Pictures simply don’t do justice to the pure joy flowing through New Orleans after the Super Bowl Sunday night. More pictures and videos on Flickr

Mere moments after the Super Bowl ended, out on Bourbon St…

Later, joining a “who dat” second line through the French Quarter…

Many more pictures and video from pre- and post-game Super Bowl Sunday are on my Flickr.

Quoting myself from part 1 of an interview I did with Ellen Boughn about photography, business models, social media, and how to “be a hub”. Part 2 (to be posted later) will be about how photographers can market authentically by creating stories and “embedding humanity” into their businesses.

From Part 1 of an interview I did with Ellen Boughn about photography, business models and social media, “Be a Hub” – Taylor Davidson:

“The economics of new technologies gave anyone the tools to create, but didn’t guarantee that they would profit from creating. While the activity is in the long tail, profits flow to the aggregators [of] the tail.”

… Taylor points out that the economics of the hub have been changed by many factors, one of which is social media. He explains that electronic word of mouth has given power to smaller hubs. By being a specialty destination, your website/blog can become the hub for that subject or story. You can operate in smaller niches but you MUST be the hub in the niche. You must be really good at (your niche). You must be the top choice in the subject.

“Being a hub” is a grand idea, but how can one create a hub? Start by telling stories and creating conversations to connect people:

“I have a strong belief that successful businesses need to be more like people. Individuals want to connect to the people behind a business.” He suggests that a photographer that only shows photos on his/her website is missing opportunities to connect with their audience. “People want to see more than a series of images. Photographers should use all the tools available to them to tell a story. Be a hub of information about not just yourself and your work but about a story that you have created.”

On that note, I’m a huge fan of efforts like Help-Portrait (led by Jeremy Cowart) and Images Without Borders. But more on that later.

While it’s important to focus your time, energy, passion to create stories, experiences and assets that build on each other, it’s important to test and learn as you build:

“Don’t put yourself in a situation where the only experiments you try are the ones that could wipe you out. Try little experiments. Try one a day, one a week even if the burden of mid-career responsibilities keep you focused on getting through the demands of running an established business. These small experiences will sometimes create opportunities. (But don’t expect them all to.)”

Part 2, about how photographers can market authentically by creating stories and “embedding humanity” into their businesses, will be posted later.

Until then, dip into the deep end of posts about the evolving business models in the photography industry.

Thoughts from a year chasing split ends, random projects and fractured priorities, from IgniteNOLA, Feb 1, 2010.

Below are the slides from a little talk at IgniteNOLA on Feb 1, 2010, about how to stop doing things that don’t matter. In short, follow your passion.

Better in person, I hope…

Links to the items screen-captured in the presentation:

• Slide 2: Social capital isn’t new, but everything about it is.
• Slide 3: A Freemium Life
• Slide 4: Tweet to request help to prep for this presentation
• Slide 5: Making Myself Uncomfortable (A Zombie’s Journey)
• Slide 6: How to Pack for a Nomadic Life (and the 79 things I packed).
• Slide 7: A little known fact: I’m actually a baseball geek.
• Slide 8: 34 Posts on Evolving Business Models in the Photography Industry
• Slide 9: Slide from How to use Twitter to Market your Photography
• Slide 10: John-John music video, by Jeremy Yuricek
• Slide 11: Photo book on Blurb, INDIA, by Taylor Davidson
• Slide 12: A “Personal API” could be a modularized, standardized interface for collaboration.
• Slide 13: Workspaces and Aging, on IDEO blog
• Slide 14: Comments by Taylor Davidson, on Backtype
• Slide 15: The Drive-By Route, Dec 2008 to May 2009
• Slide 16: How to Fail: 25 Secrets Learned through Failure
• Slide 17: How can we “shape serendipity”?
• Slide 18: Slide from How to use Twitter to market your photography
• Slide 19: Slide from Trends in Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital from SXSW 2009
• Slide 20: Slide from Making Yourself Uncomfortable from Tribecon

Also:

• The view from the stage, at the start of my little talk.

Try it. And tell me how it goes.

The past couple days I’ve been struck by calls and emails from people asking me for advice on matters business and personal, asking me for my thoughts, advice and counsel.

I mean, who am I?

But seriously, it’s meant a lot to me.

Thus, Friday morning I asked:

Why? To try to fix a couple things. Like: what happens when the markets and metrics for attention, value and impact break down? And: how can we figure out the impact we have if the traditional markets fail us, if we don’t get feedback, if nobody tells us?

The simple goal: to tell people they matter, to help give them the verve and confidence necessary to push uphill, to help them fight through the dips, to help them keep moving forward.

The much-larger goal: to help make meaning “pay”.

Clicks, page views, followers, these are the metrics we see everyday, but they aren’t enough.

