HIT Piece 08.25.2015

I am a live streaming video fan in general and a Meerkat partisan in particular.

You probably haven’t heard of the mobile application Meerkat, though its two more popular cousins, Blab.im and Periscope.tv are getting a lot of attention from tech bloggers and online magazines. The Meerkat app “blew up” at SXSW this year because of some shenanigans with the Twitter API, which you can read about here[link]. Part of this is because live streaming video is popular right now as a way to immediately connect with public events and personalities. The other part of this is because live streaming video is the next step in the continuing disassembling of television as a content delivery mechanism.

I like the Meerkat app for many, many reasons. The top two are:

The app integrates seamlessly with Twitter and you can publicize your Meerkat streams to your Twitter followers to grow your audience on two platforms.
The app also allows you to invite others onto your stream to either “host” a show with your viewers or to be interviewed by the host of the “show.”

Now, if you are a peacebuilder in any of the conflict management spaces—from facilitation to coaching to mediation to negotiation—you can probably already see the benefits of live streaming video to grow your business practice, develop a niche following and to grow your brand.

Here are a few thoughts I have around this new intersection between peacebuilders, marketing and technology:

Live streaming a mediation or coaching session to your Twitter/Facebook followers and fans might not be the best way to ensure client confidentiality and build trust, but you might have some clients who would be willing to have their lives placed on view for you to showcase what you do in real time. This would work particularly well if those clients are connected to you as a peacebuilder online.

Live streaming samples of you working (i.e. “This is what a session looks like,” “This is me explaining my philosophy and approach to peace,” etc., etc.) would be a way to immediately get feedback from potential clients and customers around tone, approach and other areas, rather than the one sided bubble of blog writing. There’s already a person on Meerkat who streams his Tai Chi sessions and talks to followers as he’s performing.

Live streaming to build a brand presence requires maintaining the same habits that you have to in order to blog daily: Show up on schedule, on time and engage effectively. This is easier (and harder) with live video than with the more controlled spaces of Youtube, Vine, SnapChat video or any other service that allows you to edit your presentation before uploading the content. With live streaming, it happens as it happens. However, this can be a way to schedule time with another peacebuilder and build an “Oprah” type show via Meerkat that goes on the air everyday and builds a sense of consistency and relationship with viewers.

These are just three ideas I have after messing around with the Meerkat app and researching live streaming video for the last few months. I am sure that some enterprising and entrepreneurial peacebuilder will use this platform (or Blab or Periscope) to begin to explore the possibilities of live streaming for peace.

If not, maybe I’ll host my own show on Meerkat….

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: jsorrells@hsconsultingandtraining.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

HIT Piece 08.18.2015 – #outrage

There’s an awful lot of fake outrage out there.

In the parlance of political writing—whether of the right or the left—the vast majority of what the web based and traditional media decides is worthy of reporting on and what isn’t, is driven by what type of emotional response it can generate from people.

The old catch phrase from the 80’s “If it bleeds, it leads” seems to have transformed in our own micro media saturated day to “If it creates a feeling of outrage in the reader, then it gets clicks.”

It’s not as catchy or as rhythmic, but you get the point.

The fact of the matter is, relevant, interesting, and tough decisions are made every day regarding conflicting desires that impact people in real ways: in their homes, their jobs, their civic and religious lives, and many other realms. These decisions deserve to be reported on via the web. I remember the great promise of content on the web—that it would be factual, long form, considered and consistent—rather than what it has turned out to be—clickbaity trash designed to engender an emotional response in a reader.

I have succumbed to the siren song as well—I am a writer, a content creator, a publisher, a marketer and a consumer. The key question in battling the rise—and spread—of fake outrage, is “What’s my role in perpetuating the problem?”

I’m going to struggle with this for the next year and when I have an answer, I’ll write about it here.

-Peace Be With You All-

HIT Piece 08.04.2015 – The Prevent Defense

The prevent defense, used as a response to an opponent, has always been around, from the start of human conflict all the way to today’s social media fueled fires.

