The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual by Christopher Lock et. al.

Written in 1999, and published in 2000, this book was an appropriate introduction to a world-changing decade. It’s a collection of “95 theses” explaining how authentic, global, person-to-person communication would transform the way businesses interact with their customers. Through e-mail, message boards, and blogs (implied though not mentioned), the power behind information distribution would soon be shifting from that of large corporations, to that of individuals – human beings. My favorite thesis: “Markets are Conversations.” This was an exciting book for me to read because it was clear this power shift could change much more than just how business and customers interacted – it was the signal that soon the truth would always be more clear.

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell

This 2000 book was another fitting introduction to a decade because it presented the phenomena that would be the champions of the decade. The “Connectors” and “Mavens” – through blogs, message boards, and social networking sites – would soon be seeing more power to expand their vast networks of acquaintences and validate their expertise; making them the most sought after customers in companies quests to make their products go “viral.” Of course, it would all really depend on the “Stickiness Factor” of said products. This book was important to me not only because it helped me understand how ideas spread, but I found Malcom Gladwell’s style of writing and packaging of concepts to be inspirational, and helpful to observe.

Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen

With the amount of information a person encountered in a given day rising exponentially, a new way of working was needed. In 2002, David Allen published this book, outlining a system of how to route all of that stimuli into a system that allows one to prioritize, delegate, and DO all of the things that need to be done. It was followed with religious fervor, and the whole concept behind the book came to be known as “GTD.” This book spawned countless GTD-related blogs, software tools, and physical-world hacks such as The Hipster PDA Keychain. This was an important book for me because it responded to the pain that I – and I think everyone – felt with managing a tidal wave of information, and the now seemingly endless possibilities that each day presented.

Four Hour Work Week: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, & Join the New Rich by Tim Ferriss

By virtue of our changed ways of accessing, interacting with, and managing information – the way we interacted with our physical world changed as well. With asynchronous communication techonologies such as e-mail and IM – now accessible from the palm of your hand, suddenly the whole concept of needing to be at a particular place at a particular time, just to make a living, started to look more antiquated. By use of the 80/20 rule, outsourcing, and running small tests with technologies like AdWords, Tim Ferriss’s 2007 book showed the world just how far one could stretch their potential. One can automate their income, freeing up time to pursue their passions, all while traveling the world. The bombastic title turned off many people; but I believe this book will stand as a marker in a revolutionary change in the way we work. This was an important book to me because it validated and made more clear just what it was about 9-5 that didn’t make any sense to me.

The Ultimate Question: Driving Good Profits & True Growth by Fred Reichheld

With a good portion of power now undeniably within the grip of the individual, organizations had to change the way they did business. This 2006 book outlined a concept, called Net Promoter Score, that has become a standard metric in today’s top organizations. By asking “The Ultimate Question” of your customers, “how likely are you to recommend X to a friend?” companies can now identify their “promoters” and “detractors,” and link a metric to a customer’s experience in any given interaction with their company. NPS leaders, such as Enterprise Rent-A-Car, innovate on customer experience from the bottom up – distributing ideas developed by the employees that have the closest contact with the customer. This was an important book for me because it was exciting to see how the internet had changed the way top companies viewed their customers.

Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things by William McDonough & Michael Braungart

With most of the basic needs of the American middle class met, and easier and cheaper sharing of information, the environment was a hard issue to ignore. This 2002 book exposed not only the broken industrial system that was (and still is) harming our planet and our health, but the faults in our attempts to fix them (for example, recycling is really “downcycling” – degrading materials each time). Braungart and McDonough promote a Cradle to Cradle concept that employs waste-free systems that make optimal use of “technical nutrients” and “biological nutrients.” This was an important read to me not only because I found it to be practical and realistic approach to a cleaner and healthier environment; but it introduced me to thought frameworks that can be used in other areas to design an integrated lifestyle.

The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan

Yet another book whose popularity was made possible by a shift in power, The Omnivore’s Dilemma called in to question our relationship with one of the most essential – yet underconsidered – sources of life: the food we eat. While America owes much of its success to our access to cheap food, the side-effects are emerging. Food safety issues, obesity, diabetes, and a lack of transparency of where our food comes from are all products of industrial agriculture and public policy that is enmeshed with our apathy toward our relationship with food. In this 2006 book, Michael Pollan dissects the sources of our food to reveal a lack of biodiversity, cultural apathy, and a broken political system. Since publishing this book, Pollan has published In Defense of Food, and appeared in the movie Food, Inc. and concern for the source of our food has become a mainstream topic. This book was important to me because it opened my eyes to the link between what I eat, and how I feel.

