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Philanthropy and the Super-Organism

2 July 2010 – 12:29 pm

Michael Robertson recently wrote a controversial, and no less compelling piece on philanthropy, referencing the Bill Gates and Warren Buffet effort to direct half the wealth of the country’s wealthiest.

I agree with many of Michael’s points.  One in particular.

Some might say, “What can it hurt to have charities distribute money?”. History indicates it can have a hugely detrimental effect. One can examine the great charitable experiment called Africa to see how a half a trillion of well meaning donations prop up cruel governments, cripple economic freedoms, and retard meaningful change over the last 50 years. By any measure the monies have achieved the exact opposite effect. Africa has seen its GDP decline during the last 50 years along with a decline in life expectancy.

He goes on to suggest that free markets are a better solution to rectify inequities in the haves.v.have-nots.  I don’t totally jibe with his view on this, mostly because I don’t feel that truly free markets exist.  The game is rigged at the top, to a large extent, and is dominated by super-organism dynamics– increasingly huge, monolithic and non-innovative companies and governments perpetrating corporate imperialism.

In the note he sent around to a number of folks he commented that there is too much derision regarding large corporations.  It was probably rhetorical (so I apologize, Michael, for literally responding!).   I don’t agree with Michael that unchecked pseudo-capitalism is a good thing. I say “pseudo” because there is no truly free-market system.  The system is gamed constantly by the bigger players.  But that’s another blog.  The thing he said that stood out for me and piqued my interest was this:

Someone needs to explain why the 49th hire is a good thing, but the 50th or 500th is bad

There is is a real difference, as I’m sure everyone already knows.  It’s embodied in every dealing with a small, owner-operated business versus a massive, faceless institution.  The dynamics of ANY organization changes with size– commercial or philanthropic.

It’s not that the 500th hire is intrinsically bad, it’s that organizations behave inherently differently with size. They become organisms, the whole becoming more important than the sum of the parts. There are oodles of historical and evolutionary precedents, the most prevalent relate to military organizations. There is a reason that a military “company” has settled on the size of 150. There is a decent essay her that touches on those dynamics (though I’m not endorsing the writer).

A smallish organization is inherently more connected to an eco-system, as a whole. Larger entities tend to try to *become* the eco-system, or manipulate the eco-system for their own benefit. They are no less selfish and self-serving, but they are simply more powerful, and their reliance on the human individual becomes less pronounced– humans become a fungible asset (we even call them “human resources”), and those organizations tend to abstract themselves from the affect they have on the even larger organism (Earth!). They will ultimately respond to changes in the macro-ecosystem… but kicking and screaming all the way. They tend to become defensive, not innovate and responsive.

“Overhead” becomes an influential dynamic– perpetuating a status quo. Those human resources hired to facilitate the original mission become entrenched, and it’s more important for them to keep their jobs than make decisions to serve the mission or goal. The goal becomes to keep the job, and thus mediocrity and reduced innovation or efficacy often result.

The Catholic Church (in which I was raised) as an organism is many centuries old. It has outlived every member, and will outlive every member. The Red Cross is older than every human living today (unless someone knows a 130 year old person). They famously became a travesty of inefficiency. Any organism of size’s first-order of business is to perpetuate and proliferate the organism. Philanthropic organizations are no different.

IMHO, to be efficient, charity must be a human-to-human (or small group of humans to small groups of humans). There is less abstraction from the “context of the need” (that is, a large organization will have less understanding of the cultural idiosyncrasies to gifting or so-called “relief”), and financial and organizational overhead remains low. Philanthropy may make someone “feel good” when giving to a Red Cross or Haiti Relief fund… but the downside of perpetuating (or creating) an institution to administrate it will kill efficacy (or severely reduce it). Models like Kiva’s (and other micro-lending or micro-giving) seem like a better dynamic to me, but I have no direct evidence as yet.

People can be greedy. Organizations “of size” are inherently so.

cumulusguy | On the Human Condition | Comments (0)

GoGo, Yer Gone (If Only!)

26 March 2010 – 3:12 pm

Or, “I Paid $12.95 to (Try to) Post to My Own Blog”

I’d really like to know how many others out there think GoGoInflight is a no-go, lame-o, rarely-works-o service?

I’ve tried GoGo perhaps 20 times (yeah, I know the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result). Probably 4 times out of 5 it’s been fraught with connectivity issues, “errors occurring when submitting my data” and strange re-directs (it’s like the Winchester Mystery House of ISPs). The only thing that’s worked flawlessly for me is the billing (when it’s able to connect) and the chat to customer support usually works (but didn’t really this time, it kept dumping me from the queue claiming network problems were causing it)… but even the customer service chat doesn’t provide the ability to share a screenshot of what’s happening on my machine. Lame.