That’s why I like what Jen and Frank are doing with thankfulfor; that’s why I care about supporting people living lives “too meaningful to ignore” *; that’s why I proposed an idea a couple weeks ago:

Let’s take the idea one step forward. Pick out one person “living a life too cool to ignore”, and tell them. Reach out to one person that you follow online everyday but have never said hello to. And share with me the results, privately or publicly. I’m sincerely interested in what happens.

Try it. And tell me how it goes.

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* Yes, I’m switching from saying “too cool to ignore” to “too meaningful to ignore”. Just seems more powerful.

According to friends here in New Orleans, you don’t go to Mardi Gras, Mardi Gras comes to you.

Red evenings, Yuki, New Orleans, Louisiana

Tomorrow’s Krewe du Vieux was mentioned in this week’s NOLAlicious newsletter as an obvious thing to do this weekend, and earlier this week Molly Reid told one small story from a past Krewe du Vieux parade that only increased my interest:

… the sub-krewe’s theme would be “We All Live in a Jell-O Shot Machine, ” and krewe members would be dressed as Jell-O shots. They’d also be dispensing Jell-O shots and whipped cream straight out of the can to parade-goers.

… Let me tell you, if you have never witnessed a continuous throng of people all shouting variations of, “JELL-O! JELL-OOOOOOOOO! I LOVE JELL-O! GIMME SOME JELL-OOOOOOO!” you have not lived.

I’ve been to Mardi Gras five times as a tourist, but I’m viewing year one as a local as a new opportunity, a chance to see the festivals, parades and traditions with fresh eyes, a thoughtful mind and an open heart, ready to dive in, follow the parades, ride in a float, dance in the balls, contemplating how I’m going to pace my body, mind and heart, fully expecting to swoon early, often, easy.

New Orleans, I’m ready for Mardi Gras. I think.

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Photo above, reblogged from NOLAlicious tumblr.

“Where meaning meets business” is a simple construct that can help us allocate our money, time, attention and love; why should we do things that don’t matter?

Capitalistic Lives, Jacksonville, Florida

Roger Martin, in the Harvard Business Review, The Age of Customer Capitalism:

Modern capitalism can be broken down into two major eras. The first, managerial capitalism, began in 1932 and was defined by the then radical notion that firms ought to have professional management. The second, shareholder value capitalism, began in 1976. Its governing premise is that the purpose of every corporation should be to maximize shareholders’ wealth. If firms pursue this goal, the thinking goes, both shareholders and society will benefit. This is a tragically flawed premise, and it is time we abandoned it and made the shift to a third era: customer-driven capitalism.

… If the shareholders were all you cared about, would focusing on increasing shareholder value be the best way to make sure they benefited?

I believe that the answer to this question is also no. To create shareholder value, as I will show, you should instead aim to maximize customer satisfaction.

… Wait a minute, you might say, why not have a dual objective of maximizing both customer satisfaction and shareholder value? Unfortunately, as optimization theory maintains, there is no way to simultaneously optimize two different things—that is, to maximize two desirable variables or minimize two undesirable variables. It is possible to maximize shareholder value given a minimum hurdle for customer satisfaction, or to maximize customer satisfaction given a minimum hurdle for shareholder value appreciation, but you can’t maximize both.

While Roger and I agree that a company’s ultimate success is derived by their ability to acquire and maintain enough paying customers to cover the costs to run their operations, I have one quibble: it’s impossible to separate shareholder value and customer satisfaction, because in they are derived from the same actions: people allocating their money, time, attention and love.

Thinking of “customer capitalism” and “shareholder capitalism” as two separate organizing principles exposes us the artificial lines we have drawn between what businesses do and how and why people spend money, time, attention and love.

We were taught that “customer satisfaction” and “shareholder value” were two separate things, but that exposes the root of the problem: they aren’t.

Instead of trying to shift from maximizing one principle over the other, why don’t we work to integrate the two principles? Why not work to maximize the whole, rather than the sum of its parts?

And since metrics guide behavior, instead of creating metrics attempting to measure each principle independently, analyzing and measuring the web of linkages and impacts of one principle on the other, why don’t we work to develop metrics based on an integrated view of customer satisfaction and shareholder value?

Umair believes that every organization must learn to fight the war on consumption. Why? Because thinking of people as consumers creates a layer of abstraction that obscures how organizations address the mission-critical need to make consumption more meaningful.

People aren’t simply consumers: money is just one thing people spend; aren’t time, attention, passion and love far more meaningful?

This is why I care about how to allocate passion, how to develop relatable events and experiences as “marketing campaigns” *, how to do “cool stuff” that can become “meaningful stuff”, why ethics matter and how to embed humanity into business.

But more than anything else, when creating, supporting and investing in businesses, this is what I think about: does allocating my money, time, attention or love towards this help “meaning meet business”?

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* An example of turning a relatable experience into a campaign? Using your birthday as a vehicle for giving rather than receiving. And helping and highlighting others that do the same.