Neatly stacked piles of paper, empty desks, desert desktops, I hate them with a vengeance. It simply never works out for me. I will try, organizing my desk, filing documents, doing creative things with Post-It’s, lining up my pencils. It will make me sneeze. It will give me a headache. It will not work. I will be setting there in that oasis of clean, ordered efficiency, helplessly fishing for inspiration. Organization, it gives me the creepiest nausea just thinking about it.

But, until now, they always made me do it, these goddesses of efficiency, these marvels of organized workspaces. Frowning from under perfectly groomed corporate hair, they will point out, slightly patronizing, how inefficient my cozy, dusty desk is, and that I would be better, faster and smarter if I just could keep it neatly organized.

Until now that is. No more. I have a new hero: Michael Schrage, a research fellow at MIT Sloan School’s Center for Digital Business . In a recent HBR report he said: “How much time do you spend each day getting better organized? Cut it in half. When it comes to investing time, thought and effort into productively organizing oneself, less is more. In fact, not only is less more, research suggests it may be faster, better and cheaper.”

Sounds like music to my ears! But it gets better:  “IBM researchers observed that email users who “searched” rather than set up files and folders for their correspondence typically found what they were looking for faster and with fewer errors. Time and overhead associated with creating and managing email folders were, effectively, a waste.”

I’m faster, better, cheaper. Schrage said it. So, get out of my office, stop frowning over my desk, and yes… I DO love my bookcase exactly as it is. I DIGG the icons on my desktop. Go get your stuff in disorder, try to keep up.

*happy sigh*

Curation. The word was hotter than a steaming Bhut Jolokia chili pepper in 2011, and many social media rainmakers  swept the concept around in presentations  and books with more enthusiasm than a hungry Chinese drummer  his chopsticks.
In a digital world where more content is being created per day than in the last two millennia, it becomes increasingly difficult to find relevant, trustworthy, and adequate content. Technically, the finding of good content and putting/pulling it together in a list is still aggregation. Curation requires more than that: it requires for the curator to give a value to it in the form of an appreciation, contextual scoping, summarizing or even re-editing.  But the term curation is so hot now; it will not be bound by semantics. 
A decade ago, people shared content in an easy understandable way: the notorious 1 percent created content by writing blog posts on Blogger and WordPress. Other people read it, and spread it through email. Spreading now happens through a plethora of networks, including Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. The syndication of authentic content through the Social Media platforms happens now mostly with one click,: the content appears out of context and out of frame in a different social ecosystem. A well thought-off piece of content on your blog might trigger a conversation within seconds on a Facebook page in Timbuktu, without the author even knowing or realizing it. Twitter’s Retweet , Google’s +1 and Facebook’s Like buttons propel astronomic amounts of data and content all over the social web, snowballing it into the darkest corners of the internet.

As a new blog platform, Tumblr added to this with a 1 button reblog function, enabling seamless content meshing.  Without even having to write a single character, people can thus populate complete news and content sites… The concepts creation and curation  watered down to redistribution…. often even without mentioning the original source.
Newer platforms like Pinterest, Snip.it, Storify, Scoop.it, Fab.com, Pearltrees, mySyndicaat, and Budlr make it easier for a whole generation of content re-distributors to personalize their favorite content from a timeline/stream approach into more personalized and structured board approach, where content can be fashionably “pinned” on the right “board”. In sharp contrast to Twitter, Facebook and Google+ where content is merciless bound to a fleeting timeline, the board like approach brings back memories of magazine style content consumption that a lot of people have missed online.  Even, fast aggregator tools for mobile content consumption as Zite and Flipboard swear by this magazine board style approach, turning screens into comfortable e-zines.
Yelp, twitter, Facebook  and Foursquare bring quick social comments on top of shared content and places, effectively adding a more credible flavor (as in adding opinion and value) to the pure aggregated content.
Social Local Mobile curation, where content and places are shared with a simple click, and value perception is added (often condensed in a line that is most probably shorter than a 140 characters ), will drive a lot of the social web in 2012. Social Local curation,  is as laser sharp, on the spot, on the go –thus mobile-, black and white , in your face and lightning fast as it gets…. Worse than a jury, social curation  judges quick and hard, the verdict relentlessly published on more online places than you can imagine.
Are you ready for it?

