Welcome to The Very Daily Weblog of Joshua Blankenship

1. W
2. American Craft
3. I.D.
4. Vanity Fair
5. (British) Esquire

Honorable time machine-dependent mention: Dwell (from ‘02—late ‘06)

The fine folks from New Attitude are live blogging and posting audio from the main sessions at their site. I especially enjoyed last night’s The Troubled Soul: God’s Word and Our Feelings from C.J. Mahaney and this morning’s What’s the Point?: Growing in Vision for Diligent Study from Eric Simmons.

I’d be posting more frequently, but the entire city of Louisville has conspired against internet-loving people on a travel budget, and I refuse to pay anyone $10 a day just to browse the internets. You can catch occasional conference insights and random ephemera via twitter.com/blankenship. (Most of which, thus far, has been ranting about the first sentence in this paragraph. Maybe don’t catch all that.)

It’s just past the time I’m normally waking up and I’ve been somewhat coherent for at least fours hours now. Mrs. Blankenship and I are currently sitting in the C Concourse of the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport awaiting our delayed connection flight to Louisville, KY. She’s reading the National Geographic issue about China and I’m wondering if it would be weird to eat Qdoba before 9:00am.

We’re on our way to the New Attitude conference for a few days to soak up some teaching from a few pastors/teachers (John Piper, Mark Dever, C.J. Mahaney and others) and meet a few dotcomrades in person for the first time.

I’m also excited to see the Louisville Slugger Museum, The Speed Art Museum, Kentucky Museum of Art & Craft (do you see a theme?), and all the tasty typographical treats Matthew Wahl has cooked up for the conference, eat some good local food, meet lots of new people, and generally enjoy some vacation with my wife in a city neither of us have visited before.

I also hear that the Kentucky Reggae Festival is this weekend. I bet that would be a riot.

1. When people use Twitter to pimp new blog posts
2. Anything that disrespects the user by taking away their control
3. Omission of generous line-height on text-heavy sites
4. Anonymity
5. Blogs

Hugh McLeod runs a site called Gaping Void where he posts (occasionally NSFW) cartoons drawn on the back of business cards and discusses social media, the web, and a few other marketing projects.

I’ve become interested in his take on what he refers to as “social objects” (and defines in depth as “sharing devices.”) These are the things social networks are built around.

He posts his cartoons as hi-res downloads that are free to use for personal use, and they make the perfect case study of the social object theory.

As a “Social Object”, a cartoon that one can actually print out and hang on their cube wall, or put on a t-shirt, a business card etc is far more powerful and useful than say, YET ONE MORE IMAGE you can find on the internet and e-mail en masse to your friends.
— Free Cartoons as Social Objects

He goes on to discuss that this sort of open policy makes him money “indirectly” by connecting him with other people/organizations and building relationships around these social objects.

I don’t create the online cartoons as “products” to be sold. I create the cartoons as “Social Objects”, i.e. “Sharing Devices” that help me to build relationships with. As with all things, the REAL value comes from the human relationships that are built AROUND the social object, not the object in itself.

I think we make the mistake of believing our [product, service, message, church, cause, etc.] is intrinsically valuable and will therefor spread because of its internally-perceived awesomeness. “Well, WE think it’s important, therefor anyone smart will too, right?”

But things aren’t valuable. At least not in a sustainable sense. Everything depreciates, everything becomes irrelevant over time. No matter what we do, if we want it to last, to have impact and meaning, we need to admit that the human interaction(s) that organically occur around shared experiences are VASTLY more important than any thing we create.

If it can’t be shared, if socialization can’t happen around it, then why bother?

[When shoe company] Zappos hires new employees, it provides a four-week training period that immerses them in the company’s strategy, culture, and obsession with customers…After a week or so in this immersive experience…[Zappos] says to its newest employees: “If you quit today, we will pay you for the amount of time you’ve worked, plus we will offer you a $1,000 bonus.” [Because]…if you’re willing to take the company up on the offer, you obviously don’t have the sense of commitment they are looking for.
— William C. Taylor, Why Zappos Pays New Employees to Quit—And You Should Too

From my very satisfied customer’s point-of-view, Zappos is an incredible company. What’s even more fascinating to see is their corporate culture functioning in non-standard ways like the quoted policy, and fully embracing technology like Twitter (they have over 300 employees using Twitter) in order to connect directly with customers.

I love you with the passion of 1,000 suns, but I won’t be able to come see you on your tour stop in Atlanta. The tickets for good seats are $105+fees each and that’s just dumb.

PEHDSTCKJMBA,
Joshua