Hey, GoGo! The 1990s called. They want their “Internet Service Provider” business back.

Airlines! Why didn’t pit two services against each other. Give me two ISPs on-board. Oh, they’ll get good fast and push each other to get flawless fast, through competition for my dollars. I simply cannot imagine the incremental cost to put two wi-fi systems into the plane is significant. I don’t know what deal you cut with GoGo… but I hope you didn’t pay them.

As a species, we must have a masochistic streak a mile wide, or a technology addiction so acute that we put up with cell phones with lousy coverage, first-generation devices so bug-infested they’d be given Cs by City Health Departments, and airborne ISPs who don’t embody the words “internet,” “service,” and “provider.” I don’t even want to be connected on an airplane… it was pretty much my last vestige of off-the-grid tranquility. So who’s really the lame-o here, eh?

Postscript: Try as I might (like for half the flight), I could not get connected via GoGo, so this blog post had to wait until I got to a more reliable bit of connectivity.

cumulusguy | Uncategorized | Comments (2)

The Contextual Web

18 December 2009 – 11:08 am

I found this bit of wisdom, attributed to Phil Windley, the other day and found it worthy of consideration and proliferation.

Six Rules of a Purpose-based Web
1. Purpose is more important than Location.
2. Freedom is more important than Control.
3. Context is more important than Content.
4. Relationships are more important than Transactions.
5. Loyalty is more important than “Time on site.”
6. Individuals are more important than Demographics.

Phil Windley

Whether followed verbatim, or as guiding principals, I feel like those ensconced in classic “editorial culture” would be well-armed by taking them to heart. They are good “genes” with which to do cultural engineering to match up editorial culture with the “social media culture” or “utilitarian cultures” that have emerged with the web and mobile wireless.

You might wanna take a look at what Phil’s company, Kynetx, is up to, too.

cumulusguy | Uncategorized | Comments (0)

Six Slides on Social Nicheworking

17 December 2009 – 9:42 am

Or “How to Co-opt Dominant Social Utilities to Capture, Nurture and Monetize a Passion Group”

cumulusguy | Networked Media, Social Media, Spark Marketing & Engines of Engagement | Comments (0)

Legal-ease

2 December 2009 – 6:55 pm

File this under: “Ten Things That I Thought Would Never Happen in My Lifetime.”

Law firms forced to lower fees

The recession hasn’t been good for the legal profession. Clients are demanding lower fees and new billing procedures. What’s more, it’s unlikely that law firms will be able to return to business as usual even after the recession.
The overhaul in fee structures could include offering flexible payment options such as flat fees, monthly retainers, blended rates, contingency fees and rate caps, according to Jonathan Veale, division director of Robert Half Legal. To offset revenue loss and increase efficiency, many law firms will start outsourcing support services overseas.
Beyond the impact of the recession, one of the biggest changes will be in dealing with the popularity of online legal services. Experts predict that clients will have the option of increasingly sophisticated Web-based legal assistance. These services may end up hurting small law firms more than large firms because small firms traditionally handle document preparation, and most online legal services allow easy access to documents and regulatory expertise on demand.
Source: Trend Letter, December 2009
Sorry, Lawyers, but halle-friggin’-lujah!  ’bout time. How about a few more merit (success)-based metrics?  Like half now and half when you accomplish what I hired you to accomplish.
Real estate agents are next.  What again exactly is sacred about 6%?
cumulusguy | On the Human Condition, Random Thoughts | Comments (0)

Social “Streams”

25 November 2009 – 3:14 pm

What “entitities” should have a “voice” in social media?

I’m a big proponent of making “humans” the priority when creating social media products.  I actually coined the term “humanode” in my book Word of Mouse: The New Age of Networked Media, which described the individual human as the only “node on the network” that was important when designing and building technology for social media. So much software stops short of this, being built based on what the computer, mobile phone or other device can accommodate vs. being built based on what humans will or won’t, or might and mightn’t do with the device running the software.

I’ve evolved my thinking somewhat in this regard.  I still believe we should be prioritizing the empowerment and enhancement of the human experience, individually or en masse, but I believe we can serve that mission by activating more than just humans.

I described a humanode as a multi-faceted human empowered to take on roles beyond that of simply “consumer.”  That is, to be able to act (and be encouraged to act) as creator, producer, distributor, marketer, vendor, exhibitor, reviewer, critic and all manner of proactive roles.

I believe we can best serve that aim by “awakening” more entities than just the individual person to express or activate.