Remember Watson? The IBM computer that successfully beat the living beejezus out of an army of Jeopardy champions? Turns out most people think it’s kind of cute. Same thing happened when Deep Blue (still called Deep Thought in 1997) won over six chess games against world champion Garry Kasparov.

It’s cute that a machine beats a human. Just… don’t call it thought: that would be immensely disturbing. Deep Blue is fine Deep Thought is creepy. Watson is fine, as long as he looks like a set of silicon on steroids. It needs to stay a thing. Our psychological and ethical sensors seem to take all AI (artificial intelligence) nudging machines as ultimately creepy when they take a human form.

Admit… you would not mind losing to a chess computer. Chess computers are built to outperform and outsmart us. But, imagine a chess computer looking like this?

What people find most disturbing in Watson is not that it (he?) has tremendous linguo-analytic capabilities, parallel thinking power and advanced AI logarithms… but that it speaks. People would prefer it to just dot words on a screen.

Humanity my age and older does not want to see computers and interfaces become human, in any way. Younger generations however are completely fine with human/machine interaction that is stooled on humanoid processes. Computers with a human voice, looking like us – be it on screen or in real life- do not disturb the gen-Y’ers in any way. Can you imagine a Google interface that looks and talks like Hale Berry? We are not that far off! Watch how Kate interacts with virtual Milo in this Microsoft Kinect demo:

David Levy, PhD, goes further by showing that psychology has identified roughly a dozen basic reasons why people fall in love, “and almost all of them could apply to human-robot relationships. For instance, one thing that prompts people to fall in love are similarities in personality and knowledge, and all of this is programmable. Another reason people are more likely to fall in love is if they know the other person likes them, and that’s programmable too.” Levy predicts that robots will become so human-like in appearance, function and personality that many people will fall in love with them …

Maybe that is why grumpy old men like me do not want our gear to look too human. A robot looking like George Clooney, with my sparkling personality, and IBM Watson smart would simply be too hard to compete with!

Lately, I teach a lot of teams on how to integrate digital media better into their marketing and communication mix. And, lately I get a lot of people asking if it is a wise thing, making people better at skills that I could sell to them…
I remember a discussion just like that with my grandfather. He wanted me to understand it was way better to teach people to fish, than to give them a fish each day. This discussion came right after a long chat on why it was good to be entrepreneurial. Young, cocky and confused, I pointed my finger at the obvious flaw in his reasoning: surely, by teaching them to fish, you give away your knowledge, your unique selling proposition, your vision, your art, your wisdom? Once you teach them how to fish…. you’re done?
My grandfather just smiled, and bounced a pebble over the waves: “wrong”, he said: “Teach them how to fish…, only then will they understand the need to buy a boat.”