What is the What? by Dave Eggers

Through 9/11, the internet, and increased gobal travel, this decade brought us more awareness of the people with whom we share this world, and brought life to the inequities that were once nothing but news headlines. What is the What?, a 2006 novel written by Dave Eggers is a product and reflection of that. It follows the life of Sudanese refugee, Valentino Achak Deng from boyhood as his village is ransacked by the murahaleen, and as he walks through Sudan, Ethiopia, and Kenya, suffering and witnessing unbelievable horrors and losses. Accounts of his days in Africa are interspersed with stories of his subsequent struggles in America as a member of the Lost Boys of Sudan program. This book was important to me because the accounts of Deng’s experiences were a conduit through which to understand the suffering that exists in the world. It was humbling to read, and made me not only appreciate my life; but it reinforced my belief that we rarely have as much to lose as we think we do.

I think the 00′s will be remembered as a decade when everything we take for granted about how we live our lives was called into question. The models for how we access, understand, and distribute information were violently disrupted, exposing the now obsolete frameworks within which we live our lives. In the 10′s we will rebuild those frameworks.

I’m looking forward to rebuilding with you in the 10′s.

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It’s called Being Yourself for a Living; and while it’s been done before – but reserved to those of massive celebrity and resources – it’s becoming more feasible for more people each and every day. Technology has brought us channels that allow us to express our unique personalities, to share our unique knowledge and experiences, and to explore our curiousities.

You may have just one burning passion. Some may say that BYFL will be easier for you; but not necessarily. In today’s world, boundless curiousity is once again an asset. You’ll have to know a little HTML at the least. The Renaissance Person is back.

It will start with a blurry flurry of snowflakes. “You lack focus.” But eventually those snowflakes stick together. Technology has brought us feedback mechanisms by which to see just which of those snowflakes stick. You now have a snowball, and the ground upon which you stand has been blanketed. Start rolling!

Hi, my name is Kadavy, Inc.. What is your name?

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I really need to Compliment Someone more often, and I’ve found that Grow Something is very relaxing, too. Though, it sucks when your plants die.

I want to see more lists! So:

• Sean Johnson
• Laura Roeder
• Mary Campbell
• Dave Ferguson
• Fayza
• Patty Huber
• Ze Frank
• Pek Pongpaet

What are Eight* simple things that make you feel like you’re cheating the system? Blog it, put it on a Facebook note, better yet, make a video and get Eight* people to do the same. Like an item on someone else’s list? Go ahead and include it on yours.

Are you not on the list? Do it anyway. What are your Eight Life Hacks?

* or 2, or 5, or 300 – you get the idea.

——–

Lemon photo by Lori Greig

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Facebook disabled my account, and didn’t tell me why. The other day, as I was trying to comment on a Lifehacker thread using their super-cool Facebook Connect integration, I received this message:

HUH?! Disabled? How could my account be disabled? How could they take away from me my main means of communicating with my friends back in San Francisco, and everywhere else? Now I can’t even play Scrabble with my own mother!? Oh, yeah, AND WHY THE FUCK WAS MY ACCOUNT DISABLED?

At first I thought maybe it was this Tweet:

I figured, probably the words “teen sex”, followed by a link, set off some sort of flag when it was syndicated to my status message. One would think they would have a more sophisticated system for screening these things, but whatever. I sent them a message explaining this may have been it.

Then it was pointed out to me that since this tweet started with an “@” it probably wasn’t syndicated to my status message. The mystery continues.

Then I remembered a message I got a few weeks ago, regarding a video I posted that included a song by Spoon.

Hello,

We have removed your video entitled “Proportional Design Technique Time Lapse” uploaded at 8:20pm February 4th, 2009. We did this because we learned that your video might include copyrighted material owned by a third party, such as a video clip or background audio.

If you are the copyright owner, or have permission from the rights holder to upload and distribute this material on Facebook, you may file a counter notice of alleged infringement by following the link below.

Please note that if you re-upload this video without filing a counter notice, or if you upload another video that infringes on the rights of a third party, our system will again remove the content. This could cause your access to the Facebook Video application to be disabled, or your Facebook account to be disabled.

For any other questions, view our Help page.