There are seven (7) entities I’ve so far identified to which I feel we should strive to “give voice” or “make aware” or “make us aware of”– a sort of social sentience. 

Seven entities that should and will be socially sentient: (1) People Streams; (2) Place Streams; (3) Event Streams; (4) Media Streams; (5) App Streams; (6) Device Streams; and (7) Product Streams.

People Streams

This is the core of the social media revolution– providing tools to humans so that they may express themselves, broadcast location, and connect to other humans in myriad fashions.  It started before social networking, with personal home pages, instant messaging, email, etc… and is being exalted in the so-called web2.0 phase of social networking, microblogging, and the general improvement of tools that turn consumers into all manner of producer, marketer, writer, exhibitor or vendor.

Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and others have made People Streams a core focus of their growth.

Place Streams

Every place has a personality.  It also has time-varying dynamics, information flow in and out, and people associating and disassociating with that place.  A place doesn’t have to have a scheduled “event” to have social sentience.  Whether that place be Disneyland, Google HQ, a city park, a ski resort, or my own home…  all places should have a voice– a mixture of the voices of those humans associating and disassociating, or of the place itself.

“Sinclair Station at Summit Park just dropped regular gas price $0.10 to $2.58.  Remember American Spirit cigarettes are $3.50 this week only. You’ve purchased here 3 times this month, one more and you get 20% off your next fillup. ”

“Silver Mountain Health Spa just added a regular pilates class Friday’s at 9am. Your brother mark just checked-in here. Yoga teacher Janice Pender just joined us from Bally’s in Santa Monica.”

“No crime reported in the last week at Pioneer Park.  Kids face-painting every Sunday 12pm-3pm. 10 check-ins at the dog park in the last hour.”

“Park City Mountain resort has an avg base today of 48 inches.  Text #pcmeal for 20% mobile coupon at any Park City Mountain lodge. Jupiter Lift carrying 20% of capacity– get up here for fresh tracks!”

A Place Stream could/should include any dynamic (time-varying) activity, descriptor, event or characteristic. But the Place Stream is *different* from the People Streams eminating from that Place. Those managers or executives responsible for that Place should be treating that Place, or the conglomeration of Places (like a Theme Park or Ski Resort) as entities in their own right, building the “voice” for each Place in that light.

The location-enabled app revolution that started in force in 2009 is representative of this Place Stream eventuality, but it is still currently rooted in location-enabling People Streams.

Event Streams

Events comprise place and people, typically within a constrained period of time.  It’s a focused aggregation of entities: People + Place(s) + ∆t

Many of us have experienced a contemporary “Event Stream.” A good example is ustream.com’s coverage of Real-Time Crunchup just yesterday (archived now).  A large portion of an Event Stream will originate from the participants– People Streams.  But there may also be a “venue-centric” Place Stream, distinct from the People Streams, flowing from the proprietors of the location– restaurant, convention center, hotel, etc.  And any information from the event organizers regarding everything other than the content of the event– schedule changes, venue changes, special deals, registration update, presenter changes, etc…  pre-event, during the event, and post event.

Content Streams (or “Media Streams” for individual pieces of content)

I have contemplated this Content Stream for some time, and have long-planned (and are in the process of) integrating it into our PlanetTagger product.  Mark Benioff of Salesforce.com gave a cool demonstration of how this can and should work in early incarnations.

Any piece of content or media– excel spreadsheet, word doc, film, .pdf white paper or powerpoint– has a life of it’s own.  Anything that happens to that piece of media, any change in the content itself, and any commentary on the content or status is part of the voice of that piece of media.  And people should be able to “network” around that piece of content, too.  Not social networking, but instead “knowledge networking” (look for a future post on this term).

This voice may not be appropriate to make “public.”  A .ppt or a word doc or a film production may require some level of proprietary treatment.  But the latest installment of the Twilight series should have it’s own voice, and we should be able to interact with that piece of media post-release (or pre-release), and/or network around it.  I’m not talking about “networking” with the producer, the director or one of the stars…  but instead networking around the actual film product with a voice of its own.

The same is true of a white paper, a piece of original research, or a market research report.  Abstracting the conversation and centering it on the author, or the person delegated to managing that piece of media isn’t good enough.

A singular piece of content is powerful, influential…  and it can become a perpetuated meme all it’s own– like the first Star Wars film, a brilliant journalistic expository, or Joseph Campbells digested Hero’s Journey which spread like wildfire (via fax, no less!) through Hollywood.

One could *kinda* argue that the emergence of YouTube, Flickr and Scribd are evidence that this is already happening.  Yep, it is.  But specialized services “by entity” will give way to applications the embody all 7 socially sentient entities under a social nichework– an affinity group-centric experience.