You know, I can predict the future. Every morning, I predict the day will end with dusk and dark. And, using my best Nostradamus skills, I predict a lot of New Age craziness on my favorite social networks this year. It will dwarf all talking of Michael Jackson’s death, Obama’s election, and Paris Hilton‘s underwear: the 21-12-12 frenzy.  The Mayan calendar,  you know, it maxes out end of this new year, when a huge astronomic line-up is due, and the Black Hole planet Nibiru will doom us all into the next solar maximum.  We’re doomed. We’re going to die.
Before you start maxing out your credit cards to go with a bang, hold your horses. First of all: Yes, the Long Count Calendar reaches the end of its round…. Only, it is not Mayan…  it’s Olmec.  Nowhere in Olmec or Mayan history is the end of the world mentioned. … but the end of an era.  After our calendar year 2011 was “up” and “over”, luckily we could start a new count in 2012. When the figures on the mileage counter of your car reach 99999 miles, it starts over again. So does the Olmec Long Count.  The ancient Mayas even thought it was the reason for a huge celebration…
There are even multiple references in as well Olmec as Mayan inscriptions referring to dates way beyond the turning of the long wheel (well, ellipse is more correct ). B’ak’tun 13  is not the end of time.  In fact, there are inscriptions leaping forward to October 21st 4772 AD.  We should be fine. For the moment. I think.
The cosmic line-up is another doomsday reference….  It’s been said that on 21.12.12 the Sun will lign up precisely with the Galactic Equator on the 2012 winter solstice, the precision and slight wobbling of the earth all thrown in a mix that predicts overheating of the earth’s electromagnetic capacities, prompt polar reverses and mayor catastrophes.  Too bad that neither the Olmec nor the Mayas refer anywhere to the Milky Way. No inscriptions, no tailored calendar.  Most unfortunately, even today, no one knows even remotely where the exact equator of the Galaxy is… the Galaxy still mostly being very much uncharted and unknown… what we do know is that the accepted equator did indeed  align most precisely  with the exact center of the Sun, only….. this occurred  already  on October 27, 1998.
So… I’m going out widely on one limp here: we will be fine! The world will not end, just yet. Trust me, I’m a consultant. If you DO fear 21.12.12… Porter Novelli, the company I work for, offers great crisis communications advice. Now is the time to get your end-of-life-as-we-know-it-messaging right. Contact me for end-of-time prices.  It might be your last chance to spend your budget wisely .

A marvelous 2012. It is a New Year, 366 days of blank canvas for you to fill in. Make it into a nice piece of art. May your most crazy wishes come true, may you encounter fun, friendship, starry nights, real coffee, pleasant moments, dreamy music, warm fires, plenty of luck, blue oceans, true love and crazy quarks… have a fab one!

In the old days, if I remember correctly, Christmas was truly a great moment. The radio would air Christmas songs for weeks in a row. As a kid I was marveled by the twinkling of the lights in my grandmothers Christmas tree, the colors of magnificent glass balls, the funny faces of a plethora of Father Christmases, and the sweet angel laughing from the very top of the tree.

And then, there where the carols. All the kids would sing “Silent Night”, or “Petit Papa Noel”. The more musically gifted ones (mostly everyone except me) would bring their flutes, their piano, hoboes, trumpets or clarinets. There would be music. And singing. And someone would tell a story. Very often it involved a shining star, a baby, some shepherds, and voices singing from heaven. All this, together with a nicely prepared duck would set the scene for a great night. A holy night. A night that would warm me from the inside, that made me feel warm, loved and comfy.  Most of that seems to have gone. Radio 1 shouts “Katie” from the Barenaked Ladies,  and “Thunder” from ACDC, with a week to go. It  forgets “the Little Drummer Boy” completely.

Thousands of Belgian people are spending over half a billion euro on mostly useless presents that will be sold on Ebay within hours. Still on the radio, people seem to be more worried about the number of glasses of alcohol they could drink without losing their driver licence than about world peace. Well, we have a government now. Kids will bring their Playmobiles, PSP’s, TV’s and DVD-players on Christmas Eve. I could not tell you if they can sing. Or play music, or tell stories.

Well, call me sentimental. Or old. Or an over-romantic sot. But I miss the old-style magic. A lot. I still am moved by the stardust, the angel hair, the secret smiling spirits in the decoration, the old stories. Can I wish you an Old-fashioned Christmas? And peace and harmony for you and your loved ones…

For those hardliners that still doubt if Santa really really exists: NORAD, the bi-national U.S.-Canadian military organization responsible for the aerospace and maritime defense of the United States and Canada uses top notch bleeding edge technology to track the whereabouts of the good man on  Santa’s Christmas Eve flight.

The tradition began in 1955 after a Colorado Springs-based Sears advertisement for children to call Santa misprinted the telephone number. Instead of reaching Santa, the phone number put kids through to the NORAD Commander-in-Chief’s operations “hotline.” The Director of Operations and his staff checked the world’s most powerful radar for indications of Santa making his way south from the North Pole. Children who called were given updates on his location, and a tradition was born. Now you can track Santa’s flight on Google Earth… Watch the video.

