Hold on to your butts. It’s about to get personal-ish. I’m a full-time, not-so-single dad, dating an incredible, not-so-single mama. Last year, I took an awesome job at a fantastic company. Last month I walked away from that steady paycheck into the great unknown of grab-n-growl freelancing. This is the part where other people in similar situations talk about how crazy that decision sounds. How scary it is. How they took some time off to reflect. To think. And then they came to some eureka moment, and discovered their purpose in life. Know what I did? Nothing (except take care of my kids). No deep thoughts about my purpose in life. No angst-ridden, sad Seth on a park bench. Why? Didn’t need to. Happiness, purpose, and meaning aren’t some mythical creatures out there waiting for us to find them. We have to make them. I’m going to make music. And some leather bags. And a music venue (maybe). And do some marketing strategy & copywriting. Above all, though, I’m gonna make some humans (my kids). They’re pretty rad already, but we’re not done with them yet.

What’re you going to make?

I love education. But I hate teaching. Far too often we confuse the two, and I think that’s a big reason the US education system is the battered & bruised behemoth it is. Well, that and demagoguery by pusillanimous politicians.

If you look at how the US education system evolved, there are striking similarities to how our workforce evolved. The industrial revolution turned farmers with broad skill sets into incredibly specialized factory workers. Schooling moved from truly individualized curriculum in the living room, to a rigid, standardized, curriculum-driven classroom. Mass production meant less variation. Mass education meant we could educate more kids in a standardized system, as long as they fit in within the system. It meant less tolerance for “abnormal” kids.

Back in the day, Horace Mann thought that “public education was the best way to turn the nation’s unruly children into disciplined, judicious republican citizens.” He thought a standardized approach to education would level the playing field for kids from all socioeconomic backgrounds. Give them all a fair shot at the American dream. Lofty goal. A goal I agree with. But what happened was factory farms and factory education.

And it’s not that people haven’t been trying to make reforms– they have. For a long time. Back in the early 1900′s, John Dewey was pushing the idea of “Progressive Education.” He argued (rightly, I think) for a more balanced approach to education. According to Wikipedia, “The problem was that Dewey and the other progressive theorists encountered a highly bureaucratic system of school administration that in general was not receptive to new methods.” That rings true today, too. Massive, entrenched institutions are structured to preserve the status quo.

But the status quo isn’t working. Obviously. Something needs to change. Just like Dewey, and Maria Montessori before him, I’m arguing for a more balanced approach to education. Rather than teacher-centric, vs. content-centric, vs. student-centric, it ought to be more collaborative. Maria Montessori put it best: “Education should no longer be mostly imparting of knowledge, but must take a new path, seeking the release of human potentialities.” There are people pushing for this today. Marshall Kirkpatrick wrote an article on RWW about how How YouTube is Part of a Global Economic Transformation. From the article: “It has become increasingly evident that to realize human potential in today’s societies and economies, lifelong learning is required, not just an initial period of formal schooling.” Hell yes.

Now, I’m not suggesting that the US education system has failed. Or that it’s terrible. Or that I hate teachers and textbooks. On the contrary. I think that on the whole, we’ve tried our best. But we can do better. Because in our attempt to give our national treasures an equal shot at success, we forgot that “equal” doesn’t mean they should be treated like so much carbon in a diamond factory.

Our children are not factory-made. Each has unique strengths and weaknesses. Each has unique experiences that will inform their learning. If we can minimize the demagoguery and leverage some of the amazing technologies (iPads, serious games, the friggin internet) to create mass-customized learning, we can help each of our precious stones polish themselves into the gem they can be.

In the good ol’ days, I could’ve signed a deal with some huge record label, borrowed a ridiculous amount of money from them to record those songs, and end up putting 2 good songs, 5 mediocre songs, and 3 terrible songs on an album.

Then, if anybody bought my 2/5/3 (good/boring/bad)  album, the retailer takes a cut, the distributor takes a cut, the label takes a cut and repays themselves (with loan-shark-level interest) that fat loan I took to record. Then, if there’s anything left, I’d get about $0.50 an album. That’s $0.05 per song, for you non-math types. Seems like an awful lot of hullaballoo for me to earn $0.05 per song.

As a musician, I don’t need those companies who are trying to preserve a bloated, dead business model by litigating their customers into obedience. I don’t need those companies who are trying to preserve a bloated, dead business model by censoring the Internet with asinine, heavy-handed legislation like the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA).

I don’t need that huge loan to record some songs anymore. I can do it with my computer and less than $500 worth of gear in my basement.

People who pirate music are actually just an under-served market segment. Music pirating is the market telling me it doesn’t value recorded music the way it used to. It’s my job as a business owner, then, to shift my unit of value to something the market is willing to pay for.

If you’d like to learn more, watch the video below. Then, once you’re sufficiently pissed off, do something about it.