The Facebook Team

“Okay,” I thought. A little anal, considering the video is only being shared with my friends, but whatever. Typical sort of language for this thing: “this could cause your access to the Facebook Video application to be disabled, or your Facebook account to be disabled.” Surely this language is for flagrant offenders. Anyway. Done deal. I can go on with my life, and spend the rest of my days throwing as many sheep at my friends as I wish.

Well, I guess there was one other video I had up that had a copyrighted song. A little experiment I did with processing.org and a Crystal Castles tune. I uploaded this video well before the Spoon one, so I didn’t think to take it down. Besides, they’ll just take it down and send me another message. Right? Right?

So, I’m left to assume that this was the egregious violation I had committed – putting up a video with a soundtrack that included a copyrighted song. By a group that, incidentally has had some copyright troubles themselves.

It’s been about 48 hours since my account was disabled, and still no comment from Facebook, or response to my inquiry. It’s as if my very existence has just gone into the ether. All those comments from my regular status updates via Twitter – shall be no more. Unless I get my account back.

Oh yeah, and that Facebook application that I spend thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours developing (which was also just about killed by the new API) what happens to that?

• Something is fucked here: yes, I did violate the Facebook Terms of Use by uploading a copyrighted video. In fact – TWO of them. But really guys? Disable my account? And cut off access to a portion of my business without word of when, why, whatTF? That’s a dick move. Would the same happen were I to publish a picture of the Eiffel Tower at night, or a picture of The Lone Cypress?
• Everyone should know: Facebook needs to know that if they are going to encourage users to invest their entire social lives in their platform, and to entrust them with housing and managing all of this personal data, those users – excuse me – PEOPLE are going to need to know that access to their own personal data isn’t going to be destroyed on little more than a whim.
• So, those of you on the inside can you start one of those Facebook group thingies? Join this group (thanks, Fayza). Get the word out that Facebook is very unforgiving with their policies, and can destroy this account you hold dear without notification.

If you’re on Twitter, please tweet this:

Save @kadavy! Facebook disabled his account: http://tr.im/h7Ji Please ReTweet!

Be careful what you trust Facebook with. After this experience, I made this video about it:

Photo by willgame

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Most of the time, I would kindly nod my head; but secretly, it felt as if my ears had vomited into my brain. “There’s only so much dirt on the earth, and everyone needs a place to live, so housing prices will always go up,” I would hear. The popularity of this opinion, and the intensity with which it didn’t make any sense to me, was enough for me to begin to wonder if I was the crazy one.

When I thought about buying a house, it all seemed like a big freedom suck to me. It was mind-numbing to me the amount of time, money, and autonomy people were expending on this supposed, “best investment.” Paychecks were spent re-roofing them, nights and weekends were passed tending to their yards, job offers and moves were turned down because of their ownership, and the opportunities for serendipitous experiences were traded for “neighborhoods” as monocultural as the cornfields that surrounded them. These costs were exponentiated by the accumulation of stuff to fill empty rooms in these vessels.

It simply didn’t make sense to me, so I did other things with my money. I got a cheap apartment in a neighborhood of character, followed the principles of my instinct, stowed  away in my Ameritrade account, and spent those precious nights and weekends persuing my curiousities, and building my skills. Thrift store scores of old Billy Joel records, books from the library, friends made in professional organizations, and hours spent coding and writing on my blog. When all of this paid off and opportunity called, there was no housing market to consider. I brought my investment with me.

I don’t want to make it sound as if I believe that buying a house is always a foolish endeavor. I’ll probably own one myself at some point, and I’m sure that for many people’s situations it was a great decision. However, for many, it didn’t turn out to be such, and the blind pursuit of this goal is at the root of the troubled financial times that we face now.

I’m also not disillusioned to the point of believing that I am some fantastic example of success; but I’m glad that I didn’t succumb to the frenzy. I was free to pursue the unexpected opportunities that came my way. 

So what are the lessons to be learned? 1) Be strong in processing decisions for yourself and your priorities 2) Be wary of popular goals, because they quite often bananas 3) Sometimes, you don’t have to look much further than the bathroom mirror of your rented apartment, to find the best investment you can make.
———
Money photo by tracy_olson. House photo by Per Ola Wiberg.

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I have a habit of teaching myself things. Yes, I did get a Bachelor’s in Graphic Design, but that didn’t teach me how to use the software, program for the web, and many other things that I know how to do today. If it taught me anything, it taught me how to think, and gave me an opportunity to learn how to think for myself. I even supplemented my education by locking myself in my apartment for the final semester of my education, and checking out every typography book I could find. I learned through that experience that a good portion of the faculty at my University didn’t know a fraction of what they claimed to about the subject. I wouldn’t trade the experience of organized higher education, but it’s not one that I’m eager to repeat.