13 times. 13 times in 3 days, someone on stage @ #LeWeb11 referred to Steve Jobs. Not in the logical sense like “Steve did…” but in the more esoteric inquisitive way: “What Would Steve Do” or WWSD.

I think it is tragic. Jobs was a brilliant thinker, an entrepreneur, someone who would move mountains and seas to get his will done, his vision productized. If necessary, he would knock over some people who were in his way. Nothing and nobody would stand between him, and his vision… The very last thing Steve Jobs would ever have done is wasting precious energy and very costly time pondering on stage on what Jobs would do.

Wondering What Would Steve Do is about entrepreneurial a as buying a book “entrepreneurship for dummies”. Steve Jobs was Steven Jobs. He took his decisions in the context of his time, and stood by them as a man. He took some very unwise decisions, and even more decisions that proved to be excellent choices. His decisions however, will not drive your business very far, regardless of the countless WWSD presentations and countless official and officious memoires that are for sale right now.

I admired Jobs a lot. I’m reading his memoires. I will tell the future generations what a remarkable stubborn wise man he was at times. But I will not spend a minute more trying to figure out what Steve Would Have Done, and neither should you.

I know what Steve would have done hearing you asking what Steve would do. He would have hissed SUMO! And that, my friends, is Jobs’ shorthand for Shut Up And Move On.

Steve did his thing. Now it’s your turn…

I have something for brainy girls, so what can I say… deep down in me, I have a particular soft spot for this woman. Ariel Garten is about as close to the verge of helping machine-body integration as you can. Garten is a psychotherapist trained in Neuro-linguistic programming, and is on the frontlines of thought controlled computing.

If there ever was a gap between science, art, business and technology, Ariel has closed it. An avid hydrophone performer, her scientific work converts the workings of the mind into tangible solutions. Interaxon, Garten’s company explores how man and machine can interact better and faster.

Thought controlled computing was deemed a thing that emerged in bad Sci-Fi novels, but Ariel and her team drilled deep into neuro linguistic to make successful machine/mind interfaces. Granted, still far from thinking up your next email, but it is way closer than you think.

“Professional thought controlled computing is less than a decade away” states Garten: “then we will have reached the level of speech control we have now”.

Thought controlled computing will first have an impact in the medical field. Think about the endless possibilities for locked in , and paralyzed patients, or people with reduced mobility. But think beyond that. Think about a world, not that far away, where those annoying interfaces with machines just went away. No more crappy small keyboards, smudgy touchscreens, or drilling through menus… we will control our computers, home automation, phones, and all the smart devices around us through thought.

Not convinced? Watch Ariels demo… As she states eloquently: “Even the future has a expiring date”

The augmented reality of techno-magic

I admit, it must be this process of becoming a middle-(r)aged man. But I am blasé.  Going to many conferences, listening to the very core of ultimate thinkers, seeing the authors of my favorite books on stage… I love it. But I see that it becomes increasingly difficult to “wow” me, and that I become more and more critical on how people perform and behave.

What I miss most these days is freshness, passion, and a childish fire to share the excitement. If I look at my corporate world: what is the point in trying to get the message across if people, client and/or agency side, get not childishly on fire around a concept or an idea. I learned one thing:  If people in that mythic meeting room without windows are not nodding after a project is unveiled, if you do not see the smiles and twinkling eyes… the project will not fly. Projects need passion. Projects deserve passion. Passion and this innocent fire-within to share are the magic ingredients to make a good project sing, and rock. Passion is magic.

But like unicorns, real magic is hard to find these days. Most of us spend way too much time looking at PowerPoint slides that look like they are made by the Spanish Inquisition, and that are brought by the corporate equivalent of zombies: death inside, but still walking.