The prevent defense is a tactic that relies on being a little ahead—winning either realistically, rhetorically, or in any other way you can think of that human beings think of “being ahead”—and then doing the bare minimum to stay ahead of your erstwhile opponent.

There are two main flaws in the prevent defense, and we see them both play out in sports situations, where the tactic is the most obvious to everybody in the crowd, or politics, where the tactic is the most muddied:

Your erstwhile opponent has the option to not go along with your way of looking at the field of battle, and to be aggressive in pursuing their own outcome, their own “win” if you will.
You have the opportunity to become lazy and apathetic; to coast on your past victory and dominance in a particular space, which breeds hubris, vanity, and ultimately, a loss at the hands of a more aggressive opponent with less to lose.

Why am I talking about the prevent defense?

One of the trends I have noticed increasingly, is the idea out there, that all of the major innovations, discoveries and progressions that would benefit humanity, spirituality and our material world, have already been discovered, plumbed and exploited. And all that’s left is for humanity to wallow in the detritus of exploitation that has been left behind.

The other trend that I’ve noticed is a nostalgia (even I have experienced it, heck, I was watching Firing Line videos on YouTube last night) for a past that seemed more monolithic, more streamlined, and less complicated. This is, of course, a misnomer. The past was as complicated to the people living in it then, as the present is complicated to people living in it now.

The final trend that I’ve noticed is the growing acceptance of mob justice solutions, intimidation tactics, “doxing” of opponents, and other negative “resolutions” that seem easy, but in reality create more complications. With allof these approaches, simplification is honored over understanding, and context is lost in favor of the crowd.

The inundation of noise, information, and knowledge, but not real wisdom, has served only to stratify and create false division, fake outrage, shortened attention spans, a lack of patience and an inability to balance current orthodoxy with long held principles.

Many people, unable to articulate these feelings in words are playing prevent defense, hoping that the inundation won’t come to their door, visit their family, or impact them too much.

But the prevent defense has never really worked, and I for one, am not going to rely on it.

-Peace Be With You All-

HIT Piece 07.14.2015

I was sitting with another consultant the other day and was having a conversation.

In passing, he happened to mention—after hearing my response to his question about how long I’ve been in business with HSCT—that I have actually succeeded.

I paused for a moment, and then corrected his term “succeeded” by saying “No, I think I’ve just survived.”

The line between success and survival is thin. And it’s perceptional, based on who’s looking at the line—and the place where they’re standing.

-Peace Be With You All-

HIT Piece 07.07.15

I don’t know what lies in the clearing at the end of the path.

But I do know that the way forward is through content: written, audio, visual. Content is the oil that greases the wheels toward success, rather than failure.

People often ask me, “Where do you want to end up at the end of Human Services Consulting and Training?” Or, “How are you going to scale this?”

I don’t know whether I am going to register as a minority and women owned business. I have no idea.

What I do know is that the work (not the jobs, by the way) will continue. And by putting one step in front of the other, I will get to the clearing at the end of the path.

My answer to both of those other questions, by the way, is “I don’t know,” and “I’ll scale when I’m good and ready.”

Thanks!

-Peace Be With You All-

HIT Piece 06.30.2015

“He’s so full of himself.”

“He brought a NYCity attitude up here to Binghamton and that’s not going to work here.”

“He was totally a commercial the entire time.”

“His intro was too long. He talked too much about himself.”

And that’s the feedback that was written down.

The formalized feedback process for workshops, seminars, in-person trainings and other events is based off of an old model that hybridizes the immediate feedback a stand-up comedian receives (either the audience claps or boos) and the more long distance feedback that politicians and actors receive (either the audience buys a ticket, or doesn’t).

Both methods of giving feedback to a presenter, or speaker, are gradually fading away in an era of immediacy with social media, but that’s with crowds that are majority 18-34. The crowds that I still present to, train in front of and receive feedback from (like that written up there in those quotes) is still in the 35-55 year old age group.