Applications Streams (or App Streams)

Applications are by definition dynamic (time-varying).  Whether that application be Facebook, Microsoft Word or any number of MMOGs, they should all have a subscribe-able and filterable “voice.”  App Streams already exist in certain form, but typically require me to launch and interact with the App in order to “hear” it.

Shouldn’t I be able to hear the tips and tricks, app upgrade info, release notes, alerts that have unfinished piece of content languishing in a drafts folder, unanswered mail, etc. via the same universal messaging/filtering system I use to conglomerate my Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. experience? (or vice versa– have the App Stream come *to* my Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn stream).

Device Streams

My Personal Video Recorders.  My iPhone. My computer.  My Xbox.  My car’s GPS.  My washing machine.  My refrigerator. All should be capable of expressing themselves– future Device Streams will be configurable and filterable so that I can hear

They should also be capable of asking for help, reporting their status, alert me when there is a software or hardware problem or impending problem, etc.  And I should be able to interrogate those devices similarly– “Refrigerator: how old is the half-and-half?” “Answer: Winder Farms Half-and-Half is half-full and expires on December 2nd.”

Again, I shouldn’t have to be with the device, it with me, or operating it for this voice to be heard or interrogated.

Products Streams

With the advent of technologies like RFID (Radio Frequency Identification), products may not be “aware” per se, but they are beginning to have senses– an ear, a voice and perhaps a sort of sense of touch.

From my Fritos to my Winder Farms Dairy Milk to my Cinnamon Life cereal and my Rossignol skies and Gary Fisher mountain bike, all should and will be able to tell me where they are, what their status is, what they need, how long it’s been since I used it (or ate it) and where I can buy *stuff* related to it, whether it be add-on gear, parts or refills and replacements.

Utility-centric will give way to Affinity-Group-centric

The combining, compounding and filtering of these “streams,” and the technologies that will allow us to converse and interact with these streams is either here already and needing tweaking or productization, or is inevitable and imminent.  Whether the stream is available on-demand via query, or we subscribe to the voice in-whole or in-part is a matter of choice, taste and customization.

This isn’t big brother.  It’s lots of little brothers (and sisters).

The idea of having to have a specialized service to “network” around people, and then a different one for places (or geo-tagging), a different one for events, a different one for content, etc… will soon be considered quaint.   Many hit apps on the web started around a utility, but most folks are not microblogging or photo-sharing or social networking or mapping hobbyists, per se.  Some are, but most aren’t.  But those utilities have idiosyncratic application to many many other affinity groups.

Many of the most successful social media apps of the future will be centered around a real-world passion, behavior, industry, hobby or other affinity group (like being a gardener, skier, sci-fi fan, etc), and they will all be better described as “knowledge networks” that incorporate some or all of the socially sentient entities, but will do so in the specific and characteristic context of that affinity group.

cumulusguy | Networked Media, Social Media | Comments (0)

Contextroversy

20 November 2009 – 2:34 pm

The explosion of socializing and communication tools in the social media sphere has fueled the debate about what is connotative of “context”?

We used to have this simple mnemonic: the five (5) Cs– content, community, commerce, code and context– to which we referred when we were discussing the building blocks of building web-based products.

  • Content Anything consumed by the senses: text, pics, graphics, videos, animation, etc.
  • Community Any utility/dynamic that connects users to us, or to each other.
  • Commerce Any exchange of value (mostly in the form of money, or in time/commitment like ad viewing)
  • Code Any technology responsible for “rendering the experience” for the user. The “engine” we don’t see underlying the experience.

But what is context?

Context isn’t so easily defined, I suspect. I’ve thought about it, but haven’t rendered it into a coherent thought-stream yet.  So a little real-time riffing:

I feel like there are multiple “contexts” possible for human beings, especially as they apply to media consumption and socializing/social-media.

1. Content Context

An example was used recently at #crunchup in a discussion about how one of the emergent “real-time” companies was enabling users to sift through information.  The context they described was rooted in the newspaper model: when I’m reading (or want) comics, I don’t want hard-news mixed into it.  The allusion was to Twitter and Facebook mixing all kinds of content together into the respective feeds in ways that’s difficult to parse.

Filter by: tags, categorization on input, keywords, heuristic analytics, etc.

2. Social Context

More often than not, what I may share with my mom is likely different than what I share with my work colleagues.  So far, social media has done a pretty lame job of implementing social context beyond the context of the utility itself– microblogging utility, photo-sharing utility, geo-tagging utility, etc.

The notion of “groups” within a general social media utilities will suffice it for some, but not for most.  Imagine having to build and select sub-groups you’d have to select for every tweet or facebook feed.  No thanks.