Some speakers at #LeWeb brought their keynotes and product demos with about as much passion as I can muster to set out the garbage in a hailstorm. In walks Marco Tempest. Tempest is not a corporate guy. He is a magician, bitten by modern technology. A guy re-inventing his world. A world that is ruled by silly card tricks, a million years old, and black-clad guys sawing curvy underdressed girls in two on stage.

Tempest has burning passion to spare. You see the people shifting from hanging in their chairs to full attention just as he walks in and smiles. A smile that awakes an audience, dear Marco, is worth a fortune.  And then he talks… captivating his audience every single second. Explaining on how he uses bleeding edge technology like augmented reality, crowdsourcing, camera tracking, interactive lighting and cross border social media to give his projects body and existence.

Marco awoke the boy in me. I’m including a video of Tempest, so you can judge for yourself. One sentence of his keynote will be my 2012 motto… “Believe in your magic. If you do not believe in your own magic, how do you expect other people to believe in you?”

That is why we do not see unicorns anymore… we stopped believing in them…

Dear Richard. We need to talk, really. It’s about that space thing of yours, Virgin Galactic. You know, when I was even younger than I am now, that is what I wanted to do. Become an astronaut, build a spaceship or two, and defend the earth against the baddies that could sneak past captain Kirk. But you know how it is, Richard, I had to change plans. Some doctor said you cannot save the planet if you are colorblind, so I did not build the spaceship either. There was not really a point, you see? So I am glad you did.

Richard, I was all excited when I saw Virgin Galactic would speak at LeWeb. I thought you would be there. But… you had better things to do, helicopter skiing with some supermodel, or having diner near Saturn with Kirk and Spock,  I do understand that. Priorities and so.

So, you did send a nice video, on how you wanted to socialize space, and boldly send tourists where they never went before. Trust me Richard, I almost bought a ticket. You were good, on message, touching, wise, smart, a bit funny, and with that little twinkle in your eyes that made the ladies in the audience melt. You totally captured 3300 people by showing of some pricy spaceships, and some manly talk about opening up space to people like me. And then… you stopped. No more video. But you had a back-up  Richard, you shipped George Whiteside, the CEO of Virgin Galactic to finish the presentation. He did, Richard, he did… he killed it.

Don’t ever do it again Richard, letting Whiteside do your presentation? Please? I’m sure he is smart, and nice, and good with numbers. And, he sees colors better than I do. But he is not an astronaut, he is not an adventurer, he is not a storyteller. He lost us Richard, all of us. Here is a man who calls your precious rockets and spaceships “vehicles”, and who murmured stuff that was utterly unexciting.  The melted girls froze up again Richard! Men, who wanted to become firefighters and astronauts before coming to #LeWeb, left the auditorium to get some lukewarm coffee Richard. It was just pathetically boring.  Vehicles… faut le faire as they say in France.

I feel guilty Richard, that I did not make those spaceships myself. I left you with the dirty work. Let me help you… I’m prepared to show George Whiteside how to present better, and how to say rocket in a sexy way. For free, of course Richard, just take me on one of those Intergalactic flights… so we can talk it over.

Yours sincerely,

Danny

In the dark ages, I studied educational sciences and agogics, the science of social interaction. How people learn, how group dynamics influence behavior and how individuals interact with their environment has intrigued me ever since.

I was baffled to hear Deb Roy speak @ #LeWeb11. When his little baby boy was born, Roy and his wife took a courageous decision: they would move into a house that would record every second of their lives, sound and video. The house has sound recording equipment, and cameras all over, and is packed with the most spectacular processing and storage power MIT can provide.

Deb Roy first mission was a misleading simple one, he wanted to understand how language is assimilated by humans. Lan­guage is without a shadow of a doubt one of the defin­ing fea­tures of the human species. By collecting busloads of data on how his child learns in the nat­u­ral habitat of its home, Roy wants to track the process.  Cameras record where the family moves, microphones record sounds…all this is captured, labeled and data mined. The system is able to produce the whole sequence from the baby sound “gaga” to say­ing “water.” The system can also find correlations between assimilating words and vocabulary, and visual impressions. Roy was able to prove that words that are more often associated with an image are quicker absorbed by the child.