So why don’t I go to business school? 1) I feel like the teacher-to-student format of most schools is outdated. And I’m not alone on this. 2) I don’t see much value in titles, or words that summarize the complexity of an individual’s experiences in an easily-digestible format (i.e. “I went to Harvard Business School”) 3) I don’t want to pay the actual dollar costs, and opportunity costs, just to be able to say those words (not that I believe I could get into HBS). Going to business school just isn’t my style.

I could just read a bunch of books. Josh Kaufman had put together a nice list of 77 books you can read to get a “Personal MBA.” It’s a nice list. But simply reading all of those books isn’t quite right because 1) It would take me ages to motivate myself through all of it 2) I would be learning in a vacuum, no insight from other minds, and 3) I would miss out on the most valuable aspect of getting an MBA – the people whom you meet.

So what am I to do? I want to get a group of people together to read the books on this list (and/or some that aren’t on this list), and 1) motivate each other to actually read the books 2) discuss the books, so that we aren’t learning in a vacuum, and 3) teach each other through sharing our related experiences in our actual business lives.

I’d probably organize it through Meetup or a Ning page. If there’s enough people, there could be different “tracks,” like the “Design & Production” track – smaller groups of people who read a specific set of books together. The individuals in the groups could present and summarize the books to one another, or present to groups who are in other tracks.

Actual business students and professionals in related fields could come to speak, or participate in discussions. Events and “meetups” would take place in Chicago, but there could be discussion and interaction on the web, as well.

This can be whatever the founding members make it to be, but ultimately, it should be a nimble, efficient, and scalable peer-learning experience. Are you in? Do you have ideas or thoughts? Comment now! And pass this on to others whom this may interest. Wherever they may be.

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Lately I’ve been fascinated by cognizance. With the increased freedom of what we have to do with our time and money these days – so much of what we do with those things is limited by our cognizance of them. We don’t become cognizant of something until our surroundings and experiences that envelop us introduce it to us. What we are cognizant of drastically dictates what we do day-to-day.

Until I was introduced to edamame years ago, I wouldn’t have sought it, because I wasn’t cognizant of it.

Until I moved to San Francisco, ended up working with a bunch of hippies, got a complementary massage, and subsequently learned about essential oils, I never would have known the joys of owning a French Lavender plant. I wasn’t cognizant of that option in life.

Until I got the opportunity to live in Silicon Valley, I wasn’t cognizant about corporate structures, option packages, venture funding, entrepreneurship in general. The critical mass in my environment just wasn’t there to release the entrepreneur in me. I was surrounded by a cloud of interest in job security, buying houses, raising families.

Lack of cognizance can poison our social fabric

The inner-city child may never consider technology as a way to make a living because his surroundings – the people around him, the businesses in his community – may never make him cognizant of it. He’s surrounded by a cloud of crime, poverty, violence.

I wish I was cognizant of something better to do.

The kid brought up in a homogenous suburb may get caught in a cycle of loneliness, lack of authentic stimuli, expression of the self – unless something makes him cognizant of a lifestyle that may better suit him.

Make it a point in your life to have cognizance-building experiences. Travel. Live in different cities. Drive through a part of town you haven’t before. Eat a food item from the ethnic section of your Safeway without knowing what the heck it is. Plug a random keyword into Flickr and browse around.

Uht oh, another food analogy

I am so fucking sick of eating the same salad...

Imagine the only salad you had your whole life was just iceberg lettuce, a couple of slices of onion, and a slice of tomato and ranch dressing. Then one day a friend makes an amazing salad for you. It has six different kinds of greens, walnuts, craisins, balsamic vinagrette. WOW! Now this is a salad!

But you go home, and you can’t make that salad. You don’t even know what the ingredients in it were. You had never even seen walnuts, craisins, etc.. What are you to do? Well, at least you’re cognizant that a better salad exists.

Go spend alot of time in the supermarket (well, a healthy one, anyway). Spend the night if you have to. Grab everything you can find, and make lots and lots of salads, until you finally figure out that perfect salad.

You’ve gained cognizance. You know what you want in your salad, and you know where to get it. If you had to sit at home, drive to the supermarket, try to make a salad, realize you don’t like the ingredients, drive back, repeat, repeat, repeat, until you finally made a decent salad, you…hell, you wouldn’t bother. You have to go live in the supermarket first. You have to bring every food item imaginable into your sphere of awareness to know what you want on your salad. Then, if you want, you can move out of the supermarket. Make a list, and drive back there once in awhile to get the things you need to make your perfect salad.