Filter by: Clique, Family, Industry, Job, etc. (a bit too obvious… thinkin’ more about this…)

3. Behaviorial Context

These are hobbies, passions and affinities.  I think this relates closely to “social context,” as the behaviors in which I engage very often define my Social Context.  Watching baseball is a behavior that dictates I become a fan of a team (like the Yanks!), which in-turn defines a particular social circle.

I’m not a “social networker” by hobby (though some are). I’m not a photo-sharer by hobby (though, again, some are). I’m a gardener.  I’m a skier.  I’m a scifi aficionado.  I’m a foodie.  I’m a parent.

These are the ultimate contexts that I predict will rule social media.  It’s social nicheworking.

Filter by: offering behavior-centric apps that can service those affinity groups most effectively, much like niche media companies service their watchers/readers (Food Network for foodies vs. CBS for general entertainment junkies).

4. Brand Context

There is relevance and context to those entities with which I associate in my life.  I run pretty much exclusively in New Balance shoes.  I ski exclusively on Rossignal skis.  I love my Toyota truck. I watch the Food Network and HBO religiously. I adore Tillamook cheese (sharp cheddar!), Dannon Activia yogurt and Winder Farms, a local dairy. I think Burt Brothers is the most honest and value-delivering auto service I’ve ever encountered. I’ve had the best credit card customer service experiences with American Express.

There is most definitely a context around those products I consume, and services in which I partake.

Filter by: opt-in brand preferences, and heuristic analytics around what I actually buy (but make it pull/share, not push).

5. Location Context

I live in Park City, Utah. That fact is important to my life, and increasingly important to my social media life.

Social media utilities that facilitate, improve and enhance my “first-life” (real world) instead of encouraging me to build an online “second-life” are one of the biggest opportunities in social media for the next 10 years.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who thinks about it for a minute that geographical context is important– where I live, or where I am right now.  The explosion of smartphones with location-awareness is breaking that opportunity wide open, and location context is a context that has the most value in concert with other contexts.

Compound Context

I like this term: “compound context.”  A single context alone isn’t where the ultimate opportunity lies in social media. Their is power (and amazing revenue opportunities) in the combination of “I’m a skier, I’m at Jupiter Bowl at Park City Mountain resort, tell my posse to meet me here, and have the ski resort tell me if there are discount coupons for food for lunch“; or “I’m a user of New Balance shoes, I’m in Los Angeles, tell me when and where there’s a sales promotion“; or “I’m a golfer, I’m on the 17th Hole at St. Andrews, anyone have tips on this brutal bit of turf?”

Applications that enable this compound context automatically filter the focus of information or knowledge sharing, and provides super-contextual advertising opportunities.  I shouldn’t have to scour Facebook, Twitter, etc. to do it, either.

What if we flipped the model on social media tools? Instead of “utility-centric” (microblogging, geo-tagging, media-sharing, etc) we approached social media “context-centric.”

Sign-in Page Photo TOP v2What if I’m a fan of, say, the musician Diana Krall? There are tweeters who are Diana Krall fans (nearly 5,000 at this count).  There are Facebook users (some 50,000 strong) who are stated fans of hers, too.  And there are myriad fan clubs and message boards dedicated to the same purpose.  But as a fan, why would I want to or need to join a myriad of groups (on Twitter, Facebook, fan forum, message board, etc)?  I shouldn’t have to.  And if I’m the lead marketer for her as a brand, I shouldn’t ask a user to, either.

If I’m the manager of *any* brand, I should be taking a hub-and-spoke (or more appropriate– body and two-way tendrils) approach to building that brand, or interacting with fans/users of that brand.  Building a “group” on Facebook alone doesn’t (and shouldn’t cut it).  Having a Twitter-stream does not a social media marketing strategy make.  We should be co-opting those myriad streams and feeds (both ways), but there should be a singular place back to which they all lead… and that which the brand “owns” in capturing and nurturing their user-base (and monetizing, if that is the aim).

What brand managers have yet to realize is that the “network effect” so powerful within social media is being reaped by others– those social media utility companies.  Those brand managers should be taking a more “venture marketing” approach to their marketing, promotions and advertising dollars (every social media dollar spent is an investment in creating an social media asset, not just creating more awareness for the brand or media property).

There are now emerging affordable “integrated brand-centric marketing apps” that enable this kind of brand-centric, compound-context strategy.

It’s a start that I can use integrated messaging apps like Brizzly, Tweetdeck or Seesmic, but the context there is *still* the utility, a very narrow behavior around general information sharing, not providing the the contexts of brand, social circle, or behavior (beyond the behavior the utility purports).