By recording every single bit of data, scrubbing the data from unwanted ballast, correctly labeling it, and building intuitive learn­ing algo­rithms to process, analyze and under­stand the patterns Roy is now able to visualize these patterns, interpret them, and close on understanding.

On top of the obvious hearing/learning connection, Roy can prove a definite social con­text to learn­ing, up to a point where his analytic tools can predict how fast a word will be learned, based on the movements in the house, and the number of times the child is exposed to the word.

Armed with this amazing technology, Roy started up Bluefin Lab, convinced that the same prin­ci­ples of lin­guis­tic analy­sis, visualization and predictive interpretation can be applied to new areas, such as TV and the social web. Bluefin Lab  is now not only index­ing over 200  US net­works, 200,000 shows and 2 mil­lion ads per month; it is also connecting all the online conversations gen­er­ated by 20 mil­lion peo­ple around these indexed items,  .

The associations, learnings and predictive formulas that Roy is able to distill out of his system  of cognitive machines are mindboggling, and I am convinced that we’re only at the beginning of social datamining. This will in earnest change the way we deal with “influence” and “metrics”

Tell me what you did when you said it… and I’ll predict what you will do next…

You just know he is different. Put Karl Lagerfeld on the central stage of a global web event as #LeWeb11, and he fits in as nicely as a yellow rubber duck in a bowl of strawberries. Lagerfeld is different. Even a seasoned host as Loic Lemeur, organizer of LeWeb does not really know how to handle him.

Lagerfeld does not come with a manual. He is who he is, and even that is not for sure. Evidence shows he is 78, but he claims no-one knows who he is, and where or when he was born. Lagerfeld… is a big cultivated mystery dressed in spotless black.  He is the flamboyant head designer and creative director for the prestigious fashion house Chanel. Karl Lagerfeld has his own label fashion house, and owns a publishing house. He creates the collections for the Italian house Fendi, is a cult star photographer and filmmaker. At 78, he seems more energetic than a bunch of teenagers on mushrooms, a third his age.

At 78, Lagerfeld thinks email is for old people, it is just annoying him. “I do not do email, it’s useless” he said: “ if I need to read, to deal with all those questions, I cannot create, not concentrate, not shine. I do work, you know?”.  Lagerfeld is also harsh on modern technology: “no machine or program produces creativity. Humans do. Machines are just machines, a help, nothing to bash about. The genius is within us.”

And then… Lagerfeld opens his magic box. He produces 4 iPhones out of his suitcase. Each has a selected circle of people who know that number. Lagerfeld shows his iPods, with his playlists full of favorite music “I paid for this music. I do not download illegally, artists need to live.” And from behind his smoky sunglasses, he throws in a small bombshell: “I also have 20 to 30 iPads. I use them to sketch. Before I worked on sketchbooks, more and more I create on iPad” And he shows the audience a sketch he made of Steve Jobs, and playfully makes a cartoon of himself. Live. Onstage. On an iPad. Not bad for a 78 year old old-timer.

His favorite tool is the trash-bin. “Throw away the 95 percent of your work that s mediocre or bad, concentrate on the good stuff. The winning stuff.”  And on social connections: “it is not because you are heavily connected that you are well connected”.  There is clearly more about Lagerfeld than meets the eye. “Be yourself, be your own brand, you are your own ambassador. Do not look shabby or poorly, style is priceless. But always, always be true to yourself. Pretending is plain ridiculous.”

Lagerfeld was captivating. An old creative genius, out of his bottle, out of his fashion world, stealing the complete attention of 3300 nerdy techy social media kids. “Fashion is not what you see on the catwalk. It is what people wear”.

Lagerfeld will launch a new label in January called ‘Karl’. Net-a-Porter will launch this line exclusively online from January 25th 2012. Lagerfeld is convinced he brings his collection closer to the public this way. “Shopping is social, online shopping is a social activity, you share your experience through the social web.” He is right, especially with prices hovering around 150 euro. But how do you keep up when you have 8 decades on the counter?

