But this got me to thinking, “Are we required to have a next big thing?” Now I don’t say this in a negative context. Far from it, but rather, I wonder if the social space will take the route of other industries that became more fragmented as they matured.

I will use TV and Music as two examples. Think about television years ago, if you are older than 35, you may recall the first time a cable line was an option in your home. We went from the default of a few primary stations for entertainment to hundreds of options today.

The music business is another one, and I don’t mean the distribution. I am talking about the musicians! The odds of another act at the scale of U2, The Rolling Stones, or Madonna, are fading fast or have already sunset.

The actual genres for musicians today is broken out into more sub-genres than Lady GaGa has hairstyles. Just like the Burger King slogan, you can have music “your way.”  A few of my personal favorite names include… Shoegazing and Witch House (you can’t make this stuff).

If other big industries have moved this direction as they mature, why not social? Maybe the new landscape is more customized to my style, taste, community, etc.? Perhaps as awareness grows, people evolve into natural groupings and the right technology solutions are developed as a result. And yes, I would like a side of fries with that.

So, not to beat an analogy to death but it seems to me that the future of social may be more of a buffet style versus a prix fixe menu.

Here’s my reasoning…  EVERYONE. And I do mean EVERYONE loves having three-day weekends. Not to mention, who doesn’t want to stay up late and watch their local fireworks extravaganza? Or at a minimum, go all hillbilly in your backyard with several dozen of Black Cat’s finest.

As such, let’s reflect on this year’s schedule, shall we? The fourth falls on a Monday. Which means, for most of the world with a Monday-Friday gig, this means you may not be able to participate in any late night revelry if you have to get up early on Tuesday. Mayjah Bummah!

But if we celebrated on a Friday each year, woo hoo! A new annual long weekend emerges. One could plan, one could vacation, it would be grand!

I would even go out on a limb and say that it might even help the economy with all those weekend warriors building fences, or families traveling out of town to visit a theme park or the beach (embrace that inner Clark Griswold), all because they knew they would have three luxurious days of vacation the first weekend in July.

Think about it (logically) and don’t go getting all patriotic on a specific day. Lemmeno your thoughts.

p.s. Alternatively, our government could declare a national holiday one day each summer and we call it Bob Vila day. Right???

What else could be the explanation? Homelessness must not be an issue, everyone has found a job, and miraculously, ten feet of new ice must have formed around the north pole.

Will the breakdown of our civil society occur before climate change strangles us? Will we succumb to ridiculous content and news nobody can use? I think George Orwell had it all wrong. The government won’t control us…I think we are subordinating to an absolute deluge of mundane and totally creepified information.

Why are political figures covered in the news cycle similar to reality TV stars? I just can’t even bring myself to watch anything but the weather report these days. I am totally and utterly embarrassed that some executive producer of a cable news program said to one of his producers , “Make sure you scoop everyone else and get Larry Flynt to to talk about his job offer to Congressman Anthony Weiner.”

Now, I once met Larry when I worked on Roseanne’s daytime talk show. He’s a very smart and shrewd businessman. I don’t think I can blame him for capitalizing on the media moment. But please LA Times, don’t write about it. It’s like a car crash, just move along and let the police do their job.

Hey look, I am no snob when it comes to the world around me. I am just as big of fan of Khloe & Lamar’s show on E! as I am Fareed Zakaria’s GPS on CNN.

But I would really like to bring back our separation of church and state, or in this case, take me back to the good ole days when Paris Hilton and Pamela Anderson were trying to cover up their sex tapes. For some reason, that actually felt like an extension of their entertainment brand. This new fascination with political figures and their sordid personal lives is just creepy and shouldn’t have received more than a passing mention on the back page of a small regional DC paper.

Nothing to see here people…  move along.

That’s a relevant message for everyone. Nowadays, you can craft a story as short as a Tweet by @badbanana or as long as a ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ film (almost three hours in case you forgot).

Connecting with your audience is all about the (right) words and perhaps some lovely visuals.  Are you providing them with graphics that make sense? Or are you caught up in your own internal messaging leaving your readers scratching their heads? Investing in good copy is what sets your content apart. Everyone seems to think they can write pithy taglines and marketing pitches, but if we all had the writing chops of the Coen brothers… then All My Children would have folks like Clive Owen doing guest appearances.

There is a book based on ridiculous comments attributed to network executives called, “A Martian Wouldn’t Say That” and it really sums up how out of touch people can be about the sweat equity writers produce over every single word: "This is the best script for the The Addams Family we’ve read in a year," wrote one happy suit. "Attached are the notes for the rewrite.”