If you have a “website” from your web1.0 phase of web marketing, then you should have the web2.0 version of that old content-driven website– an integrated social media application that ties together everything that’s going on organically in the social media sphere.  This means you: advertiser brand, publisher, tv network, film, tv show, artist, etc.

That website1.0 should be evolving into a integrated social media center that creates compound context for users, fans and/or customers.


cumulusguy | Conversational Marketing, Networked Media, Social Media, Spark Marketing & Engines of Engagement | Comments (0)

If Rube Goldberg Was a Musician

19 November 2009 – 9:15 am

This piece of video is simply extraordinary and needs to be shared and seen.

The Ruse:
People were told this bizarre and wonderful machine was built as a collaborative effort between the “Robert M. Trammell Music Conservatory” and the “Sharon Wick School of Engineering” at the University of Iowa. It was alleged to be comprised 97% of the machines components came from John Deere Industries and Irrigation Equipment of Bancroft, Iowa …Yep, farm equipment! They claimed it took the team a combined 13,029 hours of set-up, alignment,calibration, and tuning before filming. They went on to claim it is now on display in the Matthew Gerhard Alumni Hall at the University of Iowa, and is slated to be donated to the Smithsonian.  Watch:

The Truth:

The video is amazing, no question, but the “fantastic machine” depicted therein wasn’t built out of farm equipment parts at the University of Iowa. It’s an example, rather, of the incredible 3D computer animation created by Wayne Lytle and his team at Animusic in Austin, Texas. No such machine exists in the real world.

Nor, for the record, is there a “Robert M. Trammell Music Conservatory,” a “Sharon Wick School of Engineering,” nor a “Matthew Gerhard Alumni Hall” at the University of Iowa. The caption accompanying the video in emails circulating since November 2006 is entirely fictitious, authored by an anonymous prankster.

You can view a clip from the original video, entitled “Pipe Dream,” in its proper context here.

Real or computer animation… it’s worth the watch.

cumulusguy | Random Thoughts | Comments (0)

Slow Money

17 November 2009 – 4:01 pm

Bringing Money Back Down to Earth

Oodles of money zip around electronic banking networks every minute of every day.  The movement is so quick, the transactions so frequent, the companies so complex, and the forms those investments take so myriad, the average investor has lost track where their money is and for what it’s being used.  There are trillions of dollars being invested in abstract financial instruments called “derivatives.”  It’s basically money betting on money (or some  market movement).  It’s legalized gambling.  Bankers can come up with anything they want to “bet on” and make a market out of it– from pork belly futures to North American home mortgages.  But derivatives are dangerous. They are twice, thrice or fourfold removed from the actual product or service touching an actual consumer.  High-concept, high-complexity, low-touch… and by-definition elitist.

A derivative is a measure of rate-of-change.  Say I have a car.  It moves from position A to position B.  The derivative of position is the rate-of-change-of-position, or velocity (speed and direction).  The derivative of velocity is the rate-of-change-of-velocity, or acceleration.  The derivative of acceleration is the rate-of-change-of-acceleration, otherwise called jerk.   Imagine being able to gamble on a NASCAR race entrant’s acceleration or jerk, instead of it’s average velocity over the course of a race.  Stupid, right?  Like, who cares who accelerated the fastest or jerked the most.  It’s just a number.  It seems arbitrary and trivial.  But it might not to a bookie if they felt they could get people to gamble on changes in those abstract numbers.

And so it is so with bankers…  clever MBAs with nothing better to do than invent new abstract ways to make money off of money.  One way or another, there are trillions of dollars committed to “legalized gambling” in the form of complex derivatives that bet on 2nd, 3rd and 4th-order derivatives far removed from real product or service.  Gives whole new meaning to the mathematical term for the third-order derivative “jerk.”

All of this in the name of making money.  Big money.  Fast money.

But what if “big” and “fast” weren’t the overriding operating tenets guiding financial wizards.  What if the pressure for double-digit returns in single-digit number of years was mitigated, or eradicated. There is some evidence to support the idea that unbridled capitalism-at-any-price isn’t really sustainable.  Gordon Gecko’s “greed is good” was turned from an intended cautionary tale into an industry mantra.  What if a few modifiers were added to the mix– “big enough” and “not so fast.”  And a few more adjectives thrown in like “sustainable,” “ethical,” “local,” and “high-touch” (read: touches humans, not simply bits whizzing through computers).

Slow Return is Better than No Return

… and slow money investing likely has intangibly-tangible benefits to community through sustainability.