“I have my eyes hidden behind sunglasses” he says: “But they are always open. Always. I observe. I see. I link the dots. That is how I learn. See, even at my age I need to adapt to the world. I’m sorry, but the world does not adapt to me. I have no respect for status quo: change things, push forward, be  crazy enough to change the world… Do it!”

“I am a strange child” says Lagerfeld: “I am down to earth, but just not grounded to this world…”

Karl Lagerfeld is more hybrid  than most people half his age… I learned a lot more from Lagerfeld, than from some so-called guru’s today…

Respect…

Corporate life, you have to love it. Working in a consultancy environment, with clients that are dictated by the whims of Wall street is, well, interesting. Nearing the end of the year you spend your time waiting for Godot. Budgets erode away quicker than Artic ice in a microwave, projects get postponed, to that magic point where they emerge into the next year, maybe. Political games are played harder, sensitivities emerge more sensitive, accentuated by hourly rates, geographic location, gender, diversity, language, level, connections, hope and early Christmas carols. Decisions are phrased, rephrased, polished, re-polished, vanish into the waiting room of stuff about to happen, before they join next year’s budgets, maybe… where they will be postponed, eventually. Plans are penciled out in meeting rooms to do better, faster, quicker, with more ROI, and will be discussed in conference calls, next week, before Christmas, before Easter, but soon, really.

Q4 is the time where corporate world waits for Godot. Vladimir meets Estragon, Didi meets Dodo. The modus is waiting, rephrasing, and ironing it out in splendid PowerPoints. Meeting rooms are hard to get in December. Windows get steamy on the inside, wet on the outside.

It reminds me of J.P., best personal coach I ever met. Ex Airborne trooper, hard as nails with a hernia. Cold as frozen carbon. Liquid Freon in the veins. Eyes that burn through armor. I still can hear the gasps when we first saw his foot, or better what was left of it. J.P. amputated three toes while climbing a silly mountain in Alaska. They were frozen, going gangrene. The toes that is, not the mountain. J.P.’s wisdom is simple. You roll the dice, cut through the bone, and let it bleed. You kill it before it kills you. Don’t wait for a new year. Sometimes, you have to hammer nice.

I really miss J.P. Especially in Q4’s waiting room called Godot…

Charming spot

On Twitter, 140 characters make up a message. That’s not much and some businesses, especially small to medium-sized ones, still think Twitter is a no-go. They say it’s too short, too uncontrollable and too time-consuming.

At first glance, Twitter might indeed not seem an ideal communication tool, but in just a couple of years it has proved the world that sometimes “short” is powerful. From its genesis as a basic online SMS service, it has evolved into a world-encompassing communication tool; Twitter users generate more than 200 million tweets per day, and the microsite often beats the most sturdy news platsforms in the world with speed and accuracy. And don’t forget that close to 750 million searches are performed on Twitter every single day, making it a toup-four search engine.

Communicating in 140 characters can be extremely tricky, and when done in an unconsidered or trigger-happy way, a lot of damage to brand and reputation can be done in a heartbeat. Here are 10 ways that brands risk ruining their reputation on Twitter and, ultimately, across their marketplace:

1. You have the wrong handle. A good Twitter name should be short, catchy, simple and recognizable, and refer to your brand.

2. You’re nobody except an egg on a blue background. If you do not tell people who you are and what you stand for, you’ll never reap ROI. Use your profile to show what it is you do and what you stand for. Include your location and website, and remember to use the C3 rule: be catchy, concise and complete. Also know that the default Twitter background with the impersonal “egghead” avatar is not the road to success. Dress up the bride. Stand out. Be sparkling, inventive, inviting.

3. You’re a robot or a zombie. Communicating from a corporate pedestal and hiding behind a shiny logo gets you nowhere. People want to interact with people, not with a brand. This is the engagement part of social media; So mention in the profile who is tweeting on behalf of your brand. You’ll be amazed how much more interaction is triggered by having real people represent your brand.