It is extremely hard to remember what it was like before we knew how to ride a bicycle. So keeping your content balanced to your audience is crucial because you have to tell yourself that you might not be the best judge of what’s required. How far removed are you from a real customer interaction? How often have you asked a family member to give you a gut check analysis of your content?

I love working with good storytellers and treat their work as art. So always remember before you ask your writer to, “make the joke funnier.” Just remember, they weren’t holding out on you and keeping the really good joke in their pocket.

Some examples of work I’ve found to be uniquely inspiring at telling simple and engaging stories:

• Lost without words
• The Crisis of Credit Visualized
• Bernard Pivot Questionnaire on the Actors Studio (a concept that is entertaining every single time)
• It’s unfortunately no longer live (pity that) but the Wall Street Journal produced a lovely series called Every Journey Needs a Journal. I just loved this work.

I was having a grumpy moment on a recent trip to IKEA. I know, I know, why on earth would someone be grumpy in an IKEA? I mean, it’s all perfectly manicured and they have everything you could ever want, and tons of things you never dreamed of like breakfast for $0.99. Oh yes, I have been to the store in Renton so early in the morning on a weekend that the discussion of stopping at their school-style cafeteria for a meal was considered. For realz…

IKEA’s perfectly groomed showrooms were even the inspiration for an online soap opera. Some super-fans setup an entire website ecosystem dedicated to people who remix IKEA products and then share the ideas. Totally true.

So again, why so grumpy? Well, let me explain…

Let’s say you are working on a remodel of a room or you just moved into a new house, you create a handy little list of the items you need and off you go to IKEA-Town (not to be confused with its cousin Funky). You breeze past the Ansultas, the Grundtals, and the Poang series where you find yourself needing to enter the dreaded warehouse.

Commence rant: Can someone explain to me why this chain has yet to adopt a sophisticated tracking system for their gazillion SKUs? If you dare ask a salesperson if they have an Akurum with the Adel White doors, they look it up on their computer and say it appears there is one in the warehouse. Huh? Excuse me? It’s Saturday and there are precisely twenty-seven thousand people in the store and they all look like they are searching for the 36” wide Akurum. What if I get all the way back there and it’s gone? This is where the blank salesperson stare enters the picture.

Huh, so let me get this straight, you guys run a bajillion dollar business  and you have yet to insert a fifteen cent RFID tag (jump to geek spec doc)  onto each box giving you the ability to tell me if Sally from Maple Valley is wandering around aisle 42 with my cabinet?

And to add insult to injury…  wait for it…. wait…  I have to stand in a long line to give you my money when I could just roll through a metal detector looking thingy and it scans all the items in my cart in about two seconds (note to el-Costco). Oh, you don’t have that technology? Well, you could. And I guarantee you that it would pay for itself because I would find myself with extra time on my hands allowing me to enjoy a $0.99 breakfast.

IKEA Non-RFID Warehouse: You’re On My List

We have artwork like this all around campus and even I, the wife of an artist, have found myself immune to the plethora o’paintings.

How many times a day do you overlook something that’s two inches from your nose? I always wonder how people appear to be so brilliant by observing and dissecting some of the most mundane subjects around us. We liken them as genius for sorting through the clutter (a la Seth Godin or Gary Vaynerchuk) and then provide us with their analysis. We swoon and buy their books.

But are they better at sorting through the chaos? Or are they just savvier at adjusting their lens? While I was traversing the building focusing on being the navigator, there was my husband… scanning the interior design. I suppose it’s like any other trait, if it doesn’t come to you naturally, you should be looking for some other tricks to help you adjust your lens.

So that does it… I’m driving a different route to work tomorrow. I shall read a new blog. I will find one new painting to admire and finally, make a point to spend a few more minutes chatting with someone I don’t normally interact with each day.

So he proceeds to tell me that he was reading in a book how cinnamon is very high in antioxidants and that you should consume one teaspoon each day. “Woo Hoo!” I say, “is Cinnabon still open?” (remind me to tell you about the crazy story of how the actual Cinnabon product came about.)

Ok, let’s keep going here…

So this cinnamon thing was the final recommended daily allowance that broke the camel’s back.

Are you kidding me people? Do you realize that if I consumed in one day all of the things touted in these studies as recommendations; I’d be as big as a house and that would defeat the purpose.