I find it infinitely more interesting to investigate, study and autopsy how my investment in, say, community-supported agriculture or urban agriculture ripples through my community and the general economy than I do figuring out where a hedge fund in which I might invest puts their money, if they’re taking fair pay, and if the world derivatives markets in which they’re dabbling are sound.  I think I’d rather regularly meet with a human that I can see prospering, see a product I can see, feel, taste, smell and touch the value of.  Sound quaint, parochial and Pollyanna-ish?  Maybe.

But real businesses can be built on slow money.  You may not become a dot-com or bio-tech billionaire (and I’d most certainly make a *great* billionaire), but does any one person really need a billion dollars.  Really?

Time Magazine has featured the slow money movement.  So has the Wall Street Journal, which showcased former venture capitalist Woody Tasch, who took “a page from the Slow Food movement, which calls on consumers to take the time to savor home-cooked meals, Mr. Tasch dubbed his philosophy “Slow Money.”

The crux of the movement is persuading investors to put some of their assets into businesses they can see, smell and even taste — to measure growth not by the flashing numbers on a stock ticker, but by the slow ripening of a tomato.

Location, Location, Location

Slow Money Alliance poses several questions on their website, but the one that piqued my interest most was:

  • What would the world be like if we invested 50% of our assets within 50 miles of where we live?

It’s more than “sustainability,” though it is indeed sustainable.  Wouldn’t it be interesting to see investors take some portion of their investment portfolio and localize it?  Take some of that dough out of the hands Wall Street-centric czarist financiers, and put some of it with a local guy or gal with the a great idea and great execution skills, one you can meet periodically face-to-face to check on their progress.  Or perhaps find or found a group focused on financing those local businesses.

Alas, convincing investors they’re going to make less money more slowly is no easy task.  Perhaps a wee bit easier in times like these.  But slow return is most definitely better than no return… especially if there is an additional “ROI” beyond receiving a multiple on your investment.

If we’re going to delve into the complexities of “investment,” let’s focus on the impact ripple effect a company or product has on the system.   Stop focusing on leaps, shorts and futures, and instead invest in “restoration and preservation instead of extraction and consumption,” as Woody Tasch put it so well.

Invest in restoration and preservation instead of extraction and consumption.

As of this writing, there is not much available to invest in that could be deemed “slow money investments,” but I’m watching and listening.

cumulusguy | On the Human Condition, Random Thoughts, Uncategorized | Comments (0)

Bank Robbery

1 November 2009 – 8:35 am

This story gives whole new meaning to the term “bank robbery.” But I fear my words are a mere fart in the gale force winds of banks being banks.

I was recently turned down on a re-fi for my primary residence. I have paid faithfully and timely on my current loan for 5 years. My median credit score is around 720. I have worked for the same company for three years, and my current pay grade has been consistent for the last 2 years, and handily supports the current payment anticipated for the proposed new loan.

My current loan is an interest-only that goes adjustable next month. Probably not the best choice, but at the time (2004) it was a good one. Nothwithstanding that fact, the loan to value ratio is still approximately 53%, based on the most recent appraisal. That is, the amount financed is approximately 53% of the value of the home, or I have 47% equity in the home (it was substantially more, but the residential home value bubble has squeezed 20-25% out of the overall home value).

So, based on current interest rates, my monthly payments are set to rise by nearly 20% starting in November.

So here’s the logic: The bank won’t refinance my home so I can keep my monthly payments flat or (heaven forbid!) lower them, but they’ll let me keep paying on the existing loan at 120% of the payment I’ve been making for the last 5 years. So in tough times, where I simply want to keep my payments flat and affordable, the great and powerful Oz-tracizer is making 20% more by denying me the ability to re-fi. Hmmm….

Here’s they’re stated reason: I own more than 22% of the company for which I work, and the company is not yet profitable (FYI– it is a growth company that is financed through venture capital, like so many entrepreneurial endeavors are). So the banks undertakers… that is, “underwriters”– one of those superorganisms that got us into this housing mess in the first place– has decided to attribute the company’s so-called losses pro rata to my ownership position. That is, they’ve decided to deduct from my personal balance sheet the amount the company invested this year multiplied by my percentage ownership. Suffice to say the math doesn’t work… for them.

But the company is a Delaware C-corp that pays me like an employee, and has an independent board of directors that can fire me as an employee. That is, not even the IRS can moosh together the profits-and-losses of a C-corp and an individual who works for that C-corp. So how is it that a mortgage lender is conveniently allowed to do so?