What the hell are you talking about David Kadavy!? Get it, silly? The salad is your life. The ingredients are your experiences. And living in the supermarket was a cognizance building experience.

So build your own cognizance, and if you see someone who might benefit from some, save them a trip to the supermarket and share with them something that makes your life great.

Salad by Laurel Fan. Swing kid by plasticrevolver. Bug by Mike McCaffrey.

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Some good reasons to completely rethink goals:

• Achieving goals doesn’t make you happier. Achieving goals can be a bit like eating Chinese food: your hunger is sated for a half an hour, and the next thing you know, you’re hungry again. Your happiness is more dependent upon how you percieve your goals than if you achieve them or not.
• If you achieved it, it was probably too easy. I remember when I was in grade school, they told us to always do the “five finger” exercise when deciding whether to read a book. They told us to read a random page in the book, and count on our fingers how many words were new to us. If it was five, the book was too hard; one, the book was too easy. We could have been encouraged to read books that we could breeze through, but where would that have gotten us? It’s okay to have things you’d like to achieve, but getting too bent out of shape about achieving those things encourages you to set goals that are too easy.
• You can miss the forest for the trees. If you’re too focused on your goals, you can often miss opportunities that are right in front of you. Imagine you’re a monkey swinging through the forest; and you have your eyes set on a bunch of bananas way across the forest. You may have to swing – from branch to branch – across some pretty wide gaps to get to those bananas. But if you’re mindful, you may notice some branches that are a little easier grab that may lead to other, perfectly good, sets of bananas. You may have your heart set on becoming a Partner at your current company, and meanwhile your best friend from B School is begging you to start a firm with him. Everything around you is constantly changing; and altering the priorities of you, and everyone around you. You can’t decide whether to RSVP “yes,” “no,” or “maybe” to your friend’s evite for next week’s BBQ, and you think you can plan what you’ll be doing in five years?
• You know what’s good for you better than you think. Why spend your evening working late for your boss when you really want to be writing on your blog? Sometimes our goals come from outside factors that we might not recognize. We might be clinging to a childhood dream about being an astronaut; there may be societal factors that have made us decide it’s prestigious to become a lawyer. We often hold onto goals that aren’t in line with our actual desires, talents, and social context. Do you think there was any kid 20 years ago who wanted to be a Web Designer when they grew up? No, and it’s a good thing that some people didn’t clutch onto their childhood dreams of being artists or mad scientists, because then we wouldn’t have any Web Designers. Constantly asking yourself “is what I’m doing right now in line with my goals?” sounds like a great idea, but it can be destructive. If you listen to your desires, you’ll probably find there’s something at least as beneficial to your well-being – whether you know it or not – that you’d actually rather be doing right now. If you take time to listen to yourself and doing those things, eventually you’ll find yourself being successful at something you truly enjoy, and what could make you happier than that?

So should you just forget about having any goals? Of course not. Just think twice next time you’re beating yourself up for not achieving a goal. Either that goal wasn’t sensitive to your personal situation and desires in the first place, or something has changed about your personal situation and desires that makes it infeasible. Focusing on goals without mindfully evaluating the ever-changing landscape that is your life and your desires is a recipe for misery. If you take the time to ask yourself what it is that you really want, relative to what opportunities lie in close reach of yourself, you may find yourself with a perfectly good bunch of bananas.

Read this post next! Eight Life Hacks for Health Wealth and Happiness
Or, this one! Chinese Food Goals

Photo by Flickr user ppdigital.

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A couple of weeks ago, I had one of my popular sinus infections. I already knew that I had a sinus infection, and I had just had another one a few months prior. So, I called up the doctor that I saw when I had my last sinus infection, and said “hey doc, I have the exact same symptoms as last time – can you call in a prescription for me?” 30 minutes later, I was picking up my prescription at Walgreens. Instead of costing me something like $300, like my last sinus infection, I got out of this one for about 30. This is what healthcare should be like!