4. You’re selling. If you only communicate about your beloved product all the time, people will unfollow you faster than you can press “send.” People are not interested in your sales talk or marketing language. They are interested in finding useful content, hearing smart viewpoints and getting helpful tips.

5. You’re boring. People follow you because they think you might share good information with them, or because they want to build a relationship with you or your brand. So give ‘em what you want. As a rule of thumb, divide your tweets in three buckets, one-third for conversing with people, one-third for spreading great content that others brought to you and one-third for bringing great original content to the platform. This optimal mix will allow you to boost followers, connect and engage.

6. You’re shy. Staying in your corner will not win any business or Twitter goodwill. Growing a Twitter account is hard work, and it requires commitment and a willingness to connect. The easiest way to get followers is to follow people. So search for and follow relevant accounts. So search for and follow relevant accounts. If you find someone interesting, check out who he or she is following and add some of these folks to your lists too.

7. You follow spambots and prostitutes. Tell me who you follow and I will tell you who you are, so be careful. When people start following you, it’s common courtesy to follow them back. That’s how a relationship gets started. Be smart about it though. Make sure you filter out the spammers, spambots, prostitutes and random bizarre people.

8. You don’t keep your house clean. Once in a month, do some housekeeping. Look to see if you’re following the right people back and if you answered all messages. Decide whether or not to keep people on your follow list if they are not following you. Ask yourself if the accounts you do follow are relevant in your Twitter stream. If not, unfollow them. Also, accounts that haven’t tweeted in 90 days are usually stone dead, so unfollow.

9. You’re rude. Yes, you have the right to disagree with other people and have your own opinion. What you don’t have is a reason to be rude or impolite. Deal with the message, not with the messenger, and disagree in a pleasant style.

10. You’re lazy. Remember that point earlier about unfollowing accounts that are dead? You’ll be unfollowed if you aren’t a regular tweeter. And remember that once you starte engaging, you’re in it for the long run and should never stop. Your social capital builds with every single tweet.

BONUS TIP: never tweet when angry, drunk, in love, upset, confused or high on emotion. What you put out there cannot be taken back.

(Originally published in PRNews’ Digital PR Guidebook, by Danny Devriendt , buy it here http://www.prnewsonline.com/store/57.html?hq_e=el&hq_m=2327704&hq_l=1&hq_v=b80c18002f ; republished on http://pnintelligentdialogue.be/?p=1675)

Kurzweil’s singularity. Intriguing stuff. It made Peter Hinssen almost nauseous at the last #TEDxBrussels conference. Too much Singularity is bad for you, everybody knows that. It’s a bit scary, talking about this almost magic moment in the not-so-distant future where man and machine will finally merge, kind of…

While most speakers could comfortably maintain an intelligent helicopter approach, Rob Spence was different. He is, well, an eyeborg. Six years ago, a stupid shooting incident destroyed one of his eyes. Rather than feeling sorry, or permanently mimicking one-eyed Jack Sparrow, he opted for filling that empty spot. Literally. With a camera. Equipped with a wireless video camera prosthetic in his right eye socket, Spence moves now in the world as a human camera. An Eyeborg. It gives Rob Spencer extensive international press attention. Time Magazine recognized his eye as one of the 50 best inventions of the year. Spence speaks all over the world.

Spencer looked a happy man. As happy as some people I know with ear prosthesis that help them hear. Or some people with pacemakers that make them live. There seems to be more and more machinery in humans around us. Do some microchips, sensors, titanium plates or bolts make us less human?

The moral question will be what to do with it. I, for one, look forward to that debate… it will be a hefty one. Do we define “human” as the body, the mind, or both. What do you think? Think carefully .

I love presenting, I love speaking. Seeing others doing it well is a joy. Peter Hinssen blew away the audience @ #TEDxBrussels. You’ll like it…

This one… just moved me. For all of you who love the power of words…