corner and makes the case for public financing of elections:

"Members of Congress are CONSUMED with raising money for their re-elections.  It has become a burden.  And no matter how cavalier they are about it in public, their hand wringing in private is certain.   And anyone, including lobbyists, who lessen that anxiety, is considered a better friend than those that don’t.  It is just a fact.  No lobbying reforms will change that fact.

…

The ONLY answer to all of this is public financing of elections.  Then lobbying becomes genuine “education” and relationships are built on respect and constituent interest.  It seems so obvious."

I’ve been a fan of campaign finance reform for years, but I know the reality of that happening is grim. And if you’re not convinced about the need for campaign finance reform, candidates raised around $4 billion in the 2004 election cycle — all that money for seats in public office. I can think of many great ways to spend $4 billion…

Despite her former job, I’m proud of Hilary’s admission and hope that other lobbyists admit the need for greater reform than what’s currently being proposed in Congress. I especially hope that some day Hilary will come clean about her role in the creation of the DMCA and other RIAA-friendly policies, and that will come in the form of an interview with me exclusive to my web site.

One thing at a time though… Keep an eye out for more Lobbyist Stories during the Abramoff fallout.

It’s probably in your living room right now

I’ve wanted to opine on the state of digital video sales on the Internet for some time, and thanks to a chat with a friend today I feel inspired to follow through with it. But before we get to video, you need to understand the state of music first.

No surprise here — Apple is the digital music industry. They’re over 80% of the market (Apple’s numbers, but I believe them), but not even that stat can capture Apple’s power. The rest of the digital content sales industry bases everything they do — pricing, marketing, new technologies — on Apple’s moves. For instance, we’re stuck with $0.99 songs and $2 videos until Apple changes their pricing — that’s how much power Apple has in the industry. (You can argue that Apple is at the whim of big media who set that pricing, but that doesn’t matter. The rest of the digital content industry won’t budge until Apple does.)

Video seemed like a natural progression from digital music sales. However, the experience of music listening versus video watching is very different. Music can be (and usually is) enjoyed alone — a pair of headphones and you can tune out the world to your Walkman, iPod, or digital media device of choice.

Video has two major differences. In most cases, people seek out collective watching experiences like at movie theaters or sports bars; there’s something about being part of an audience — sharing the experience. For all video, people like to enjoy movies, TV, sports, and other video content in the comfort of their homes on a big TV with big stereo.

And thus begins the rush to video on portable devices. Apple lagged behind other portable video offerings but had a store to go with the device when they launched. However, Apple did not have a TV offering that matched the bad-assness of the iTunes Music Store. Apple has Front Row and that’s about it. Therefore Apple didn’t immediately corner the video market, and so it’s still up for grabs.

For the reasons I just mentioned, portable devices are not the platform that will drive the future of digital video. Video is a living room or movie theater, big screen experience. Any video killer app has to start there. That’s why I say the killer video app is in the cable box. You can watch hundreds of channels from around the world, in multiple languages, and across every imaginable genre. Many boxes are DVRs and record on hard drives so you can watch them at any time. And On Demand shows and movies mean we can watch whatever we want right at that moment.

And so if Comcast, Time Warner, and the like can get their shit together, they can corner the digital video sales market in one fell swoop. Make videos purchasable and downloadable onto your DVR via the cable box, let people then download them onto a computer or iPod, and reap the profits. Besides Apple, cable companies are the only companies that have the infrastructure to do video right and do it right now. (Note Google was not in that sentence — they’re still behind Apple like everyone else). And remember, Apple has Front Row. I’ll bet it won’t be long until you can buy an Apple set top box either from Apple or your local cable company.

On a related note, TiVo has been ahead of the video curve for some time — recording shows, new advertising models, downloading to computers and iPods and PSPs, even will let users swap shows over the Internet (to the anger of every TV and movie company). TiVo has Live365 support (Internet streaming radio), and I don’t think it will end there. I’m willing to bet that TiVo incorporates a video store in their next version (or version following — I don’t keep up with TiVo version numbers). Kudos to them if they make that deal with Apple to integrate iTunes sales into TiVo. If TiVo dies (and sadly I believe that’s the most likely outcome) it will be because they didn’t make enough deals with the cable and satellite services. Why buy a TiVo and pay $10 a month when you can pay the cable company $5 a month for the same thing? How the mighty have fallen.

Because of TiVo and the dominance of cable and satellite DVRs, I think Apple doesn’t want to get into the set top box game right now. The only things that can bring Apple into the set top market are 1) a viable iTunes Movies Store (note Movies, more than just Video) and 2) CableCARD support so that anyone can use an Apple box with encrypted HDTV cable offerings. TiVo and Microsoft Media Center are planning CableCARD support soon too. If the cable companies can’t capitalize on digital video offerings, expect Microsoft, TiVo, Apple and others to jump on it and fast. The first computer CableCARD offerings should start appearing this year. I should add that the cable companies are tied to the big networks — Viacom, GE (NBC), and so on — making an already complicated landscape more complex… (Think of how the RIAA (may have) influenced Apple in their pricing, DRM, etc.)

The next two years will be highly transformative in the digital content business because of video. Video sales will not scale up for at least a year or two, and companies are only now getting the infrastructure in place to handle video. Any company that doesn’t migrate towards video will find themselves obsolete; the customers and the content will go elsewhere. Also the cost of building this video capability is very high, so companies are going to start pouring money into video. In either case, some companies will go bankrupt. The shakedown starts now.

How many companies will survive this? Dunno, but Napster looks like they might go soon . Despite the positive PR spin of their 500,000 users, I’m betting against them. By comparison, Rhapsody’s music subscription has around 1.3 million users and is making deals with high speed Internet providers to increase their subscription base. There’s Yahoo! too. Yahoo! is trying to undercut all the subscription services — well, tried to and then jacked their prices up . I don’t know how many users Yahoo has, but they’re using the music service as a loss leader — undercutting the competition and hoping that either the music subscription market grows or that competitors will close up shop.

Let’s talk mobile video too. Nobody wants mobile video. I love this study from the UK — 36% of people who have mobile TV watched it at home. Why? Because they wanted to compare the TV on their phone to a real TV set. I’m amazed they couldn’t figure that one out. Mobile TV is dead until the cost of that service and the phones that support it plummets. The kicker is that if everyone who could buy mobile data and video plans subscribed to them and used them, the cellular networks would overload. Can you hear me now?

Good.

Everyone — and I mean EVERYONE — wants a piece of the pie. Even the good old telephone companies are making deals with content providers to ensure rapid and high quality delivery of goods, at a cost of course. In short, a two-tiered Internet. Decent service for most, great service for those who pay — ‘those’ being consumers, companies, or anyone who will pay for it. While some folks argue that we really need this, others think it may bring about the demise of the Internet (no links here — I won’t give these Chicken Littles any cred). This is what happens when your Internet is regulated by market forces. These moves are especially relevant because… *drum roll* — phone companies want to start offering cable TV service too. Broadcast over IP. Like I said, everyone wants a piece of the pie. Everyone.

It’s a turbulent time to be in the digital content business. I’m sure there will be more fun stories to come, but at the least you’re now a little more informed about this complicated landscape. Keep an eye on video. What happens with video will single-handedly transform the Internet.