Then it dawned on me. Why is it, with all of this health information that’s available on the web, and all of the new ways that people can interact, that there has been hardly any change in the doctor/patient relationship? Well, I know, that’s a dumb question, but in a more agile world, things would be different. Here’s a potential use case:

- I get another sinus infection.
- I log into a sort of “My Healthcare” interface.
- The interface has quicklinks for some of my most common health problems
- I click on “sinus infection.”
- There’s a check-list of questions, perhaps mentioning some symptoms I may have that may be a sign of a different condition.
- After verifying that I have the correct symptoms for a sinus infection, the system recommends some prescriptions for me.
- I’m given the option to choose other prescriptions that may work. I’m picky about my antibiotics.
- My prescription request is sent to my doctor’s “people” for approval, or possible escalation, and I’m sent status notifications via SMS or e-mail.
- I pick up my prescription. I save time and precious energy, and my doctor is freed up to treat people who actually need his help.

I was once a Kaiser Permanente patient, and they had made some good strides towards “automating” some healthcare processes. I was even able to e-mail my doctor. Still, the experience was far from being like the above.

I would think that with the increasingly prevalent DIY attitude of people, the amount of health information available on the web, the advances in social media, and the outrageous costs of healthcare in America conditions would be ripe for a revolution.

Of course, maybe it’s already happening (very gross video from a member of a kadavy.net spin-off community):

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And Craiglist works great for alot of things, but let’s say you’re looking for a roommate. First, you’re going to get a shitload of e-mails. Many of those e-mails are going to be totally irrelevant: from incompatible candidates, or people who generally didn’t read your post. You’re also going to get some spammers and scammers. When you finally sort through all of that, you’ll set up some appointments to meet with a few candidates. Many of them are not going to show up at all – they have no prior relationship with you, so there’s no damage to be done to their reputation by just not showing up. If you do finally find someone whom you’re comfortable living with, ultimately, they’re just a stranger – even if you get references, because those references are from strangers.

The problems of a socially “dumb” classified system

The problem is that something like Craigslist isn’t socially intelligent. It’s just a huge sea of anonymous listings. It’s oblivious to your social connections and doesn’t employ current methodolgies for building trust amongst members. With the influx of social networking over past years, people are able to maintain larger and larger networks of friends. It’s not uncommon for someone to have 400+ friends on Facebook. Shouldn’t these social connections be of some use?

Methinks also that as we start to have larger and larger networks of friends, we have less and less time for people whom we aren’t connected to in some way – thus the problem of the Craigslist “flake factor.”

If you’re looking for a roommate, you could let all of your friends know about this by sending out an e-mail to all of them. But nobody wants to be “that guy,” and you’re just being unrealistic if you expect your friends to forward that e-mail on to your friends. The trick is, getting that information in front of your social connections without annoying them.

So here’s a conceptual model of what such a system would look like. People’s needs are ported through a mechanism that understands their social connections. Those needs are then broadcast to those social connections through their “leisure portal.” What’s a leisure portal? It’s the “playground” of the internet. Huh?

The internet’s playground: the leisure portal

People are very protective of their e-mail inboxes. It’s their territory. So when you bug them with something that is irrelevant to them, they take offense.

Imagine you hated playing basketball. All of your friends know that you hate playing basketball. It’s okay to not like to play basketball. But there’s this one friend that comes by your place unannounced and says “hey, let’s play basketball.” and you say “I hate basketball, you know that” and then he says “well, I’m going to play basketball, tell your friends that I’m going to play basketball.” If he did that enough times, he probably wouldn’t be your friend for long. Getting impersonal e-mails from your friends is a bit like that.

So if e-mail is like “your house,” then a “leisure portal” is more like a “playground.” It’s not your home, you’re there in public space by your own volition. To the right of you, some of your friends are on the monkey bars, to the left, some others are playing kickball, behind you, they’re playing red rover, and in front of you, some other friends are playing chess. You aren’t obligated to join any of them, but you’re certainly welcome to – and you can always just go home.

Get it? A leisure portal is something that people come in contact with every day, usually during their leisure time. The technical equivalent of a playground. Something that, when you broadcast to it, doesn’t give your friends a sense of obligation to act, the way that a mass e-mail does.

Right now, the closest thing to a leisure portal on the internet is Facebook’s news feed. Hopefully you aren’t on Facebook trying to get some real work done – you’re just there to kill time and see what’s up with your friends. If you see in your news feed that one of your friends is looking for a roommate, that may be of interest to you. You may be able to help out, or know someone who can help out, but you may not. It’s not likely to bother you.

The plug

Sound familiar? Yeah, this is the conceptual model behind Through a Friend. Right now, Facebook provides the best system for bringing this model to reality. But hopefully it can be scaled up even further at some point.

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