I spoke at length to the in-house broker at this bank– the same bank to whom I have been paying faithfully for 5 years. She is frustrated to the edge of quitting. She and her colleagues acknowledge, even lament that it is ridiculously unfair, and she shares dozens of similar stories. The underwriters, to whom she is subject — that same super-organism that greedily signed up anyone and everyone to a loan, with no regard to whether or not they were qualified, and thus put us into this housing bubble mess– have now become capricious and ultra-conservative. They are arbitrarily rejecting loans for people that have shown *no evidence* of risk of default, have excellent credit, and are by their very nature “low risk.”

I’m one of a class of people who didn’t ask for government help via FHA or some other program when establishing my financing, and thus don’t get any help in the government now. I’m not rich. And I’m not impecunious. Not yet, anyway. But the bank seems happy to squeeze me dry, instead of renegotiating my loan so I can keep my payments flat.

WTF?

A Bit of Shreditorial

I’m an entrepreneur. I’m creating jobs, and products and services of real value. I’m also classified as a small business. Research by the Small Business Administration shows that small businesses contribute 50%-plus to the Gross Domestic Product. 50%! We’re not talking Goldman Sachs. Not AIG. Not GM. We’re talking startups and local businesses. You kill them, you kill the economy. It’s the middle class, stupid. You fuel them, the economy flourishes.

So where is the specific “economic stimulus” to the entrepreneurs and the middle-class? There isn’t any. It certainly stands to reason that 50% of the economic stimulus should be going to businesses that account for 50% of the GDP. Even if you took 10%! Say $150 billion. Ok, let’s be conservative– $100 billion. Put most of that directly into “underwriting” *existing* small businesses to ensure they have the capital to operate and grow; and put the rest into regional venture capital funds with a mandate to support local economies with new, fresh ideas of how to put people to work.

I can hear the arguments like “it’s too tough to administrate” and “how can we trust that the money will got to the right people?”

I assure you I’d much rather put $1 billion into the hands of Michigan entrepreneurs, for example, and trust them to get the at-risk workers of that region re-trained and to work on sustainable businesses primed for the 21st Century, instead of $3 billion for Cash-for-Clunkers to prop up bloated and ineffective gargantuan institutions from the last century. Am I the only one that sees the obviousness of this?

But I and other small business owners don’t have $50 million to spend this year on lobbying Washington, and another $15 million to contribute in campaign contributions, like the automotive industry does. Neither does the fragmented small businesses who comprise 50% of the country’s GDP.

And the banking industry has received TRILLIONS of dollars in government bailout funds to ensure the likes of Goldman Sachs report record profits.

This isn’t capitalism. It’s socializing losses and privatizing gains. Then you hear people like former Goldman Sachs CEO Jon Corzine blame the ire of folks like me as envy of their success. Dude, really? Are you that far removed from the real world. You don’t *make* anything. You make dress up legalized gambling and call it banking, move paper from one place to another, arbitrage anything and everything and call it value-creation, when in-fact you are the tail wagging the dog of real-life and the everyman. If you and all your fellow mega banks disappeared overnight, there would be a few lumps and difficulties to weather, but we and the economy would do just fine. You and your cronies are not as important as you think, Mssr. Corzine.

I’m obviously incensed that I’m a victim of the banks’ own greed and capriciousness, and that I’m further victimized by my own government, who takes my money and the money of millions of others like me to prop up those who would take more of our money…. nay, all of our money until they’ve bled us all dry through variable interest rates, debit card charges, overdraft fees, and all manner of legalized gambling called derivatives, commodities, and other legitimized games of chance.

I can hear some conservatives saying “well, your fundamentals mustn’t be sound and the banks have every right to reject his application.” Nope. You’d be wrong. Besides, the bank can’t take a bailout from the government and then turn around and reject a loan application of one of the government’s constituents who has very good credit and shows no historical or future indications of being a default risk. They cannot make up arbitrary rules that defy even how the government classifies individuals and C-corps, and the relationship between them. They cannot decide they won’t create new paper to ensure my payments stay flat or drop, when they’re happy to take 120% of my current payment based on the exact same credit analysis.

I’m sick of the pussies in Congress, and the guy I voted for President acting like a “pussy until proven otherwise.” The growth of the internet over the last 15 years was rootly greatly in the ability of *everyone* to be able to compete… putting the means of production, distribution, marketing, vending, exhibition, etc. into *everyones* hands. Not in the hands of the incumbents. And we’ve seen huge value-creation. How ’bout we take a page from that book and put the *bulk* of any stimulus money into the hands of individuals (or small groups of them) and not institutions. And let’s further endeavor to ensure you’re not letting those same institutions hamstring individuals with capricious and arbitrary rules that penalize those of us who are working our tails off to create value… real value… for ourselves, our employees, our investors, our region and the country as a whole.

cumulusguy | Uncategorized | Comments (0)