I was going to write today’s HIT Piece about the endgame for this entrepreneurial project I’ve got going, but the feedback issue has been growing in two ways:

Audience members now feel comfortable enough with me (which I guess means that there’s a sense of rapport now) where they feel as though they can come up to me and say almost anything. Like the gentlemen that approached me and said “f—k you” to me after a workshop I did recently.

Audience members now feel comfortable enough to give feedback in the forms of praise and support; or, critique and condemnation. Critique and condemnation are easy to give. Praise and support fade over time when immediacy of feedback (“I’m really excited about you, how can I help you now!” “Well, you can get me hired someplace else.” “…oh…ok…”) looks to the receiver like a call for more business.

I don’t know what the way forward is out of this, but I have more insight now into why it’s easier (not better) for celebrities, politicians, comedians and other performers to put up walls (psychically, socially, culturally, economically, emotionally, etc.) between themselves and the audience—after the show is over.

-Peace Be With You All-

HIT Piece 06.23.2015

I have been traveling around New York state for the last three to four weeks pretty consistently and I’ve got a few thoughts:

The amazing natural beauty and landscapes of this state reflect what the original colonists saw. I can’t imagine what this state must have looked like to the original colonists who settled here from England, Germany, Scotland and even Denmark.

And no, I’m not forgetting that the Native Indigenous People were here first.

There are very real possibilities in the state of New York, but some of those possibilities have been squandered by well meaning, but misguided people. I am not opposed to the people who have decided to live in the most populous city in this country, but there are millions and millions of other people who deserve to have access, and the possibility of growth, who are in places not in New York City.

The false dichotomy—and false conflict—between those who are within (the “city”) and those who are without (“upstate”) is the most pointless and meaningless division in the history of this state. And it is easily overcome through being open to learning, innovation and true, genuine, scary growth.

I’ve got some other observations, but this is supposed to be short.

-Peace Be With You All-

HIT Piece 06.16.2015

When something is missed that should have been obvious, that feels like a monumental failure.

What feels worse than that is when something is missed that should have been obvious, and no one tells the person who missed it about the mistake.

The feeling that no one is paying attention enough to point out the flaws in the design, is the same feeling that Steve Martin had playing to an empty room early in his career.

Online however, there are plenty of empty rooms, with people talking in them, but the people talking can’t see that the room is empty, the audience is slipping out and the lights are slowly being clicked off, one by one.

This is the real reason many people don’t try to do stand-up (or start blogging) but would rather attend a stand-up show, or casually consume blog content. There’s no risk of failure or shame in consumption.

There’s also no risk of humiliation, because no one read, or listened, closely enough in the first place to point out constructive criticism.

-Peace Be With You All-

HIT Piece 06.02.2015

“So, we’ve decided that we’re not going to move forward with you in the fall. We’re going in a different direction and your services are no longer required. But thanks!”

Now, in any other circumstances, this would seem like a firing. A rejection of process, approach perspective, philosophy and even self.

But, sitting in that room and hearing the news, after working for many months on this project, asking hard questions of the organization and the people in it, and taking the hard answers and making even harder recommendations, a feeling of peace flooded over me.

Most people would frame that in terms such as “delusional” or maybe even “not facing reality.”

But in the world of entrepreneurship, this is the normal way of affairs. And in the world of consulting, coaching and even corporate training, no matter how much you may love the client, you can’t love the project more than the client does.

-Peace Be With You All-

HIT Piece 4.21.2015

I am not a fan of meaningless meetings.

Part of the reason that I started this gig was to go to fewer meetings, not more.

Part of the reason that meetings are so prevalent is that human beings are social animals, and even in the workplace, being social takes a priority, sometimes over the task at hand.

Social capital is exchanged in meetings through preening, posturing, political jockeying and other means.

There are more immediate and meaningful ways to do this, but meetings are the one way that everyone has agreed upon to take care of this innate social need.

So maybe, I should say, I am not a fan of meetings that are meaningless for me.

-Peace Be With You All-