• Studies suggest antioxidants may protect against alzheimer’s
• Studies suggest wine pairs best with holiday feasts
• New scientific study suggests almonds may help reduce type 2 diabetes
• Studies suggest that eating chocolate may be good for your heart
• Coffee: Is it healthier than you think? (and with cinnamon, a double whammy!)
• Strawberries are perfect for curbing cardiovascular disease
• Large epidemiologic study supports brain power of fish in older people
• And now grass fed beef fights cancer! Looks like the fish might be sleeping with the fishes if this news spreads.
• I don’t want the little chickens to feel left out, and it looks like I don’t have to! It seems that they are fighting colon cancer
• Studies show that scientific studies are giving Tara a headache

I think you get the idea….

I wonder if anyone has added all of this up? How is the average person supposed to keep track of all these studies? Do other countries run this many studies on every single food, from every single food group? Or is this just an uh-merikan thing?

My advice, the next time you tune into the Today Show and you see an expert talking about the latest food study, shut off the television, turn around, and calmly walk out of the room and drive to the nearest Cinnabon. You may thank me later.

What truly resonated with me during the interview was his analysis of really great artwork.

“…what I think makes art – really great art – great, is that you can never quite sum it up in a sentence," Martin said. "You think you can, but once you have done that, the painting is then dead. It’s done.”

But doesn’t this concept transfer to other non-traditional forms of art and media? Isn’t this why we all fell in love with “LOST”, how we all wanted to know what “Ginger” was about (OK, the Segway and I’m dating myself again) or how we become giddy about a new social media venture or service? The idea of seeing something develop and evolve sets our imaginations on fire. We wish that we were the brains behind those ideas! We also don’t want these things to end… we write letters to TV Executives to keep a show on the air. We give cult status to people who create art and concepts like we’ve never seen before.

So if we finally get to the point where a concept is used like a verb, is it dead? If Matt Damon is truly opting out of the next Bourne movie…  is it over? When does the magic die and what can we learn from master painters who keep work intriguing to us hundreds of years after the last brushstroke was applied to the canvas? What exactly is the secret to Mona Lisa’s smile? Could we be say the same thing about our anticipation for the next move of Jack Bauer on ‘24’ after 157 seasons?

The next time you are developing an exciting new creative idea, think about some of the amazing artists who continue to capture our sense of wonder and delight every single day. Think about keeping your audience wanting more and how your idea will look on a future episode of CBS Sunday Morning!

I have a gripe with a milk delivery company.

I recently moved houses and of course did the usual work to move accounts, change addresses, etc. So I of course called up our milk delivery company and asked if they delivered to our new house. They said the did. Excellent.

Well, it was excellent until the driver didn’t show up when they said they would. The following week someone arrived on a different day announcing they were taking on the route as the other driver refused to drive an extra mile. Uhm…. first of all, really? And secondly, do I need the backstory?

So another couple of months went by and all was chugging along with a weekly milk delivery arriving every Thursday.

Until one day, out of the blue… the driver shows up and declares that he has decided against going out of his way for our account and the other driver still refuses to drive over to our house. He took the cute little milk storage container and away he went.

Wow… since when did milk delivery men start acting like a cartel?

Vito Andolini Corleone

No, wait… it gets better!

So then I call the company headquarters and ask what is going on. The gentleman I speak with sounds surprised and tells me he will look into this and call me back. He calls back the next day confirming what had gone down! That the drivers decided they didn’t want to drive a mile out of their way and our account was being canceled.

Wait, what? Just like that the milkmen in the cute little trucks painted in a cow print motif just kyboshed my business?

So I ask you… as you look at the components of your supply chain. Does one entity control all the cards? Can they make decisions and leave you helpless? Are they empowered to leave your customers with the taste of sour milk (sorry, couldn’t help myself).

Take a look around and ensure that you wear the pants. That you control your image, you control who gets what and when. Don’t leave the important decisions up to someone else whether by accident or well-intentioned design.

One of my favorite segments was, The Lame List ~or~ What’s Weak This Week and I dedicate all future rants and other items that wallow in lameness to its inspiration.

So what exactly is weak this week? People who create blogs but don’t allow you to subscribe to their content via a variety of methods. Folks, you drafted this content, you placed it out there for the world to consume. Provide an RSS feed, an email signup, and go the extra mile to publish your recent posts to Twitter.

For goodness sakes, work with me here. Just because you don’t like receiving email don’t go making that decision on my behalf. Be excited that someone wants to sign up for your blog and provide choices!

OK? Can you help a girl out and get on that right away?

Thanks a mill.

Me