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

In the US, there are  tens of millions of searches every month for things related to social marketing, social media marketing, and the like. But, if you look at Google Trends, it also looks like that search traffic may have peaked (for now, anyway). So have searches for Facebook, by the way. What that tells me is that, as George Colony from Forrester Research put it at Le Web (to paraphrase), social is running out of people and it’s running out of hours. So, here are my 3 predictions about the future of social media and social marketing:

1. Social won’t die. But it will become a zombie mutant. When the printing press came along, written stories didn’t die, they mutated. When TV came around, radio didn’t die, it mutated. People are predicting “the end of social” and I think what they actually mean is “the end of social as we know it.”
2. You won’t care about social media anymore. “Social” will become a parallel offering– not a differentiator. Oh wait. That already happened– even this novelty “flatulence gift underwear” company has a “social” presence.
3. I lied, I only have two predictions, but who wants to read a post titled “2 Predictions About the Future of Social”?
4. Psych! Here you go, Prediction 3 about the future of social: in 12 months, all the predictions made by talking heads in fancy suits skinny jeans, flannel shirts, and stocking caps, will look like the intro to the Jetsons. Speaking of which, where is my flying car?

Ok, here’s the point: calling something social doesn’t make it social. Having a Facebook page or a Twitter account doesn’t make your brand social. On the other hand, we humans are social people, so everything is social already. The trick is figuring out what part of your product/service/experience we humans actually care about, and building a clear, compelling, consistent story around that. Easy.

Facebook has begun the The Inevitable Letdown. It was innovative. It was cool. It was fun. But Zuckerberg is so damned paranoid that some little startup is going to deflate his behemoth, that he’s clearly created a reactive culture. They are focusing on competitors more than customers (users). Let me count the ways:

1. Geolocation & checkins: Facebook saw Foursquare and its ilk getting users to produce vast amounts of time & location data. Data that could be harvested to create revenue streams from partners & advertisers. Voila, Facebook Places. People predicted it was the death sentence for all the “smaller” players. Facebook would essentially be the schoolyard bully and squash them (by sitting on them, I guess). What they didn’t consider is who the average foursquare user is, and how they compare to the average Facebook user. The average Facebook user plays Farmville and believes Facebook will start charging unless they paste a stupid message (from their other stupid friends) to their wall. Ok, that’s a little harsh. How about this instead: the average Facebook user has a real life outside the interwebs, and they see Facebook as relatively passive entertainment experience. Checking in to a Place is not passive.
2. Privacy and Google+: Ok. Most of Facebook’s moves lately [cough]Timeline[/cough] are me-too responses to Google Plus. Privacy, particularly. Sure, Facebook introduced new privacy control tools. But they don’t want you to be private. Their privacy strategy is a classic example of Confusopoly.
3. Photo filters and Instagram: I can has filters? Apps like Hipstamatic and Instagram make even the most bland pic of a sleeping cat look artsy and fun. They’re kind of like autotune, but for pictures. Facebook wants in on this trend. Adding filters to photo uploads means more time spent on Facebook. Wich means more ad revenue. Here’s what I think they’re missing: using a third party app let’s me share to places other than Facebook– Twitter, Flickr, etc.

The list actually goes on and on. But here’s the point: sure, understanding your competition helps you avoid getting sucker punched by some startup. But if all you’re doing is dodging punches, you’ll inevitably lose sight of the one thing you have in common with your competitors: the customer. If you truly understand your customers’ trials and triumphs, you’ll be able to satisfy their unarticulated needs. And then the competition is chasing you!

Understanding your competitors is good. Understanding your customer is better.

I saw this from a friend on Facebook today:

Remember when teachers, public employees, Planned Parenthood, NPR and PBS crashed the stock market, wiped out half of our 401Ks, took trillions in TARP money, spilled oil in the Gulf of Mexico, gave themselves billions in bonuses, and paid no taxes?
Yeah, me neither.

I understand the sentiment. And I agree. But I don’t like it. It furthers the us vs. them mentality that’s plaguing our culture. Creating and demonizing an “other” is good for trying to differentiate yourself in an election. Well, that and bumper stickers. But it’s terrible for actually trying to live your life. Because life isn’t us vs. them– there is only us. Most of the time.

Extremes make for good story arcs. But stories– with heroes and villains– are just how we try to make sense of the chaos of our existence after the fact. We look back at the series of events that got us here (wherever “here” is), and find patterns. We like patterns– they’re shortcuts. They require less cognitive effort than decoding, analyzing, categorizing, and acting on every stimulus life throws at us. So, it’s easier for us to look back at the fucked up things that happened over the course of this Great Recession and demonize the greedy bastards that caused it.

We’re the victims, after all, right? Yes. And no. Yes, because we truly were damaged when our nest eggs got scrambled. Yes because some people will never have as much as they did prior. No, because our insatiable appetite for More– more house, more car, more More– meant we consumed as much as we could at the cheapest price possible. Corporations– and the very intelligent imbeciles on executive teams and boards of directors– are no different than Pavlov’s Dogs: reward them for making cheap shit and they’ll make even More cheap shit. Reward them for subsidizing our consumption by reducing their costs however they can, and they’ll keep doing it. Then, of course, we lament when “our” jobs– manufacturing, sofware development, whatever– are outsourced to cheaper labor markets. We’re at fault because we were just as greedy as those Wall Street assholes. We’re at fault– all of us– because we forgot that More doesn’t equal better. It might be comforting to tell a binary story of good vs. evil– a story of us vs. them– in simple black & white terms.

But life isn’t black & white. It’s grayscale.

1. Break a complex subject into
2. Three arbitrary & meaningless steps
3. Title your post “How To [insert complex subject] In 3 Easy Steps”
4. Always include a fourth “bonus” step. E.g.: Profit! Eat a donut! or (my fave) Skip to Ma Lou My Darlin!

See? It’s simple. Like this stick man walking up some stairs.